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        Title: Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 32: 1886
   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
     __________________________________________________________________

Our Own Dear Shepherd

   (No. 1877)

   A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, JANUARY 3, 1886,

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
   NOVEMBER 20, 1885.

   "I am the good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine. As
   the Father knows Me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down My life
   for the sheep." John 10:14,15.

   As the passage stands in the Authorized Version, it reads like a number
   of short sentences with scarcely any apparent connection. Even in that
   form it is precious, for our Lord's pearls are priceless even when they
   are not threaded together. But when I tell you that in the Greek the
   word, "and," is repeated several times and that the translators have
   had to leave out one of these, "ands," to make sense of the passage on
   their line of translation, you will judge that they are none too
   accurate in this case. To use many, "ands," is after the manner of
   John, but there is usually a true and natural connection between his
   sentences. The, "and," with him is usually a real golden link and not a
   mere sound--we need a translation which makes it so. Observe, also,
   that in our version the word, "sheep," is put in italics, to show that
   it is not in the original. There is no need for this alteration if the
   passage is more closely rendered.

   Hear, then, the text in its natural form--"I am the good Shepherd and I
   know My own, and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me, and I
   know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep." This reading I
   have given you is that of the Revised Version. For that Revised Version
   I have but little care, as a general rule, holding it to be by no means
   an improvement upon our common Authorized Version. It is a useful thing
   to have it for private reference, but I trust it will never be regarded
   as the standard English translation of the New Testament. The Revised
   Version of the Old Testament is so excellent that I am half afraid it
   may carry the Revised New Testament upon its shoulders into general
   use. I sincerely hope that this may not be the case, for the result
   would be a decided loss. However, that is not my point.

   Returning to our subject, I believe that on this occasion, the Revised
   Version is true to the original. We will, therefore, follow it in this
   instance and we shall find that it makes most delightful and
   instructive sense. "I am the good Shepherd and I know My own, and My
   own know Me, even as the Father knows Me, and I know the Father; and I
   lay down My life for the sheep." He who speaks to us in these words is
   the Lord Jesus Christ! To our mind every word of Holy Scripture is
   precious. When God speaks to us by priest or Prophet, or in any way, we
   are glad to hear. Though when, in the Old Testament, we meet with a
   passage which begins with, "Thus says the Lord," we feel specially
   charmed to have the message directly from God's own mouth, yet we make
   no distinction between this Scripture and that. We accept it all as
   Inspired and we are not given to dispute about different degrees and
   varying modes of Inspiration and all that. The matter is plain enough
   if learned unbelievers did not mystify it--"all Scripture is given by
   Inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for
   correction, for instruction in righteousness" (2 Tim 3:16).

   Still, there is to our mind a peculiar sweetness about words which were
   actually spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself--these are as honey
   in the comb. You have before you, in this text, not that which comes to
   you by Prophet, priest, or king, but that which is spoken to you by One
   who is Prophet, Priest and King all in one, even your Lord Jesus
   Christ! He opens His mouth and speaks to you. You will open your ears
   and listen to Him if you are, indeed, His own.

   Observe here, also, that we have not only Christ for the Speaker, but
   we have Christ for the Subject. He speaks and speaks about Himself. It
   were not seemly for you, or for me, to extol ourselves, but there is
   nothing more comely in the world than for Christ to commend Himself. He
   is other than we are, something infinitely above us and is not under
   rules which apply to us fallible mortals. When He speaks forth His own
   Glory, we feel that His speech is not vain-glory--no, rather, when He
   praises Himself, we thank Him for so doing and admire the lowly
   condescension which permits Him to desire and accept honor from such
   poor hearts as ours! It were pride for us to seek honor of men--it is
   humility in Him to do so seeing He is so great an One that the esteem
   of beings so inferior as we are cannot be desired by Him for His own
   sake, but for ours! Of all our Lord's words, those are the sweetest in
   which He speaks about Himself. Even He cannot find another theme which
   can excel that of Himself.

   My Brothers and Sisters, who can speak of Jesus but Himself? He masters
   all our eloquence. His perfection exceeds our understanding! The light
   of His excellence is too bright for us, it blinds our eyes! Our Beloved
   must be His own mirror. None but Jesus can reveal Jesus! Only He can
   see Himself and know Himself, and understand Himself and, therefore,
   none but He can reveal Himself! We are most glad that in His tenderness
   to us He sets Himself forth by many choice metaphors and instructive
   emblems by which He would make us know some little of that love which
   passes knowledge. With His own hands, He fills a golden cup out of the
   river of His own infinity and hands it to us that we may drink and be
   refreshed. Take, then, these words as being doubly refreshing because
   they come directly from the Well-Beloved's own mouth and contain rich
   Revelations of His own all-glorious Self. I feel that I must read them
   again--"I am the good Shepherd and I know My own, and My own know Me,
   even as the Father knows Me, and I know the Father; and I lay down My
   life for the sheep."

   In this text there are three matters about which I shall speak. First,
   I see, here, complete character. "I am the good Shepherd." He is not a
   half shepherd, but a shepherd in the fullest possible sense. Secondly,
   I see complete knowledge, "and I know My own and My own know Me, even
   as the Father knows Me, and I know the Father." Thirdly, here is
   complete sacrifice. How preciously that sentence winds up the whole,
   "and I lay down My life for the sheep!" He goes the full length to
   which sacrifice can go! He lays down His soul in the place of His sheep
   so the words might not be incorrectly translated. He goes the full
   length of self-sacrifice for His own.

   I. First, then, here is COMPLETE CHARACTER. Whenever the Savior
   describes Himself by any emblem, that emblem is exalted and expanded
   and yet it is not able to bear all His meaning. The Lord Jesus fills
   out every type, figure, and character--and when the vessel is filled,
   there is an overflow. There is more in Jesus, the Good Shepherd, than
   you can pack away in a shepherd. He is the Good, the Great, the Chief
   Shepherd--but He is much more. Emblems to set Him forth may be
   multiplied as the drops of the morning, but the whole multitude will
   fail to reflect all His brightness! Creation is too small a frame in
   which to hang His likeness. Human thought is too contracted, human
   speech too feeble to set Him forth to the fullest. When all the emblems
   in earth and Heaven shall have described Him to their utmost, there
   will remain something not yet described. You may square the circle
   before you can set forth Christ in the language of mortal men! He is
   inconceivably above our conceptions, unutterably above our utterances!

   But notice that He here sets Himself forth as a Shepherd. Dwell on this
   for a moment! A shepherd is such a man as we employ in England to look
   after sheep for a few months, till they are large enough to be
   slaughtered. A shepherd after the Oriental sort, such as Abraham,
   Jacob, or David, is quite another person.

   The Eastern shepherd is generally the owner of the flock, or at least
   the son of their owner, and so their proprietor in prospect. The sheep
   are his own. English shepherds seldom, or never, own the sheep--they
   are employed to take care of them--and they have no other interest in
   them. Our native shepherds are a very excellent set of men as a
   rule--those I have known have been admirable specimens of intelligent
   working men--yet they are not at all like the Oriental shepherd, and
   cannot be, for he is usually the owner of the flock which he tends. He
   remembers how he came into possession of the flock and when and where
   each of the present sheep was born. He knows where he has led them and
   what trials he had in connection with them. And he remembers this with
   the emphasis that they are his own inheritance.

   His wealth consists in them. He very seldom has much of a house and he
   does not usually own much land. He takes his sheep over a good stretch
   of country which is open common for all his tribe--but his possessions
   lie in his flocks. Ask him, "How much are you worth?" He answers, "I
   own so many sheep." In the Latin tongue the word for money is akin to
   the word, "sheep," because to many of the first Romans, wool was their
   wealth and their fortunes lay in their flocks. The Lord Jesus is our
   Shepherd--we are His wealth! If you ask what is His heritage, He tells
   you of "the riches of the Glory of His inheritance in the saints." Ask
   Him what are His jewels and He replies, "They shall be Mine in that
   day." If you ask Him where His treasures are, He will tell you, "The
   Lord's portion is His people. Jacob is the lot of His inheritance." The
   Lord Jesus Christ has nothing that He values as He does His own people.
   For their sakes He gave up all that He had

   and died naked on the Cross. Not only can He say, "I gave Ethiopia and
   Seba for you," but He "loved His Church and gave Himself for it." He
   regards His Church as being His own body, "the fullness of Him that
   fills all in all."

   The shepherd, as he owns the flock, is also the caretaker. He always
   takes care of them. One of our Brothers now present is a fireman and,
   as he lives at the fire station, he is always on duty. I asked him
   whether he was not off duty during certain hours of every day and he
   said, "No, I am never off duty." He is on duty when he goes to bed, he
   is on duty while he is eating his breakfast, he is on duty if he walks
   down the street! And any time the bell may ring the alarm, he must be
   in his place and hasten to the fire. Our Lord Jesus Christ is never off
   duty. He has constant care of His people day and night. He has declared
   it--"For Zion's sake will I not hold My peace and for Jerusalem's sake
   I will not rest." He can truly say what Jacob did, "In the day the
   drought consumed Me, and the frost by night." He says of His flock what
   He says of His garden, "I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every
   moment lest any hurt it. I will keep it night and day."

   I cannot tell you all the care a shepherd has over his flock because
   his anxieties are of such a various kind. Sheep have about as many
   complaints as men! You do not know much about them and I am not going
   to enter into details, for the all-sufficient reason that I do not know
   much about them, myself, but the shepherd knows, and the shepherd will
   tell you that he leads an anxious life. He seldom has all the flock
   well at one time. Some one or other is sure to be ailing and he spies
   it out and has eye and hand and heart ready for its succor and relief.
   There are many varieties of complaints and needs--and all these are
   laid upon the shepherd's heart. He is both possessor and caretaker of
   the flock.

   Then he has to be the provider, too, for there is not a woolly head
   among them that knows anything about the finding and selecting of
   pasturage. The season may be very dry, and where there once was grass,
   there may be nothing but a brown powder. It may be that herbage is only
   to be found by the side of the rippling brooks, here and there, but the
   sheep do not know anything about that--the shepherd must know
   everything for them. The shepherd is the sheep's providence. Both for
   time and for eternity, for body and for soul, our Lord Jesus supplies
   all our need out of His riches in Glory. He is the great Storehouse
   from which we derive everything! He has provided, He does provide and
   He will provide! And each one of us may sing, therefore, "The Lord is
   my Shepherd; I shall not want."

   But, dear Friends, we often dream that we are the shepherds, or that
   we, at any rate, have to find some of the pasture. I could not help
   saying, just now, to our friends at our little Prayer Meeting, "There
   is a passage in the Psalms which makes the Lord do for us what one
   would have thought we could have done for ourselves--'He makes me to
   lie down in green pastures.'" Surely, if a sheep can do nothing else,
   it can lie down! Yet to lie down is the very hardest thing for God's
   sheep to do! It is here that the full power of the rest-giving Christ
   has to come in to make our fretful, worrying, doubtful natures lie down
   and rest. Our Lord is able to give us perfect peace and He will do so
   if we will simply trust to His abounding care. It is the shepherd's
   business to be the provider-- let us remember this and be very happy.

   Moreover, he has to be the leader. He leads the sheep wherever they
   have to go. I have often been astonished at the shepherds in the South
   of France, which is so much like Palestine, to see where they will take
   their sheep. Once every week I saw the shepherd come down to Mentone
   and conduct all his flock to the beach. I could see nothing for them
   but big stones. Folk say that perhaps this is what makes the mutton so
   hard, but I have no doubt the poor creatures get a little taste of
   salt, or something which does them good. At any rate, they follow the
   shepherd and away he goes up the steep hillsides, taking long steps,
   till he reaches points where the grass is growing on the sides of the
   hills. He knows the way and the sheep have nothing to do but to follow
   him wherever he goes. Theirs is not to make the way; theirs is not to
   choose the path, but theirs is to keep close to his heels!

   Do you not see our blessed Shepherd leading your own pilgrimage? Cannot
   you see Him guiding your way? Do you not say, "Yes, He leads me, and it
   is my joy to follow"? Lead on, O blessed Lord! Lead on and we will
   follow the prints of Your feet!

   The shepherd in the East has also to be the defender of the flock, for
   wolves yet prowl in those regions. All sorts of wild beasts attack the
   flock and he must be to the front. Thus is it with our Shepherd. No
   wolf can attack us without finding our Lord in arms against him. No
   lion can roar upon the flock without awakening a greater than David.
   "He that keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." He is a
   Shepherd, then, and He completely fills the character--much more
   completely than I can show you just now.

   Notice that the text puts an adjective upon the shepherd, decorating
   him with a chain of gold. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself says, "I am the
   good Shepherd." "The good Shepherd"--that is, He is not a thief that
   steals and only deals with

   the sheep as He bears them from the fold to the slaughter. He is not a
   hireling--He does not do merely what He is paid to do, or commanded to
   do, but He does everything "con amore"--with a willing heart. He throws
   His soul into it. There is a goodness, a tenderness, a willingness, a
   powerfulness, a force, an energy in all that Jesus does that makes Him
   the best possible Shepherd that can be. He is no hireling! Neither is
   He an idler! Even shepherds who have had their own flocks have
   neglected them, as there are farmers who do not well cultivate their
   own farms, but it is never so with Christ. He is the Good
   Shepherd--good up to the highest point of goodness, good in all that is
   tender--good in all that is kind, good in all the directions in which a
   shepherd can be needed. He is good at fight and good at rule. He is
   good in watchful oversight and good in prudent leadership. He is most
   eminently good in every way!

   And then notice He puts it, "I am the good Shepherd." That is the point
   I want to bring out. Of other shepherds we can say, he is a shepherd,
   but this is the Shepherd. All others in the world are shadows of the
   true Shepherd and Jesus is the Substance of them all. That which we see
   in the world with these eyes is, after all, not the substance, but the
   type, the shadow. That which we do not see with our eyes, that which
   only our faith perceives, is, after all, the real thing. I have seen
   shepherds, but they were only pictures to me. The Shepherd, the real,
   the true, the best, the most sure example of shepherding is the Christ,
   Himself--and you and I are the sheep. Those sheep we see on yonder
   mountainside are just types of ourselves--we are the true sheep and
   Jesus is the true Shepherd. If an angel were to fly over the earth to
   find out the real sheep and the real Shepherd, he would say, "The sheep
   of God's pasture are men and Jehovah is their Shepherd. He is the true,
   the real Shepherd of the true and real sheep." All the possibilities
   that lie in a shepherd are found in Christ. Every good thing that you
   can imagine to be, or that should be in a shepherd, you find in the
   Lord Jesus Christ.

   Now, I want you to notice that, according to the text, the Lord Jesus
   Christ greatly rejoices in this. He says, "I am the good Shepherd." He
   does not confess that fact as if He were ashamed of it, but He repeats
   it in this chapter so many times that it almost reads like the refrain
   of a song. "I am the good Shepherd"--He evidently rejoices in it. He
   rolls it under His tongue as a sweet morsel. Evidently it is to His
   heart's content. He does not say, "I am the Son of God, I am the Son of
   Man, I am the Redeemer"--but this He does say--and He congratulates
   Himself upon it, "I am the good Shepherd."

   This should encourage you and me to get a full hold of the word. If
   Jesus is so pleased to be my Shepherd, let me be equally pleased to be
   His sheep and let me avail myself of all the privileges that are
   wrapped up in His being my Shepherd and in my being His sheep! I see
   that it will not worry Him for me to be His sheep. I see that my needs
   will cause Him no perplexity. I see that He will not be going out of
   His way to attend to my weakness and trouble. He delights to dwell on
   the fact, "I am the good Shepherd." He invites me, as it were, to come
   and bring my needs and woes to Him, look up to Him and be fed by Him.
   Therefore I will do it! Does it not make you feel truly happy to hear
   your own Lord, Himself, say and say it to you out of this precious
   Book, "I am the good Shepherd"? Do you not reply, "Indeed You are a
   good Shepherd. You are a good Shepherd to me. My heart lays emphasis
   upon the word 'good' and says of You, 'there is none good but One, and
   You are that good One.' You are the good Shepherd of the sheep"?

   So much, then, concerning the complete character.

   II. May the Holy Spirit bless the word still more, while I speak in my
   broken way upon the next point--THE COMPLETE KNOWLEDGE.

   The knowledge of Christ towards His sheep and of the sheep towards Him
   is wonderfully complete. I must read the text again--"I know My own and
   My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me, and I know the Father."

   First, then, consider Christ's knowledge of His own and the comparison
   by which He sets it forth--"As the Father knows Me." I cannot conceive
   a stronger comparison! Do you know how much the Father knows the Son,
   who is His Glory, His Darling, His alter Ego, His other Self--yes, one
   God with Him? Do you know how intimate the knowledge of the Father must
   be of His Son who is His own Wisdom, yes, who is His Himself? The
   Father and the Son are one Spirit! We cannot imagine how intimate that
   knowledge is and, yet so intimately, so perfectly, does the great
   Shepherd know His sheep!

   He knows their number. He will never lose one. He will count them all,
   again, on that day when the sheep shall pass, again, under the hand of
   Him that knows them, and then He will make full account of them. "Of
   all that You have given Me," He says, "I have lost none." He knows the
   number of those for whom He paid the ransom price.

   He knows their persons. He knows the age and character of each of His
   own. He assures us that the very hairs of our head are all numbered!
   Christ has not an unknown sheep. It is not possible that He should have
   overlooked or forgotten one of them. He has such an intimate knowledge
   of all who are redeemed with His most precious blood that He never
   mistakes one of them for another, nor misjudges one of them. He knows
   their constitutions--those that are weak and feeble, those that are
   nervous and frightened, those that are strong, those that have a
   tendency to presumption, those that are sleepy, those that are brave,
   those that are sick, sorry, worried, or wounded. He knows those that
   are hunted by the devil, those that are caught up between the jaws of
   the lion and shaken till the very life is almost driven out of them. He
   knows their feelings, fears and frights. He knows the secret ins and
   outs of each of us better than any one of us knows himself!

   He knows our trials--the particular trial under which you are now bowed
   down, my Sister. Our difficulties--that special difficulty which seems
   to block up your way, my Brother, at this very time. All the
   ingredients of our life are known to Him. "I know My own, as the Father
   knows Me." It is impossible to conceive a more complete knowledge than
   that which the Father has of His only-begotten Son! And it is equally
   impossible to conceive a more complete knowledge than that which Jesus
   Christ has of each of His chosen!

   He knows our sins. I often feel glad to think that He always knew our
   evil natures and what would come of them. When He chose us, He knew
   what we were and what we would be. He did not buy His sheep in the
   dark. He did not choose us without knowing all the devious ways of our
   past and future lives--

   "He saw us ruined in the Fall, Yet loved us notwithstanding all."
   Herein lies the splendor of His Grace. "Whom He did foreknow, He also
   did predestinate." His election implies foreknowledge of all our ill
   manners. They say of human love that it is blind, but Christ's love has
   many eyes and all its eyes are open--and yet He still loves us!

   I need not enlarge upon this. It ought, however, to be very full of
   comfort to you that you are so known of your Lord, especially as He
   knows you not merely with the cold, clear knowledge of the intellect,
   but with the knowledge of love and of affection. He knows you in His
   heart. You are peculiarly dear to Him. You are approved of Him. You are
   accepted of Him. He knows you by acquaintance with you, not by hearsay.
   He knows you by communion with you--He has been with you in sweet
   fellowship. He has read you as a man reads his book and remembers what
   he reads. He knows you by sympathy with you. He is a Man like
   yourself--

   "He knows what sore temptations mean, For He has felt the same." He
   knows your weaknesses. He knows the points wherein you suffer most,
   for--

   "In every pang that rends the heart The Man of Sorrows had a part."

   He gained this knowledge in the school of sympathetic suffering.
   "Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He
   suffered." "He was in all points made like unto His brethren." And by
   being made like we are, He has come to know us and He knows us in a
   very practical and tender way. You have a watch and it will not run, or
   it runs very irregularly and so you give it to one who knows nothing
   about watches and he says, "I will clean it for you." He will do it
   more harm than good! But here is the very person who made the watch. He
   says, "I put every wheel into its place. I made the whole of it, from
   beginning to end." You think to yourself, "I feel the utmost confidence
   in trusting that man with my watch. He can surely make it right, for he
   made it." It often cheers my heart to think that since the Lord made
   me, He can make me right and keep me so to the end. My Maker is my
   Redeemer! He that first made me has made me, again, and will make me
   perfect to His own praise and Glory! That is the first part of this
   complete knowledge.

   The second part of the subject is our knowledge of the Lord and the
   fact by which it is illustrated. "And My own know Me, even as I know
   the Father." I think I hear some of you say, "I do not see so much in
   that. I can see a great deal more in Christ's knowing us." Beloved, I
   see a great deal in our knowing Christ! That He should know me is great
   condescension, but it must be easy for Him to know me. Being so Divine,
   with such piercing eyes as His, it is amazingly condescending, as I
   say, but it is not difficult for Him to know me. The marvel is that I
   should ever know Him! That such a stupid, blind, deaf, dead soul as
   mine should ever know Him and should know Him as He knows the Father,
   is 10,000 miracles in one! Oh, Sirs, this is a wonder so great that I
   do not think you and I yet understand it to the fullest, or else we
   would sit

   down in glad surprise and say--"This proves Him to be the Good
   Shepherd, indeed, not only that He knows His flock, but that He has
   taught them so well that they know Him!" With such a flock as Christ
   has, that He should be able to train His sheep so that they should be
   able to know Him--and to know Him as He knows the Father--is
   miraculous!

   O Beloved, if this is true of us, that we know our Shepherd, we may
   clap our hands for very joy! And yet I think it is true even now. At
   any rate, I know so much of my Lord that nothing gives me so much joy
   as to hear of Him. Brothers and Sisters, there is no boasting in this
   personal assertion of mine! It is only the minimum truth! You can say
   the same, can you not? If anybody were to preach to you the finest
   sermon that was ever delivered, would it charm you if there were no
   Christ in it? No! But you will come and hear me talk about Jesus Christ
   in words as simple as I can find--and you cry, one to another, "It was
   good to be there."--

   "You dear Redeemer, dying Lamb, We love to hear of Thee! No music's
   like Your charming name, Nor half so sweet can be."

   Now mark that this is the way in which Jesus knows the Father. Jesus
   delights in His Father and you delight in Jesus. I know you do, and
   here the comparison holds good.

   Moreover, does not the dear name of Jesus stir your very soul? What is
   it that makes you feel as if you wish to hasten away, that you might be
   doing holy service for the Lord? What makes your very heart awake and
   feel ready to leap out of your body? What but hearing of the glories of
   Jesus? Play on what string you please and my ear is deaf to it--but
   when you once begin to tell of Calvary and sing the song of free Grace
   and dying love, oh, then my soul opens all her ears, drinks in the
   music and then her blood begins to stir--and she is ready to shout for
   joy! Do you not even now sing--

   "Oh, for this love let rocks and hills Their lasting silence break And
   all harmonious human tongues The Sa vior's praises speak. Yes, we will
   praise You, dearest Lord, Our souls are all on flame, Hosanna round the
   spacious earth To Your adored name"?

   Yes, we know Jesus! We feel the power of our union with Him. We know
   Him, Brothers and Sisters, so that we are not to be deceived by false
   shepherds. There is a way, nowadays, of preaching Christ against
   Christ. It is a new device of the devil to set up Jesus against
   Jesus--His Kingdom against His Atonement--His precepts against His
   doctrines. The half Christ, in his example, is put up to frighten souls
   away from the whole Christ who saves the souls of men from guilt as
   well as from sin, from Hell as well as from folly. But they cannot
   deceive us in that way. No, Beloved, we know our Shepherd from all
   others! We know Him from a statue covered with clothes. We know the
   living Christ, for we have come into living contact with Him and we
   cannot be deceived any more than Jesus Christ, Himself, can be deceived
   about the Father. "My own know Me, even as I know the Father." We know
   Him by union with Him and by communion with Him. "We have seen the
   Lord." "Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus
   Christ."

   We know Him by love--our soul cleaves to Him even as the heart of
   Christ cleaves to the Father. We know Him by trusting Him--"He is all
   my salvation and all my desire." I remember once feeling many questions
   as to whether I was a child of God or not. I went into a little chapel
   and I heard a good man preach. He was a simple working man. I heard him
   preach and I made my handkerchief damp with my tears as I heard him
   talk about Christ and the precious blood. When I was preaching the same
   things to others, I was wondering whether this Truth of God was mine,
   but while I was hearing, for myself, I knew it was mine, for my very
   soul lived upon it! I went to that good man and thanked him for the
   sermon. He asked me who I was. When I told him, he turned all manner of
   colors. "Why," he said, "Sir, that was your own sermon." I said, "Yes,
   I knew it was and it was good of the Lord to feed me with food that I
   had prepared for others." I perceived that I had a true taste for what
   I, myself, knew to be the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Oh, yes, we do love
   our good Shepherd! We cannot help it!

   And we know Him, also, by a deep sympathy with Him, for what Christ
   desires to do, we also long to do. He loves to save souls and so do we!
   Would we not save all the people in a whole street if we could? Yes, in
   a whole city and in the

   whole world! Nothing makes us so glad as that Jesus Christ is a Savior.
   "There is news in the paper," says one. That news is often of small
   importance to our hearts. I happened to hear that a poor servant girl
   had heard me preach the Truth of God and found Christ--and I confess I
   feel more interest in that fact than in all the rise and fall of Whigs
   or Tories! What does it matter who is in Parliament, so long as souls
   are saved? That is the main thing. If the Kingdom of Christ grows, all
   the other kingdoms are of small account. That is the one Kingdom for
   which we live and for which we would gladly die! As there is a
   boundless sympathy between the Father and the Son, so is there between
   Jesus and ourselves.

   We know Christ as He knows the Father because we are one with Him. The
   union between Christ and His people is as real and as mysterious as the
   union between the Son and the Father.

   We have a beautiful picture before us. Can you realize it for a minute?
   The Lord Jesus here among us--picture Him! He is the Shepherd. Then,
   around Him are His own people and wherever He goes, they go! He leads
   them into green pastures and beside still waters. And there is this
   peculiarity about them--He knows them as He looks upon each of them--
   and they, each of them, know Him! There is a deeply intimate and mutual
   knowledge between them. As surely as He knows them, they know Him. The
   world knows neither the Shepherd nor the sheep, but they know each
   other. As surely, as truly and, as deeply as God the Father knows the
   Son, so does this Shepherd know His sheep! And as God the Son knows His
   Father, so do these sheep know their Shepherd! Thus in one band, united
   by mutual union, they travel through the world to Heaven. "I know My
   own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me, and I know the
   Father." Is not that a blessed picture? God help us to figure in it!

   III. The last subject is COMPLETE SACRIFICE. The complete sacrifice is
   thus described, "/ lay down My life for the sheep."

   These words are repeated in this chapter in different forms some four
   times. The Savior keeps on saying, "I lay down My life for the sheep."
   Read the 11th verse--"The good Shepherd gives His life for the sheep."
   The 15th verse--"I lay down My life for the sheep." The 17th verse--"I
   lay down My life that I may take it again." The 18th verse--"I have
   power to lay it down and I have power to take it again." It looks as if
   this was another refrain of our Lord's personal hymn. I call this
   passage His Pastoral Song. The good Shepherd, with His pipe, sings to
   Himself and to His flock, and this comes in at the end of each stanza,
   "I lay down My life for the sheep."

   Did it not mean, first, that He was always doing so? All His life He
   was, as it were, laying it down for them. He was divesting Himself of
   the garments of life until He came to be fully disrobed on the Cross.
   All the life He had; all the power He had, He was always laying it out
   for His sheep. It means that, to begin with.

   And then it means that the Sacrifice was actively performed. It was
   always in the doing as long as He lived, but He did it actively. He did
   not merely die for the sheep, but He laid down His life, which is
   another thing. Many a man has died for Christ--it was all that he could
   do. But we cannot lay down our lives, because they are due already as a
   debt of Nature to God and we are not permitted to die at our own wills.
   That were suicidal and improper. With the Lord Christ it was totally
   different. He was, as it were, actively passive. "I lay down My life
   for the sheep. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it
   again. This commandment have I received of My Father."

   I like to think of our Good Shepherd not merely as dying for us, but as
   willingly dying--laying down His life while He had that life--using it
   for us and, when the time came, putting off that life on our behalf.
   This has now been actually done. When He spoke these words, it had not
   been done. At this time it has been done. "I lay down My life for the
   sheep" may now be read, "I have laid down My life for the sheep." For
   you, Beloved, He has given His hands to the nails and His feet to the
   cruel iron! For you He has borne the fever and the bloody sweat! For
   you He has cried "Eloi, Eloi, lame Sa-bachthani!" For you He has given
   up the ghost.

   And the beauty of it is that He is not ashamed to avow the objective of
   it. "I lay down My life for the sheep." Whatever Christ did for the
   world--and I am not one of those who would limit the bearings of the
   death of Christ upon the world--yet His peculiar Glory is, "I lay down
   My life for the sheep.

   Great Shepherd, do You mean to say that You have died for such as
   these? What? For these sheep? Died for them? What? Die for sheep,
   Shepherd? Surely You have other reasons for which to live beside sheep!
   Have You not other loves, other joys? We know that it would grieve You
   to see the sheep killed, torn by the wolf, or scattered. But You really
   have not gone so far in love for them that for the sake of those poor
   creatures You would lay down your life? "Ah, yes," He says, "I would, I
   have!" Carry your wondering thoughts to Christ Jesus. What? What? What?
   Son of God, infinitely

   great and inconceivably glorious Jehovah, would You lay Your life down
   for men and women? They are no more in comparison with You than so many
   ants and wasps, pitiful and obnoxious creatures! You could make ten
   thousand millions of them with a word, or crush them out of existence
   with one blow of Your hand! They are poor things, make the most you can
   of them. They have hard hearts and wandering wills--and the best of
   them are no better than they should be! Savior, did you die for such?
   He looks around and says, "Yes, I did. I did. I laid down My life for
   the sheep. I am not ashamed of them and I am not ashamed to say that I
   died for them."

   No, Beloved, He is not ashamed of His dying love! He has told it to His
   Brethren up yonder and made it known to all the servants in His
   Father's house--and this has become the song of that house--"Worthy is
   the Lamb that was slain!" Shall not we take it up and say, "For You
   were slain and have redeemed us to God by Your blood"? Whatever men may
   say about Particular Redemption, Christ is not ashamed of it! He
   glories that He laid down His life for the sheep. For the sheep, mark
   you! He says not for the world. There is a bearing of the death of
   Christ towards the world, but here He boasts and glories in the
   specialty of His Sacrifice. "I lay down My life for the
   sheep"--"instead of the sheep," it might be read.

   He glories in substitution for His people! He makes it His boast when
   He speaks of His chosen, that He suffered in their place--that He bore,
   that they might never bear the wrath of God on account of sin! What He
   glories in, we also glory in! "God forbid that I should glory save in
   the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto
   me and I unto the world!"

   O Beloved, what a blessed Christ we have who loves us so, who knows us
   so--whom we also know and love! May others be taught to know Him and to
   love Him! Yes, at this hour may they come and put their trust in Him,
   as the sheep trust to the shepherd! We ask it for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

A TRAITOR SUSPECTED AND CONVICTED

   (No. 1878)

   A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, JANUARY 10, 1886,

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S DAY EVENING,
   AUGUST 16, 1885.

   "The carnal mind is enmity against God." Romans 8:7.

   MEN naturally mind the things of the flesh. This is as sad as if a
   seraph should rake upon a dunghill! It is not amazing that a brute
   beast cares for the flesh, for it is only flesh, but it is lamentable
   in the highest degree that man, in whom there is a principle infinitely
   superior to mere materialism, should, nevertheless, so generally give
   himself up to minding the things of the body--the things of time and
   earth.

   The world's catechism is, "What shall we eat? What shall we drink? With
   what shall we be clothed?" Men begin with these questions as soon as
   they leave their father's roof and they often die with them upon their
   lips. It is said of the peasants around Nice that they seem to have no
   thought of anything but how they can make a living and save a little
   money--and I am afraid they are, by no means, a unique people--in some
   form, or other, the world is in all men's hearts and thoughts. The dust
   of earth has blinded eyes that were meant for Heaven! You would think,
   from the talk of many a human being, that he, himself, was meant to
   walk about for a few years and then to occupy six feet of earth and
   never be heard of again. The creature's life seems in consistency with
   such a destiny and is, by no means, suggestive of a life to come, or an
   existence in a nobler sphere!

   Yet there is in us an immortal spirit--the very heathen were convinced
   of this! Man has an inborn consciousness that he is not to be
   extinguished by death. His strange longings, hopes and fears are, in a
   disjointed way, the proofs of this primeval knowledge which he can
   never quite forget. It was not necessary that Scripture should reveal
   the future existence of the soul. When you miss a clear statement of
   that Truth of God, you only miss that which is supposed to be already
   known! The existence of God and of an immortal soul in man is taken for
   granted in Scripture. A future state is plain upon the face of things.
   Every thoughtful man can see that there is a wide difference between
   the brute that grovels and man that aspires!

   Now, if this is so, one would have supposed that this immortal being
   would, in thought, have projected himself into the next state and that
   he would have been very much occupied with the consideration of where
   he should be and what he should be in the world to come. One would have
   suspected that he would have shaped the actions of the present with a
   view to the future and so have ceased to be earth-bound and hide-bound
   and would have risen into something superior to the life of the mere
   animal. Yet men, by nature, do not give dominion to their nobler part,
   but allow the brute in them to overrule the mind in them! They are
   earthly-minded and then, because they are earthly-minded, spiritual
   things are despised by them and the great God, who is the Spirit of all
   spirits, is most of all neglected and treated as if He were of small
   account. The minding of the flesh sours the soul against God so that he
   who minds the flesh is soon filled with enmity against God.

   Our Apostle declares this fact and declares it very positively. He does
   not say that the carnal mind is at enmity to God, but he gives us the
   solid noun--he says, "the carnal mind is enmity against God." It is
   enmity in essence-- altogether and always enmity against God! It is a
   solid block of aversion to God and animosity against Him. It is very
   strong language to use, but so he puts it under the guidance of
   Inspiration and, therefore, he does not mistake or exaggerate. The mind
   that looks after the flesh, the carnal mind, is a mass of downright
   undiluted enmity to the Most High God! Such a mind is opposed, not
   merely to the things of God, the Laws of God and the Truth of God, but
   to God Him-

   self! The mind which is under the dominion of the flesh cannot endure
   the Being of God--His Character is the object of its hate! No, such a
   mind is hate, itself, towards God!

   Of some men this need not be stated, for they declare it themselves.
   There are men, (God be merciful to them and change them!), who
   deliberately say that they do not believe in God and who use all kinds
   of opprobrious epithets towards our Lord and the Divine Truth which He
   has been pleased to reveal. These men's sins "go before them into
   judgment." They will need no witnesses against them at the bar of their
   Maker--they themselves have testified against themselves! Their mind is
   evidently, confessedly, intensely enmity against God.

   Many others would not care to confess their enmity so distinctly and
   yet their lives proclaim it. Their outward conduct shows that they are
   not only enemies of God and His Christ, but that their heart is a mass
   of enmity to Him--their speech betrays the fact that they are not
   reconciled to God. Some of these even make profession of being His
   friends and yet, of such, Paul said, "Many walk, of whom I have told
   you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of
   the Cross of Christ"--the enemies beyond all others, for they have
   entered into the Church by treachery and thus have attacked the Lord in
   His own house--where they can do most mischief. They blasphemously
   misuse their profession of faith to comfort them in their sins--and
   while they vow that they are God's servants, their lives show that they
   are the willing slaves of a very different master!

   I am not, at this time, intending to speak to these persons, of whom I
   will only say--The Lord have mercy upon any of us if that is our
   unhappy case! If we have dared to play the Judas, if we have ventured
   to enroll ourselves among the friends of Jesus and yet are giving Him a
   traitorous kiss, may infinite Grace yet convert us! Oh, that we may not
   turn out to be sons of perdition, but may we be delivered from
   hypocrisy and made honest in the sight of the Most High!

   But I am going to deal, at this time, with another class of persons who
   would say, each one for himself, "I am not a Christian, but I hope to
   be so, one of these days. I do not think that I am converted. I could
   not claim to be a believer in Christ savingly, or a lover of God so as
   to take my place among His people, but yet I do not think that I am an
   enemy to God." The accusation of our text is very distasteful to such
   persons. They think it too harsh a charge to bring against them. Yet,
   dear Hearer, you live not for the world to come, nor for spiritual
   things, nor for God. And, therefore, according to the teaching of the
   text, your mind, being carnal or fleshly, is enmity against God!

   I do not like to say any hard thing of you, because you are a very kind
   person. But I dare not say less than the Word of the Lord--and you
   would not respect me if I were wicked enough to flatter you! You are
   moral, excellent and amiable, but still, you are enmity against God in
   your heart, for the things of the flesh are uppermost in your mind. Are
   you angry that I tell you this? What would you have me do? You expect
   your physician to spy out your disease and your lawyer to discover any
   flaw there may be in the deeds of an estate you are purchasing--should
   not your minister tell you of the evils of your heart? If you want to
   hear soft falsehoods, go elsewhere--I will have none of your blood on
   my garments! If you are not born again from above, I am compelled to
   say, even of the best of you, that your fleshly mind is enmity against
   God!

   At this time my business shall be, first, to discover that enmity.
   Secondly, to deplore it. And then, thirdly, may God the Holy Spirit be
   pleased to deliver you from it and deliver you from it even while we
   are talking about it! O Eternal Spirit, renew us in the spirit of our
   mind and cause us to receive that spiritual mind which is the mark of
   the friend of

   God!

   I. First, then, I HAVE TO DISCOVER THIS ENMITY which is in your heart.
   I know what you are saying, "You cannot do so. I am indifferent, but I
   am not enmity and I will not be called so." I hear your denial, but the
   cap will fit you very well before I have done--and you will be obliged
   to wear it--I am sure you will. If you are not obliged to plead guilty,
   none will rejoice more than I if you can prove that you are reconciled
   to God by the death of His Son!

   The man who does not love God, nor serve Him, nor even profess to do
   so, has in his heart a settled enmity against God! Let me show it to
   you. Do not shut your eyes to clear evidence.

   First, the carnally-minded man is enmity against God as a servant. Take
   this description of yourselves and see if it does not lead to your
   conviction. You are all servants of God, for He has made you and not
   you, yourselves--and He who made you ought to have the use of you. You
   are under obligations to your Creator, your Preserver, your
   Re-deemer--and these obligations ought to be recognized, but you do not
   recognize them. On the contrary, you act in a way which leads me to
   charge you with enmity against God, your liege Lord and King. Judge if
   it is not so! Here is a ser-

   vant of yours and he will not serve you. Set that down to laziness, if
   you please, and the case will be bad enough. But you find him working
   very hard for somebody else! Then it cannot be laziness which makes him
   decline your service. Look at him--he is toiling for your enemy from
   morning to night! And though he is your servant, he altogether refuses
   to serve you. What can be his motive? Many of you are not serving God
   and yet you are not lazy. Your neglect of obedience to the Lord is not
   caused by love of ease. You are working very hard for something
   else--for yourselves, for your family, for approbation, for wealth or
   some other objective so that while you will not obey your God, whom you
   ought to honor, you are serving some other lord! Does not this create a
   natural suspicion that you are not on good terms with your Maker?

   But suppose, in the case of your servant, it should turn out that he
   actually does heavier work for another than he would have been expected
   to do for you? Suppose that he does harder and more degrading labor
   than you would have required of him and that he does it willingly, does
   it with all his might and yet he will not serve you? I think you would
   say, "This man must be filled with enmity to me. He works for another
   and will not work for me. He does far harder work for another than ever
   I have proposed that he would do for me." Do not forget that the
   slavery of sin is much harder and much more degrading than the service
   of God. The service of the world is much sterner, much more exacting,
   much more wearisome than the service of the Lord Jesus Christ! They
   that have served the world best will tell you that there is but little
   solace in the labor, while those who serve God best continually say
   that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. They that serve God with
   all their heart find an intense delight in His service and this is not
   true of the vassalage of sin. "His commandments are not grievous," but
   the ways of sin are full of travail and disappointment and anguish. If
   a man prefers to bear the weary burden of the world, the flesh and the
   devil--and will not take upon his shoulders the lighter load of
   Christ--what can be the reason of it but that he is at enmity with God?

   And suppose, moreover, that your servant, who is working for somebody
   else, should get very poor wages, while you are willing to pay him the
   largest wages that can be proposed--and yet he will take the harder
   work and the lesser wage--and will not come to you and take the easier
   work at higher wages? How could you account for this, except upon the
   supposition that the man hated you? Sirs, the case is thoroughly
   parallel with yours! "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is
   eternal life." Let a man work as hard as ever he may for himself and
   for the world, all that can come of it is death! Why then, does he
   choose a bitter toil and a deadly wage? "What shall it profit a man if
   he gains the whole world and loses his soul?" Why does a man follow
   such a profitless business? You know what the world's poet makes Wolsey
   say, when he comes to die--

   "Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, he would
   not in my old age Have left me naked to my enemies." The service of God
   is a remunerative service--He gives wages in the work and an abundant
   reward, according to His Grace, when the work is done. If men refuse
   such service, what can their motive be? The wages of sin is
   death--eternal death! Infinite misery follows upon the course of this
   world if men choose such service--what can be their motive, what but
   downright hatred of God as a Master--and a resolve to have the devil,
   himself, for lord, and Hell for a wage, sooner than serve the living
   God? Why then, Sir, it must be so, if I take you on the footing of a
   servant, that, inasmuch as you will serve other things with all your
   might at the poorest wage--and will not serve God when the recompense
   of His reward is altogether boundless--then my reason forces me to the
   conclusion that your mind is enmity against God!

   Let me consider you under another figure. This time it shall be that of
   a subject towards a king. Suppose that we are living in times in which
   there is a king, a rightful monarch upon the throne, but there is also
   a pretender who has set up a claim for the crown and there is a war
   going on between the true monarch and the pretender? You are one of
   those who do not side with the pretender. At least you say you do not.
   You dwell among the subjects of the king and though you act somewhat
   strangely, yet you deny that you are the king's enemy. But, listen to
   me. There might be, in this city of London, certain persons who would
   not be willing to confess that they were on the pretender's side and
   yet their course of action might lead you to feel that they must be so
   and that they must be enemies of the king! Suppose that a certain man
   lives on your street and you meet with him in business, in trade and in
   common conversation from day to day and yet you never hear him mention
   the name of the king? Would not his silence be suspicious?

   If anybody else mentions the king's name, he edges off from it. He
   never utters a word that would enable you to feel that he is a loyal
   subject. He does not openly propose three cheers for the pretender in a
   public meeting, nor does he hang out the pretender's flag, but, on the
   other hand, you noticed that the last time they were crying, "Bravo,"
   for the king, he was as quiet as if he had been dumb. And you have also
   seen that whenever conversation has gone that way, he has been as mute
   as a fish! He has no opinion on politics. He says that he has enough to
   do to mind his own business. I am half afraid that the fellow is an
   enemy! Still waters run deep and I fancy that we shall find a deep
   traitor under the coat of this silent gentleman. I begin to think that
   he must be on the wrong side and it grows upon my mind that he must be
   an enemy to our lawful sovereign, for, month after month, while all the
   country has been ringing with the war-cry and the whole nation has been
   divided into two camps, this man has never said a good word for the
   king--has never so much as mentioned him! I feel morally certain that
   in his heart this close-mouthed being must be an enemy to the king. Are
   you not very much of my mind?

   Do you want me to explain the parable? Does it not fit your case, my
   Friend? All these years you have been hearing about God and His Christ,
   but you have not had a good word to say for either of them. When you
   are in company, you manifest a discreet silence. If there were a debate
   upon vital godliness, you would take no side. You have nothing to say
   for Jesus and His precious blood. You are neutral and silent. And why?
   You are such "a good easy man" that you are not willing to fight for
   truth and righteousness! I suspect you greatly. I am solemnly afraid
   that you are an enemy!

   Now, suppose that the king has achieved a great success. News has come
   that in a great battle the pretender has sustained a heavy defeat. The
   flags are hanging out along the streets and there is an illumination at
   night. There is no flag at your house. At night there are no candles in
   your window. You have nothing to say upon the important tidings.
   Friends, what are we to make of this man? He never says a word about
   our king or his doings--and he does not share in the joy when everybody
   is in the street at night hurrahing because of his Majesty's victory!
   He walks along as if he had no interest in it. I am afraid that if
   there were any spies about, they would report him for an enemy--and I
   do not think they could be much blamed if they did so!

   Dear Hearers, some of you feel no interest in the triumphs of Messiah's
   Kingdom and are under no concern about His Gospel. So many persons were
   converted under a revival, but it is nothing to you. Whole streets in
   this city are Godless and Christless, but what of that? You do not
   really care whether this nation or that shall begin to acknowledge the
   sway of Christ. You show no opposition to King Jesus, but still, you
   take no delight in the growth of His dominion, or the increase of His
   Glory. If true religion were banished out of the land, you would not
   lose a single night's rest! And if it covered the whole earth, it would
   excite in you no enthusiasm. Does it not look as if you might be very
   shrewdly suspected to have the carnal mind which is enmity against God?
   I might work out this subject further, but I only need to light the
   candle of your conscience and you will not have to look far to find a
   traitor.

   Further than that, they have been raising regiments in the city to help
   the king. There have been enthusiastic meetings of young men who have
   enlisted in his cause. They have shouldered their rifles and have been
   ready to shed their blood on the behalf of their lawful sovereign.
   There is news of an invasion--the enemy's ships are near the shore--the
   citizens have come together in crowds. This man was not at the meeting.
   He did not propose to be a soldier. He did not contribute a farthing to
   the expenses of the campaign. He did nothing whatever for his king.
   Putting all this with the rest, it seems to me that he must be an
   enemy! Why, surely, if we had enemies at London's gates, today--if we
   knew that they were about to sack this city and kill our wives and
   children--why even the peace men among us would forget our peacefulness
   and shoulder arms on behalf of our hearths and homes! If any man said,
   "Yes, they have been blowing up some of the houses and they are about
   to destroy our city, but it is no concern of mine. I am not going to
   bear a hand in the struggle, one way or the other," we would say, "Why,
   the fellow is not a true-born Englishman! He is an enemy! Depend upon
   it, he is a traitor!" In such a world as this, where sin is rife, if a
   man does not contend against evil, he is on the side of it! If a man
   does not serve Christ and endeavor to extend His Kingdom, however
   humble may be his power, surely it must be that his carnal mind is
   enmity against God! Jesus says, "He that is not with Me is against Me;
   and he that gathers not with Me scatters abroad."

   And suppose, further, that this man should find that the king had
   issued a certain proclamation and promulgated a code of laws, and that
   this man should say, "Read them? No, not I! I would not read such dry
   book-stuff as that!" But these laws affect your daily life, your
   business, your prosperity, your very life. "I do not care what they
   affect," he says,

   "they are very dry and dull reading. I do not care to hear them, much
   less to study them." The proclamation of the king is posted up publicly
   and the man turns his back upon it. A play-bill is pasted on the
   wall--he reads that and is very interested in it! Now, I should say
   that he must be an enemy, for he will not even read what is the will of
   his king and what is the law of his country! There must be in his heart
   some enmity against the law-giver who promulgated that law. My Hearer,
   your non-searching of the Scriptures, your weariness under Gospel
   preaching, your lack of care to understand the mind of God is prima
   facie evidence that there is some enmity in your heart against the Most
   High. When your King sends you a message of love and you are not
   willing to hear it, surely you have a prejudice against Him! When you
   do not even wish to know what He promises to those who are His friends,
   you must have made up your mind to be His foe!

   But, suppose further, as in some olden time, this king were to say to
   all his subjects, "You are surrounded by the enemy. The city is tightly
   shut up and famine threatens you. But I am going to feed you all out of
   the royal granaries. There will be so much of bread and so much of
   provender for all of you who choose to come and have it, a daily
   portion freely given to all who ask for it"? Suppose this man, though
   evidently very hungry and thirsty, never went to eat at the public
   table? He need not say anything against the king and his table, but
   suppose he persistently abstained from putting himself under any
   obligation to the royal provider and would sooner go and eat with dogs,
   or pluck meat out of the hog's dish than he would be nourished by the
   king's bounty? I should say that the fellow who starved himself in that
   fashion must have deep enmity in his heart against the king!

   Your case is just the same. You will not go to Christ Jesus that you
   may have eternal life. You do not go to the Creator of your spirits
   that you may find comfort and joy in Him. You are willing, rather, to
   perish than to apply to the Father of mercies. You look for pleasure
   and happiness anywhere rather than in God--yes, in places only
   comparable to the dog kennel, or the sty of the swine! Therefore you
   cannot persuade me out of my solemn anxiety that your heart is enmity
   against God! I am sure that, hungry as you are, you would go to His
   table to be fed; naked as you are, you would go to His wardrobe to be
   clothed if it were not that you have an enmity in your heart against
   the Lord--terribly and deadly even though unacknowledged by yourself.
   He that will sullenly perish rather than accept the Gift of God must
   entertain desperately evil thoughts of God!

   Suppose, once more, that you had offended this king and you had been
   tried for treason against him? And suppose you had been found guilty
   and he were to say to you, "Freely confess your treason and there is
   the pardon drawn out for you by which your life shall be spared and
   you, yourself, shall be taken into favor"? If you were to reply, "I
   will not have it!" Yes, and if you were not even to say as much as
   that, but only neglected to accept it and just sat carelessly in prison
   until the day of execution, I would say that you must have a most awful
   enmity in your heart against your sovereign! He that will not even
   accept pardon must be rancorous, indeed! My Hearer, your not accepting
   the free pardon of Christ; your not receiving the benefit of the act of
   amnesty and oblivion which the great God has passed, proves that your
   traitorous heart is dyed to the very core with the blackest enmity
   against the Majesty of Heaven! I am not talking about the villains of
   whom we have been reading, lately, in the newspapers, who would commit
   the foulest deeds of unmentionable crime, but I am talking about you
   good people who are not far from the Kingdom and yet are base enough to
   spurn your Savior's love and blood! If you have not accepted the favor
   of your King and the pardon provided by a bleeding Savior, there must,
   at bottom, be a cruel enmity in your heart against the King of Love! Is
   it not so? Do you not begin to suspect yourself of not being quite all
   you fondly hoped you were?

   So I will use yet another similitude and but one, that I may not weary
   you. This time it shall merely relate to the common conduct of one
   person to another. I might profess, of a certain person, that I had no
   enmity against him. But suppose that whenever I met him in the street,
   I would not look at him and, if he were on my side of the street, I
   somehow or other had a call from the other side of the way? And suppose
   that when I came into a room to meet friends, if I saw him there, I
   always backed out and went somewhere else? I would think that people
   would, before long, suspect that I had great enmity towards that
   person!

   There are people who act in that manner towards God. They find hearing
   sermons very dull work. Talking with Christian people about Divine
   things they cannot endure. Reading a religious book is slavery--they
   find themselves very soon reduced to a state of slumber by treatises
   upon true religion. They have no care about such things. They want to
   get out of God's way. Their heart has no delight in the thought of God.
   If there were information in tomorrow morning's paper that God was
   dead, would not some of you be very happy? You would say, "Then there
   will be no day ofjudgment

   and I may enjoy myself, for my greatest dread is gone!" To us who love
   the Lord it would be a calamity worse than 10,000 deaths if we could
   lose our God--but your condition of mind towards God is clear proof of
   enmity against Him!

   Again, suppose that a person has written you a letter and you have
   taken no notice of it? When did it come? It came last Monday morning.
   Have you read it? "Oh, no," you say, "I do not bother to read his
   letters!" You have had a good many, then? "Oh, yes, hundreds of them!"
   What have you done with them? "I have done nothing with them. I leave
   them alone and do not trouble to read them." Are these letters
   rational? "Yes, they are wise and kind." Yet you do not care to read
   them? Did you say that you are not the writer's enemy? Ah, my Friend, I
   suspect that there is not much affection in your heart to him. There
   must, indeed, be a good deal of animosity! When you did read one of his
   letters, what was it about? "Well, it was about wishing to be at peace
   with me and desiring to do me good. He spoke of my being in great
   danger and said that he would help me; and of my being poor, and
   offered to make me rich."

   Did he talk so and have you never read any more of his letters? What
   can ail you? Were these letters full of bitter upbraiding and fierce
   threats? Do you reply, "Oh, no, they were kind, good, affectionate and,
   I have no doubt, they were meant to benefit me, but I don't care about
   them! I think that other people ought to read them, but I have no mind
   to do so?" From this I feel sure that you hate the writer very
   heartily. Have I not described your conduct towards your Bible? That
   blessed Book is a love-letter from God, the great Father, and you do
   not read it nor care about it and, therefore, I am sure that there must
   be in your heart enmity against Him. I do not think that you can argue
   me out of that conviction. I would, therefore, be glad to convince you
   of your wrong state of mind until you become ashamed of it and turn to

   God!

   Is prayer neglected by you? Is it a burden? Have you no pleasure in it?
   Then how can you say that you are a friend of God? Do you utterly
   neglect all communion with God? Do you never speak with Him? How can
   you think that you love Him? If I had a son who lived in my house, ate
   at my table and was clothed by my kindness--and that boy were to say to
   people outside, "I never speak to my father. He speaks to me, but I
   never listen to him. I live in his house, but I treat him as if he were
   dead"--would not everybody rightly conclude that there was a deadly
   animosity in the heart of such a son towards his father? I cannot help
   thinking that if you live without speaking to God, or hearing Him speak
   to you, you have a carnal mind which is enmity against God!

   There I leave the matter, hoping that your conscience will awake and
   concern itself about this business. If these things should suggest a
   suspicion of your horrible and unnatural enmity against the good God
   and that should send you to your knees, I shall bless the Holy Spirit
   that it is so! Come, O great Convincer, and cause my unregenerate
   hearers to know their own true condition before the Lord! And then
   guide them to Jesus, the Savior!

   II. But now, secondly, and very briefly, LET US DEPLORE THIS ENMITY
   AGAINST GOD. Come, gracious Spirit, and melt our hearts to penitence!

   For, first, what an injustice it is! I cannot bear for anybody to speak
   ill and think ill of one who is good, kind and generous. I would
   interpose, if possible, to rectify that mistaken judgment. But for you
   not to think well of God! For you not to love the God of Love! For you
   not to be at peace with the sweet Lord Jesus! For you not to delight in
   Christ is a gross injustice to Him! Oh, do not continue in it! If you
   have any sense of rightness, may God make you feel shame that you
   should treat Him ill!

   Moreover, I venture to say that it is more than an injustice. What an
   infamy it is! If anyone in this country could point to a person and
   say, "There is a man who hates the Queen and who, wherever he goes,
   speaks against her," we would feel that he was no man of honor, no
   person of right feeling. Yet to slander a lady of blameless life is
   nothing compared with hating the perfect Lord! When I think of a man's
   not loving God, not loving Christ, I feel that it is an awful thing for
   him, an infamous thing for him. Come here, angels, if you will! If you
   can turn your eyes from the august sight of your crowned Lord, come and
   look in this direction! Here is a man whom God has made, who does not
   love his Maker! Here is a monster that is fed every day by God's bounty
   and never thanks Him! Here is an immortal being who hears of the death
   of Christ and is told that if he believes in Him, he shall live in
   happiness forever--and he will not believe in Him! He does not care for
   Christ, or for His love, His life, or His Heaven! Surely those blessed
   spirits turn away their faces! They stretch their wings for flight from
   such loathed company! They cry, "Let us not look on such a monster. He
   is not fit to live." There is an infamy about not loving Christ.

   In addition to all this I would say, what an injury is this to yourself
   It is a very great injury to any man not to be perfectly at peace with
   God. You are losing happiness. You are losing holiness, which is still
   more! You are losing the full development of your being. You are
   missing the destiny for which a God-created soul is intended. You are
   finding your way into darkness which will gather blackness upon
   blackness forever! Oh, Sirs, I cannot bear that this should be the
   case--that you should be at enmity with God! Oh, the mournful
   consequences of living and dying at enmity with God! You cannot succeed
   in this enmity. You have no power with which to contend against the
   Lord and to prosper. You need not wish that you could have such power.
   Why should you want to contend against love, mercy, truth, goodness and
   righteousness? Oh, that the Spirit of All Grace would lead you to
   loathe yourself! You have never committed adultery; you were never a
   thief; you were never a swearer! But do not compliment yourself upon
   being free from those crimes--it is sin enough not to love God! It is
   proof enough of a base heart not to have delighted in the Lord!

   When I take a friend to see a landscape that enchants me and he looks
   at it and mutters, "I see nothing in it," I feel sorry for him. When I
   cause him to hear the delightful strains of Handel's music and he
   murmurs, "There is a deal of noise and I can hear a big drum," I feel
   greatly sorry for him that he has no ear for music. So it is when I
   think of the glories of God and meet with men who do not appreciate
   them! I feel grieved for them. I would sooner be blind, deaf and
   dumb--and lose all feeling--than lose the sense of the beauty and
   perfection of God! The capacity to enjoy God and to understand His
   superlative excellence is the grandest faculty that a being can
   possess! And he that has it not is dead while he lives! He who does not
   love the ever-blessed Lord is a very Nabal, whose heart is like a stone
   within him. He is a fool writ large who knows not God. May the Lord
   manifest His Grace to those of you who are in such a condition and
   bring you to deplore it and escape from it!

   ' III. This brings me to a close. The third point was to be--LET US
   SEEK DELIVERANCE FROM THIS CONDITION OF ENMITY AGAINST GOD. How is it
   to be done?

   Truly, I do not believe it ever will be done in any man except by the
   Holy Spirit. This incapacity to see the beauty and loveliness of God is
   such an inveterate disease that none can remove it but the Holy Spirit.
   You must be washed, I know. You must be healed, I know. You must be
   clothed, I know. But I know another thing quite as clearly--"You must
   be born again." Do you say, "How can a man be born when he is old?"
   There is but one way--He that first made you must make you over again!
   The change in you must be radical and thorough--and you cannot work it
   of yourself. You are cast upon the Omnipotent Mercy of God and that
   Omnipotent Mercy will freely come to your rescue if you will accept it
   in the Lord Jesus Christ. The crucified Son of God, alone, can be your
   salvation from all this spiritual inability and aversion. It is the
   work of the Holy Spirit to lead you to accept Jesus and so to be
   delivered from your enmity.

   Next, the enemy of God needs to be delivered from the great guilt of
   not having loved God. How is that to be done? That can only be
   accomplished through the Infinite Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ.
   Great guilt has accrued to you from having lived so long without loving
   God. The first precept of the Law is, "You shall love the Lord your God
   with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might."
   And that you have not done. Now, the guilt of that unjust omission can
   only be put away through the bloody Sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Son
   of God. By that one omission you have violated the whole Law of God and
   nothing but the blood of Jesus can make an amend to its honor. Thanks
   be to God, that precious Expiation can cleanse you! Trusting in that
   glorious Sacrifice, the guilt of your not loving God shall vanish!

   How can the enmity, itself, go? I have shown you that this must be
   removed by the heart being changed by the Holy Spirit, but the means of
   it will be this--your enmity will depart by a sense of God's love to
   you. I think that it is Aristotle who says that it is impossible for a
   person to believe that another loves him without feeling some kind of
   love in return. I concede that it is almost impossible, but I am not
   sure that it is quite so. However, this I do know--if you could but
   believe, at this moment, that God loves you. If, trusting in Christ,
   you could but know the infinite affection that is in the heart of the
   great Father towards you, His child, you would love God in return--you
   could not help it! Oh, could you understand the love that dropped from
   those five wounds, the love that forced your Savior to a bloody sweat,
   the love that cried, "It is finished," as He gave up the ghost--the
   love which, when He rose from the dead, still thought of you, and
   which, when it mounted to its Throne, still remembered you!

   If you could understand the love that pleads for the guilty, now, and
   intercedes for sinners, now--oh, could you but understand it--you would
   cry, "I cannot be at enmity with God any longer! I must love Him who
   has done so much for

   me." The love of Jesus has such a melting power that even a heart of
   Hell-hardened steel softens and flows away in streams of penitence
   beneath its influence!--

   "Law and terrors do but harden,

   All the while they work alone.

   But a sense of blood-bought pardon

   Soon dissolves a heart of stone." May you receive a sense of that love
   at once and you will then find that your enmity is gone, that you are
   spiritually-minded and that you love God!

   For that--to conclude with--is the main thing. While the man continues
   to mind the flesh, he cannot love God. While his first business is his
   body and the things of time and sense, he is and must be at enmity with
   God. But when the Lord Jesus Christ wins his heart. When the Spirit of
   God renews his mind. When he comes to love God--then he cares for
   spiritual things--then his treasure is in Heaven and his heart is there
   also! Then his hopes are in the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ when He
   shall come a second time--and then his life tends towards Heaven, honor
   and immortality. Thus the man is raised from being a worm of the earth
   to kinship with angels! He drops the serpentine slough and puts on the
   seraphic wings. He gets away from the mole life, burrowing under ground
   in the dark, and gains the eagle's eye and the eagle's pinion. He quits
   the gloom and night of earth and mounts aloft with his eyes upon the
   Sun of Glory, delighting in the holy and the heavenly!

   God bring you to that state by faith in Jesus Christ! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Plain Man's Sermon

   (No. 1879)

   A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, JANUARY 17, 1886,

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "It must be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no defect in it."
   Leviticus 22:21.

   THE Ceremonial Law, as ordained by the hand of Moses and Aaron, called
   the worshippers of God to great carefulness before Him. Before their
   minds that solemn Truth was always made visible, "I the Lord your God
   am a jealous God." Nothing might be done thoughtlessly. Due heed was
   the first requisite in a man who would draw near unto the Thrice-Holy
   God, whose perfections demand lowly and considerate reverence from all
   those who are round about Him. The spirit must be awake and on the
   stretch if it would please the great Father of Spirits. There were
   little points--I may truthfully call them minute--upon which everything
   would depend as to right worship and its acceptance with the Lord. No
   Israelite could come to the tabernacle door aright without thinking of
   what he had to do and thinking it over with an anxious fear lest he
   should, by omission or error, make his offering into a vain oblation.
   He must draw near unto the Lord with great carefulness, or else he
   might miss his aim, spend his money upon a sacrifice, cause labor to
   the priest and go home unaccepted. He might duly perform a large
   portion of a ceremony and yet no good might come to him through it
   because he had omitted a point of detail--for the Lord would be sought
   according to the due order--or He would not be found by the worshipper.
   Of every ceremony it might be said, "It must be perfect to be
   accepted." There was the rule and the rule must be followed with the
   most careful exactness. God must have the minds and thoughts of men, or
   He counts that they are no worshippers!

   This is no easy lesson to learn, dear Friends for I am afraid that in
   our usual worship we are not always as thoughtful as we ought to be.
   Mark well our singing. Do we join in it with the heartiness, the
   solemnity and the correctness which are due to Him who hears our Psalms
   and hymns? I may not judge, but I have my suspicions. Look at the way
   we pray. Is it not to be feared that at times we rush into God's
   Presence and utter the first words that come to hand? Are not liturgies
   repeated with minds half asleep? Are not extempore prayers uttered in
   the most formal manner? I refer both to public and private prayer.
   Moreover, look at the style in which some will even preach. With
   facility of language they will deliver themselves of their own
   thoughts, without seeking the anointing from on high and the power of
   the Spirit of God! I do not say that any of you ever go into your
   Sunday school classes without thought. I do not say that any of you
   ever take your tract district and go from door to door without seeking
   a blessing. I will not say that any of you ever come to the Communion
   Table without examining yourselves and discerning the Lord's body. But
   if I do not say it, I may think it and possibly that thought may be
   true!

   O, my Brothers and Sisters, let conscience sit in judgment and decide
   this matter! We need to think a great deal more about how we come
   before the Most High! And if we thought more and prayed more, we would
   become more certain of our inability to do anything as we ought to do
   it--and we Would be driven to a more entire dependence upon the Spirit
   of God in every act of worship! This in itself would be a great
   blessing.

   I do not know, however, that the Ceremonial Law did make men thoughtful
   since, for the most part, it failed of its designed effect through the
   hardness of men's hearts. Earnest heed was the design of it, but
   superstition and a spirit of bondage were the more usual results.
   Brethren, without a multitude of ceremonies which might become a yoke
   to us, let us, by other means, arrive at the same and even a better
   thoughtfulness of heart! Let love to God so influence us that, in the
   least and most ordinary matters, we shall behave ourselves as in the
   immediate Presence of the Lord and so shall strive with the utmost
   watchfulness of holy care to please the Lord our God.

   The Ceremonial Law also engendered in men who did think, a great
   respect for the holiness of God. They could not help seeing that God
   required everything in His service to be of the very best.

   The priest who stood for them before God must be, himself, in bodily
   presence, the perfection of manhood. When old age crept upon him, he
   must give place to one who showed no such sign of decay. His garments
   must be perfectly white and clean in his daily service. And when once a
   year there was a joy day, then for glory and beauty he shone in all the
   radiance that the purest gold and the most precious stones could put
   upon him!

   The victims that were offered must all be without blemish. You are
   constantly meeting with that demand and it was carried out with rigid
   care. You meet with a stringent instance in the text, "It must be
   perfect to be accepted."

   Under the law of Moses, the guilt of sin and the need of atonement were
   always most vividly brought before the mind of the worshipping
   Israelite. If you stepped within the Holy Place, everywhere you saw the
   marks of blood. Our very delicate-minded friends who raise the silly
   objection that they cannot bear the sound of the word, "blood"--what
   would they have done if they had gone into the Jewish tabernacle and
   had seen the floor, the curtain and every article stained like a
   shambles? How would they have endured to worship where the blood was
   poured in bowlfuls upon the floor and sprinkled on almost every holy
   thing? How would they have borne with the continual spattering of
   blood--all indicating that without shedding of blood there is no
   remission of sin?

   Truly, there can be no approach to a Thrice-Holy God without the
   remission of sin and that remission of sin must be obtained through the
   atoning blood! The Israelite, if he thought rightly, must have been
   deeply aware that he served a God who was terrible out of His holy
   places, a God who hated sin and would by no means spare the guilty, or
   pardon man without atonement! All the more would this be sealed home
   upon the mind of the Israelite by the knowledge that in every case the
   sacrifice must be unblemished. As he looked on the blood of the victim,
   he would remember the sacred rule, "It must be perfect to be accepted."
   He saw in the necessity for a perfect sacrifice, a declaration of the
   holiness of God. He must have felt that sin was not a trifle--not a
   thing to be committed, winked at and blotted out--but a thing for which
   there must be life given and blood shed before it could be removed. And
   that life and blood must be the life and blood of a perfect and
   unblemished offering!

   Under the Jewish Ceremonial Law, one of the most prominent thoughts,
   next to a great respect for the holiness of God, would be a deep regard
   for the Law of God. Everywhere that the Israelite went, he was
   surrounded by the Law of God. He must not do this and he must do
   that--the Law was continually before him. Now, Brothers and Sisters, it
   is a blessed thing to declare the Gospel, but I do not believe that any
   man can preach the Gospel who does not preach the Law. The book of
   Leviticus and all the other typical books are valuable as
   Gospel-teaching to us because there is always in them most clearly the
   Law of God. The Law is the needle and you cannot draw the silken thread
   of the Gospel through a man's heart unless you first send the needle of
   the Law through the center, to make way for it. If men do not
   understand the Law of God, they will not feel that they are sinners!
   And if they are not consciously sinners, they will never value the Sin
   Offering. If the Ten Commandments are never read in their hearing, they
   will not know why they are guilty. And how shall they make confession?
   If they are not assured that the Law is holy, just, good and that God
   has never demanded of any man more than He has a right to demand, how
   shall they feel the filthiness of sin, or see the need of flying to
   Christ for cleansing? There is no healing a man till the Law of God has
   wounded him! No making him alive till the Law has slain him!

   I do pray, dear Friends, that God, the Holy Spirit, may lay the Law of
   God, like an axe, at the root of all our self-righteousness, for
   nothing else will ever hew down that Upas tree. I pray that He may take
   the Law and use it as a mirror, that we may see ourselves in it and
   discover our spots, blots and all the foulness of our lives--for then
   we shall be driven to wash until we are clean in the sight of the Lord.
   The Law is our teacher to bring us to Christ and there is no coming to
   Christ unless the stern teacher shall lead us there with many a stripe
   and many a tear.

   In this text we have Law and Gospel, too. There is the Law which tells
   us that the sacrifice must be perfect to be accepted. And behind it
   there is the blessed hint that there is such an unblemished Sacrifice
   which is accepted which we may, by faith, bring to God without fear of
   being rejected. Oh, for Grace to learn both Law and Gospel at this
   time!

   This is the text for our present meditation, "It must be perfect to be
   accepted." I want to preach this Truth of God right home into every
   heart by the power of the Spirit of God! If I could be an orator, I
   would not be. The game of eloquence, with the souls of men for the
   counters and eternity for the table, is the most wicked sport in the
   world! I have

   often wished that there were no such things as rhetoric and oratory
   left among ministers--and that we were all forced to speak in the
   pulpit as plainly as children do in their simplicity. Oh, that all
   would proclaim the Gospel with plain words! I long that all may
   understand what I have to say. I would be more simple if I knew how.
   The way of salvation is far too important a matter to be the theme of
   oratorical displays. The Cross is far too sacred to be made a pole on
   which to hoist the flags of our fine language! I want to tell you just
   things that will make for your peace--things which will save your
   souls. At least I would declare Truths which, if they do not save you,
   will leave you without excuse in that dread day when He, whose
   ambassador I am, shall come to judge both you and me!

   I. First, then, THE RULE OF OUR TEXT, "IT MUST BE PERFECT TO BE
   ACCEPTED," MAY BE USED TO SHUT OUT ALL THOSE FAULTY OFFERINGS ON WHICH
   SO MANY PLACE THEIR CONFIDENCE.

   It most effectually judges and casts forth as vile, all
   self-righteousness, although this is the great deceit by which
   thousands are buoyed up with false hopes! Alas, this is the destroyer
   of myriads and, therefore, I must speak as with a voice of thunder and
   with words of lightning! Hearken unto me, you that hope to be accepted
   of God by your own doings! Look to what will be demanded of you if you
   are to be accepted on your own merits! "It must be perfect to be
   accepted; there shall be no defect in it." If you can come up to this
   rule, you shall be saved by your own righteousness! But if you cannot
   reach this mark. If you come short in any degree whatever, you will not
   be accepted! It is not said, "It must be partially good to be
   accepted." Or, "It must be hopefully good."

   No! "It must be perfect to be accepted." It is not written, "It must
   have no great and grievous blemish," but, "There shall be no defect in
   it." See you not the height of the standard, the absolute completeness
   of the model set before you? Let the plummet hang straight and see
   whether you can build according to it, or, whether, after all, your
   building is but as a bowing wall and as a tottering fence, altogether
   out of the perpendicular as tested by this uncompromising text--"It
   must be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no defect in it."

   Why, look, Sirs, you that hope to be saved by your own doings, your
   nature, at the very first, is tainted! God's Word assures you that it
   is so! There is evil in your heart from the very beginning, so that you
   are not perfect and are not without defect! This sad fact spoils all at
   the very beginning. You are blemished and imperfect! Who can bring a
   clean thing out of an unclean? Not one! If the fountain is tainted,
   shall the streams be pure? Do you think it possible that you, who are a
   fallen man in your very parentage--in whom there is a bias towards
   evil--can possibly render perfect service unto God? Your hands are
   foul! How can your work be clean? How can it possibly be that you
   should produce sweet fruit when you, as a tree, are of sour stock and
   of bitter nature? O my Friend, it cannot be that darkness should
   produce light, nor death bring forth life! How can your thoughts, words
   and ways be perfect? And yet all must be perfect to be accepted.

   Look again for I feel sure that there must have been a blemish
   somewhere, as matter of fact. As yet you are not conscious of a
   blemish, or of a fault and, possibly there is some justification for
   this unconsciousness. Looking upon you, I feel inclined to love you, as
   Jesus loved that young man who could say of the Commandments, "All
   these have I kept from my youth up." But I must beg you to answer this
   question--Has there not been a blemish in your motives? What have you
   been doing all these good things for? "Why, that I might be saved!"
   Precisely so! Therefore, selfishness has been the motive which has
   ruled your life. Every self-righteous man is a selfish man! I am sure
   he is. At the bottom, that is the motive of the best life that is ever
   lived which is not actuated by faith in Jesus Christ. The Law is, "You
   shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
   soul, and with all your mind." But you have loved yourself, and lived
   for yourself--how, then, can you have kept the first precept of the
   Law? What has been done by you has been done either out of a servile
   fear of Hell, or else out of a proud and selfish hope that you would
   win Heaven by your own merits. These are not love, nor even akin to it!
   The absence of love is a flaw and a very serious one--it taints and
   spoils the whole of your life. "It must be perfect to be accepted" and,
   if the motive is imperfect, then the life is altogether imperfect.

   Moreover, it is not only your nature and your motive which are
   imperfect. My dear Friend, you certainly must have erred somewhere or
   other, in some act of your life. If you can say that you have served
   God and man without fault throughout all your days, you can say much
   more than I would venture to do! The Scripture also is dead against you
   when it says, "there is none righteous; no, not one." If you can say
   that in not one action of your life, select what you may, was there
   anything blameworthy, anything that fell short, anything that could be
   censured--you say very much more than the best of men have ever claimed
   for themselves! As for the poor faulty being who now addresses you, I
   dare

   not claim that the best deed I have ever done, or the most fervent
   prayer I have ever prayed could have been accepted in and of itself
   before God. I know that I have no perfection in my best things, much
   less in my worst.

   Tell me, my Friend, was there not something wrong in your spirit? Was
   there not a shortcoming in the humility with which you worshipped? Or
   in the zeal with which you served? Or in the faith with which you
   prayed? Was there not something of omission, even if nothing of
   commission? Could not the work have been better done? If so, it is
   clear that it was not perfect, for had it been perfect it could have
   been no better. Might you not have lived better than you have lived?
   Might you not have been more pure, more generous, more upright, more
   loving, more gentle, more firm, more heavenly-minded than you have
   been? Then this confession shows that, to some extent, you must have
   fallen short and, remember, "It must be perfect to be accepted; there
   shall be no defect in it."

   Ah, I am talking very smoothly now, for I am only touching the surface
   and dealing with guess-work. But I fear there are greater evils
   underneath, if all were known. I think if I could read all hearts,
   there is not one here, however self-righteous he may be, who would not
   have to confess distinct acts of sin. Still, I will keep to the smooth
   strain and believe that you are as good as you seem to be. Indeed, I
   have a high opinion of many of you! I know how some of you have lived.
   You were amiable girls and excellent young women and have grown up to
   be careful, loving wives and, therefore, you say, "I never did anybody
   any harm. Surely I may be accepted." Or, perhaps you are quiet young
   men, blessed with excellent parents and screened from temptation--and
   so you have never gone into open vice, but have gained a most
   respectable character. I wish that there were more like you! I am not
   condemning you--far from it--but I know that your tendency is to think
   that because of all this, you must, in yourselves, be accepted of God.

   Give me your hand and let me say to you, with tears--"It is not so, my
   Sister! It is not so, my Brother! It must be perfect to be accepted;
   there must be no defect in it." This is a deathblow to your
   self-confidence, for there was a time, some day or other in your life,
   in which you did wrong. What? Have you no hasty temper? Have no quick
   words escaped from you which you would wish to recall? What? Have you
   never murmured against God, or complained of His Providence? Have you
   never been slothful when you ought to have been diligent? Have you
   never been careless when you ought to have been prayerful? Have you
   always spoken the truth? Has a lie never fallen from your lips? Can you
   say that your heart has never desired evil--never imagined impurity?
   Remember, the thought of evil is sin! Even a wanton desire is a blemish
   in the life and an unchaste imagination is a stain upon the character
   in the sight of God, though not in the sight of man! "It must be
   perfect to be accepted."

   I verily used to think concerning myself that I was a quiet, good,
   hopeful lad, addicted much to reading, seldom in brawls and doing
   nobody any harm. Oh, it was the outside of the cup and the platter I
   had seen! And when I was led by Grace to look inside, I was astonished
   to see what filthiness was there! When I heard in my heart that
   sentence of the Law of God, "It must be perfect to be accepted," I gave
   up all hope of self-righteousness! And now I hate myself for having
   doted upon such a lie that I could be acceptable with God in myself!

   Have you never gone to live in an old house which looked like new? You
   had fresh paint, varnish and paper in superabundance--and you thought
   yourself dwelling in one of the sweetest of places--until, one day, it
   happened that a board was taken up and you saw under the floor. What a
   gathering of every foul thing! You could not have lived in that house
   at peace for a minute had you known what had been covered up!
   Rottenness had been hidden, decay had been doctored, death had been
   decorated! That is just like our humanity. We put on fresh paper,
   varnish and paint--and we look very respectable. But from below an
   abomination of the sewer gas of sin comes steaming up, enough to kill
   everything that is like goodness within us--while all manner of
   creeping lusts and venomous passions swarm in the secret corners of our
   nature! When lusts are quiet, they are still there. The best man in
   this place, who is not a believer in Christ, would go mad if he were to
   see himself as God sees him! No eyes could bear the horrible sight of
   the Hell within the human breast! Yes, I mean you good people--you very
   nice, amiable, lovable sort of people! You will have to be born again
   and you will have to give up all trust in yourselves, as much as even
   the worst of men must do! As surely as the chief of sinners are
   unaccepted, so surely are you--for a righteousness must be perfect to
   be accepted, there must be no defect in it--and that is not the case
   with your righteousness. You know it is not.

   "Well," says one, "this is very hard doctrine." I mean it to be so, for
   I love you too well to deceive you! When a door has to be shut to save
   a life, there is no use in half-shutting it! If a person may be killed
   by going through it, you had better board it up, or brick it up. I want
   to brick up the dangerous opening of self-confidence, for it leads to
   deception, dis-

   appointment and despair! The way to Heaven by works is only possible to
   a man who is absolutely perfect--and none of you are in that condition.
   Do not pretend to it, or you will be arrant liars! I put no fine face
   upon it--you are not perfect, no, not one of you, for, "all have sinned
   and come short of the Glory of God."

   Thus, then, our text shuts out all self-righteousness. It also shuts
   out all priestly performances. There is a notion among some people that
   the priest is to save them, alias the minister, for men easily, in
   these charitable days, make even Dissenting ministers into priests! I
   have heard people say, "Just as I employ a lawyer to attend to my
   temporal business and I do not bother my head any more about it, so I
   employ my priest or my clergyman to attend to my spiritual business and
   there is the end of it." This is evil talk and ruinous to the man who
   indulges in it! I will speak of this priestcraft very plainly.
   Remember, "It must be perfect to be accepted," therefore all that this
   gentleman does for you must be perfect. I do not know what it is that
   he does, I am sure. I never could make out what a priest of the Roman
   or Anglican order can be supposed to do in his highest function of the
   "mass." I have seen him walk this way and I have seen him walk that
   way--and I have seen him turn his back--and it has been decorated with
   crosses and other embellishments! And I have seen him turn his face and
   I have seen him bow--and I have seen him drink wine and water--and I
   have seen him munch wafers. I have seen him perform many genuflections
   and prostrations, but what the performance meant, I have not been able
   to gather! To me it seemed a meaningless display.

   I would not like to risk my soul on it, for, suppose that during that
   service he should think of something that he ought not to think upon?
   And suppose he should have no intention whatever of performing the
   "mass"--what, then, becomes of those who trust in him and it?
   Everything, you know, depends upon the intention of the priest. If a
   good intention is not there, according to the dictates of his own
   church, it is all good for nothing, so that your souls all hang upon
   the intention of a poor mortal in a certain dress! Perhaps he has not,
   after all, been rightly anointed and is not in the Apostolic
   succession? Perhaps there is no Apostolic succession! Perhaps the man,
   himself, is living in mortal sin! Ah, me, there are many dangers about
   your confidence! Are you going to hang your soul on that man's orders
   or disorders? Mine is too heavy to hang upon so slender a nail, driven
   into such rotten wood! If you have a soul big enough to think, you will
   feel, "No, no, there cannot be sufficient ground of dependence in the
   best pontiff that ever officiated at an altar. God requires of me,
   myself, that I bring to Him a perfect Sacrifice, and it is all a device
   of my folly that I should try and get a sponsor and lay this burden on
   him. It cannot be done. I have to stand before the judgement bar of God
   in my own person, to be tried for the sins that I have done in the
   body--and I must not deceive myself with the idea that another man's
   performance of ceremonies can clear me at the Judgement Seat of Christ.
   This man cannot bring a perfect sacrifice for me and--"it must be
   perfect to be accepted." O Sirs, do not be deluded by priestcraft and
   sacramentarianism, whether the priest is of the school of Rome or of
   Oxford--you must believe in the Lord Jesus for yourselves, or you will
   be lost forever!

   This text makes a clean sweep of all other kinds of human confidences.
   Some are deceived in this way--"Well," they say, "I do not trust in my
   works, but I am a religious person and I attend the sacrament. And I go
   to my place of worship pretty regularly. I feel that I must certainly
   be right. I have faith in Jesus Christ and in myself." In various ways
   men thus compose an image whose feet are part of iron and part of clay.
   With that kind of mingle-mangle, many are unconsciously contenting
   themselves. But hear this Word of God--"It must be perfect to be
   accepted; there shall be no defect in it." If we trust Christ and
   nothing else, that will be perfect! But if you are trusting Christ up
   to 15 ounces in the pound and yourself for the last ounce of the 16,
   you will be a lost man, for that last ounce is an ounce of imperfection
   and, therefore, you cannot be accepted of God!

   There are some others who say, "I have suffered a great deal and that
   will make amends." There is a current idea among men that all will go
   well with poor people and hard-working people because they have had
   their bad times here on earth. When a man has had a long illness and
   suffered a great deal in the hospital, his friends say, "Poor soul, he
   has gone where he is better off!" They feel sure of it because he has
   suffered so much! Ah, me, but, "It must be perfect to be accepted"--and
   what is there perfect in a human life, even if it is checkered with
   suffering, poverty and need? Ah, no! Poverty does not work perfection!
   Sickness does not make perfection! My text stands like a cherub, waving
   a fiery sword before the gates of Paradise, shutting out all fancies
   and notions, of which I will not now speak particularly, by this dread
   sentence--"It must be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no defect
   in it."

   II. This brings me to note, with great delight of heart, that as this
   rule shuts out all other confidences, SO THIS RULE SHUTS US UP TO THE
   SACRIFICE OF JESUS CHRIST. O Beloved, if I had the tongues of men and
   of angels, I could never fitly tell you of Him who offered Himself
   without spot unto God, for He is absolutely perfect--there is no defect
   in Him!

   He is perfect in His Nature as God and Man. No stain defiled His birth,
   no pollution touched His body or His soul. The Prince of this world,
   himself, with keenest eyes, came and searched the Savior, but he found
   nothing in Him. "In all points tempted like as we are, yet without
   sin." There was not the possibility of sinning about the Savior--no
   tendency that way, no desire that way. Nothing that could be construed
   into evil ever came upon His Character. Our perfect Sacrifice is
   without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing!

   As He was perfect in His Nature, so was He in His motive. What brought
   Him from above but love to God and man? You can find no trace of
   ambition in Christ Jesus. In Him there is no thought of self. No
   sinister or sordid motive ever lingered in His breast, or even crossed
   His mind. He was purity and holiness in the highest degree. Even His
   enemies have nothing to allege against the purity of the motive of
   Jesus of Nazareth!

   As His Nature was perfect, so was His spirit. He was never sinfully
   angry, nor harsh, nor untrue, nor idle. The air of His soul was the
   atmosphere of Heaven rather than of earth. Look at His life of
   obedience and see how perfect that was. Which Commandment did He ever
   break? Which duty of relationship did He ever forget? He honored the
   Law of God and loved the souls of men. He gave the Character of God
   perfect reflection in His human life. You can see what God is as you
   see what Christ is. He is perfect, even as His Father who is in Heaven
   is perfect. There is no redundancy, or excess, or superfluity in His
   Character, even as there is no coming short in any point.

   Look at the perfection of His Sacrifice. He gave His body to be
   tortured and His mind to be crushed and broken, even unto the agony of
   death. He gave Himself for us, a perfect Sacrifice. All that the Law
   could ask was in Him. Stretch the measure to its utmost length and
   still Christ goes beyond, rather than falls short of the measure of the
   requirements of justice. He has given to His Father double for all our
   sins! He has given Him suffering for sin committed and yet a perfect
   obedience to the Law. The Lord God is well pleased with Him. He rests
   in the Son of His love and, for His sake He smiles upon multitudes of
   sinners who are represented in Him. My heart rejoices as I think of
   Gethsemane, Calvary and of Him who by one offering has perfectly
   sanctified all who put their trust in Him! "It is finished," He said,
   and finished it is forever! Our Lord has presented a perfect Sacrifice!
   "It must be perfect to be accepted"--and it is perfect. "There shall be
   no defect in it"--and there is no defect in it. Glory be to God Most
   High!

   Now, I want you just to let me stop preaching, as it were, while every
   man among you brings this Sacrifice to God. By faith take it to be
   yours. You may. Christ belongs to every Believer. If you trust Him, He
   is yours! Poor guilty Soul as you are, whether you have been a
   Christian 50 years or 10 years, or whether you are just now converted,
   if you believe, you may now come with Christ in your hands and say to
   the Father, "O my Lord, You have provided for me what Your Law
   requires--a perfect Sacrifice! There is no defect in it. Behold, I
   bring it to You as mine!" God is satisfied. What joy! God is satisfied!
   The Father is well pleased! He has raised Christ from the dead and set
   Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places in token of that
   satisfaction!

   Let us be satisfied, too! That which contents God may well content me.
   My Soul, when your eyes are full of tears on account of your sin and
   your heart is disquieted on account of your infirmities and
   imperfections, look right away from yourself "to the full Atonement
   made, to the utmost ransom paid." The offering of Jesus is perfect and
   accepted! The righteousness of your Lord Jesus is without blemish and
   you are, "accepted in the Beloved."

   That delightful passage in Exodus came flashing up to my mind just now,
   where the Israelite sprinkled the blood on the lintel and the two side
   posts. Then he shut the door. He was inside: he did not see the blood
   any more. The blood was outside upon the posts and he could not see
   it--but was he safe? Yes, because it is written, "When I see the blood,
   I will pass over you." It is God's sight of the blood of His dear Son
   that is the everlasting safeguard of all who are in Christ! Though it
   is most precious and sweet to me to look at that blood once shed for
   many for the remission of sins--and I do look at it--yet if ever there
   should come a dark night to me in which I cannot see it, still, God
   will see it, and I am safe! I am save because it is written, not, "when
   you see it," but, "when I see the blood I will pass over you." It is
   the perfection of the Sacrifice, not your perfection of sight, which is
   your safeguard! It is the absence of all blemish from the Sacrifice--
   not the absence of blemish from your faith--that makes you "accepted in
   the Beloved."

   Well, now, as is too often the case, I have run on so much upon the
   first points that I have not time enough for much more! But I was going
   to finish up by saying that I address myself, for a minute or two, to
   Christians, only. Listen, you that follow after righteousness, you that
   know the Lord! You are saved. You have not, therefore, to bring any
   sacrifice by way of a sin offering, but you have to bring sacrifices of
   thanksgiving. It is your reasonable service that you offer your bodies
   a living sacrifice unto God. If you do this, you cannot bring an
   absolutely perfect sacrifice, but you must labor to let it be perfect
   in what is often the Biblical sense of perfection.

   Beloved Brothers and Sisters, you must take care that what you bring is
   not blind, for the blind were not to be offered. You must serve God
   with a single eye to the Glory of God. If you attend a Prayer Meeting,
   or teach a class, or preach a sermon, you must not do it with a view to
   your own selves in any way, or it cannot be accepted! The sacrifice
   must see--it must be intelligent, reasonable service--having for its
   objective the Glory of God. It must in that sense be perfect to be
   accepted.

   And as it must not be blind, so it must not be broken. Whenever we
   serve God, we must do it with the whole of our being, for if we try to
   serve God with a bit of our nature and leave the rest unconsecrated, we
   shall not be accepted. Certain professors prefer one class of Christian
   duties and they neglect others--this must not be. Christ gave "Himself
   for you and you must give your whole self to Him. To be acceptable, the
   life must be entire--there must be complete consecration of every
   faculty. How is it with you? Have you brought to the Lord a divided
   sacrifice? If so, He claims the whole.

   Next, they were not to bring a maimed sacrifice, that is, one without
   its limbs. Some people give grudgingly, that is to say they come up to
   the collection box with a limp. Many serve Christ with a broken arm.
   The holy work is done, but it is painfully and slowly done. Among the
   heathen, I believe, they never offered, in sacrifice to the gods, a
   calf that had to be carried. The reason was that they considered that
   the sacrifice ought to be willing to be offered and so it must be able
   to walk up to the altar. Notice in the Old Testament, though there were
   many creatures both birds and beasts, that were offered to God, they
   never offered any fish on the holy altar. The reason probably is that a
   fish could not come there alive. Its life would be spent before it came
   to the altar and, therefore, it could not render a life unto God. Take
   care that you bring your bodies a living sacrifice.

   I notice that many men are all alive when they are in the shop. The way
   they talk, the way they call out to the men and the way they bustle
   everybody about are conclusive evidence that their life is abundant.
   But when they get into the Church of God, what a difference! There may
   be life, somewhere or other, but nobody knows where it is! You have to
   look for it with a microscope. You see no activity, no energy! Oh, that
   these people would remember, "It must be perfect to be accepted!" That
   is to say, there must be energy put into it, soul put into it, heart
   put into it or God will not accept it. We must not bring Him the mere
   chrysalis of a man, out of which the life has gone, but we must bring
   before Him our living, worshipping selves if we would be acceptable
   before Him.

   It is then added, "or having a scab." It does not look as though it
   would hurt the sacrifice much to have a scab, yet there must not be a
   scab, or spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing. Above all, avoid that big
   scab of pride. When we feel that we are doing a grand thing and are
   acting in a most satisfactory manner, we may know that we are not
   accepted! A sermon wept over is more acceptable with God than one
   gloried over. That which is given to God with a sigh because you cannot
   do more--and with the humble hope that he may accept it for Christ's
   sake, is infinitely superior to that which is bestowed with the proud
   consciousness that you deserve well of your fellow men, if not of your
   God.

   The sacrifice was not to be scabbed, or to have the scurvy. That is to
   say, it was to be without any sort of outward fault. I have heard men
   say, "It is true I did not do that thing well, but my heart was right."
   That may be, my dear Brother, but you must try and make the whole
   matter as good as it can be! What a deal of scabbed service our Lord
   gets! Men try to be benevolent to their fellow creatures with an
   irritable temper. Certain people try to serve God and write stinging
   letters to promote brotherly love--and dogmatic epistles in favor of
   large-mindedness! Too many render to the Lord hurried, thoughtless
   worship and many more give for offerings their smallest coins and such
   things as they will never miss! God has many a scurvy sheep brought
   before Him.

   Did you never bring any, my Brother? Did I never bring any? Ah, me! Ah,
   me! But still, let us mend our ways and, since the Lord Jesus offered
   Himself without spot, let us try to serve Him with our utmost care. The
   best of the best should be given to the Best of the best! We sometimes
   sing--

   "All that Iam, and all Ihave,

   Shall be forever Yours.'"

   Oh, that we practiced it as well as sang it! Would God that the best of
   our lives, the best hours of the morning, the best skill of our hands,
   the best thoughts of our minds, the very cream of our being were given
   to our God! But, alas, Christ's cause is sent round to the back door to
   get the broken meat and, "Mind you do not leave too much meat on the
   bone," is the kind of instruction that is given to her who hands it
   out! Christ Jesus is sent to the dung heap for the odds and ends!
   Cheese parings and candle ends are given to the Missionary Society.
   Perhaps the statement is too liberal--it would be well if they were!
   Three-pennies and four-pennies are gracious gifts from struggling
   tradesmen and poor work people, but they are hardly decent when sent in
   by folk who spend hundreds of pounds upon their own pleasure! To God's
   altar we ought to bring the best bullock from the stall and the best
   sheep from the fold!

   I leave you to yourselves to judge whether it is not so. If you are not
   over head and ears in debt to the mercy of God in Christ, then it is
   not so. But if you are debtors to Divine Mercy beyond all compute, you
   shall, each one, reckon up for himself--"How much owe you unto my
   Lord?" If it is a debt you can never calculate--then give the Lord,
   from this day forth--the fullness of your being! May God grant that you
   and your offerings may be accepted in Christ Jesus! Amen and amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Lesson and a Fortune for Christian Men of Business

   (No. 1880)

   A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, JANUARY 24, 1886.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
   NOVEMBER 12, 1885.

   "Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with
   such things as you have: for He has said, I will never leave you, nor
   forsake you." Hebrews 13:5.

   THE Apostle warns us against a tendency very natural to our race. "Let
   your conversation be without covetousness." I am afraid that the
   precept is even more needed, now, than in the days of the Apostle. We
   are still more sharp and keen in competition and men in trade are even
   more anxious to accumulate money than they were in Apostolic times. It
   is not easy for a man to keep his heart clear of covetousness, or his
   hands clean from moral bribes. There is a singular stickiness about
   gold and silver. They have a great tendency to birdlime our souls and
   hold them fast, so that they cannot rise superior to their influence.
   The Revised Version reads our text, "Be you free from the love of
   money" and it puts in the margin, "Let your turn of mind be free from
   the love of money." May we all enjoy that freedom and may our turn of
   mind lead us to seek better things than the miser is able to hoard!

   There is a laudable pursuit of gain, without which business would not
   be properly carried on, but there is a line, scarcely as broad as a
   razor's edge, between diligence in business and greediness for gain. We
   can so easily pass from the one into the other that we may hardly be
   aware of it. When a man is increasing his investments, when he is
   extending his agencies, when he is enlarging his warehouse, when he is
   employing a larger number of persons than formerly, or even when he is
   bemoaning the depression of his trade and his heart is aching because
   he has only half as much business as before, covetousness may insinuate
   itself into his conversation. It is a snake which can enter at the
   smallest opening. It lurks in the grass where it is long, but it
   glides, also, where the pasture is bare. It may come in either in
   prosperity or in adversity and it is necessary to whisper in the ear of
   each Believer, whether going up or down in the world, "Let your
   conversation--your daily conduct--be without covetousness."

   Any Brother here--and it is to the Brothers, mainly, that the
   temptation comes, I think--any Brother here may have present need of
   such a warning as this. And if he does not need it just now, he may lay
   it by till he does, for it will keep. But let me not restrict the text
   or the sermon to the male side of the house. The Sisters may fall into
   a like temptation, in the saving, as their husbands in the getting. You
   godly matrons, you industrious Marthas, "Let your conversation be
   without covetousness."

   The Apostle here hints at what is the real cure for covetousness,
   namely, contentment. This is a rare drug in the market. The words of
   the Apostle make up a golden sentence--"Be content with such things as
   you have."

   It is supposed by most persons that they could be content if they were
   not exactly what they are and where they are. But the precept exhorts
   them to be content with their present circumstances. If they had a
   little more, they would be satis-fied--but that is not the contentment
   to which we are exhorted! It is written, "Be content with such things
   as you have." If God has multiplied your possessions, you ought the
   more readily to be content with such things as you have, though I am
   not sure you will be, for there is a saltiness in the water which comes
   out of wells dug by the Philistines, so that he who drinks from them
   shall thirst again. I once thought that a million would satisfy any
   mortal man, but I have been assured by one who has considerable
   experience in that direction, that he who has one million is unable to
   see any reason why he should not have two or ten!

   However, I may let that pass, for millions or thousands are not likely
   to tempt the most of us who are here assembled. If you have little
   possessions, yet still listen to the voice of Wisdom, which says, "Be
   content with such things as you

   have." You now have a measure of trouble by reason of the straitness of
   your means. You might have more trouble with the breadth of your means
   if you had all you would like to have! It may not be quite easy to
   travel when your garments are too short, but it is much harder to keep
   them from dragging in the mire when they are too long. Though a single
   staff is such a convenience that a traveler without one may sigh for
   it, yet a dozen canes would be a load which would make the burdened man
   prefer, rather, to have no staff at all than to have so many to carry.
   I believe that it is an advantage to have wealth when wealth is kept in
   its right place, but the difficulty is that the horse often runs away
   with the rider and he who has wealth too often loses his liberty and
   falls into sore bondage by becoming the slave of his own possessions!
   "Be content with such things as you have." After all, contentment
   drinks the cream of life. So far as earthly things are concerned, he is
   the happiest, no--he is the richest man who is content with such things
   as he has!

   The ripest apple in the garden grows on the tree of contentment. The
   garments which fit us best are the most fit for us and are the most
   comfortable to wear. He who is where he should be and where he would be
   has no cause to envy Solomon in all his glory. He that lives in the
   Valley of Humiliation among the fragrant flowers and the sweet-voiced
   birds-- and looks up to Heaven for his treasure and to God for his
   home--he is the happiest of mortal men! God teach us how to shun the
   vice of covetousness by cultivating the virtue of contentment! May the
   sweet flower choke the ill weed! "Let your conversation be without
   covetousness; and be content with such things as you have."

   I asked a question, some years ago, of a person whom I believed to be
   one of the most covetous individuals in my acquaintance, and I received
   from him a singular reply. I said, "How was it that St. Francis de
   Sales, who was an eminent confessor, to whom persons went in the Romish
   church to confess their sins, found that persons confessed to him, in
   private, all sorts of horrible sins, such as adultery, drunkenness and
   murder, but never had one person confessed the sin of covetousness?" I
   asked this friend whether he could tell me why it was and he gave me
   this answer which certainly did take me rather aback. He said, "I
   suppose it is because the sin is so extremely rare." Blind soul! I told
   him that, on the other hand, I feared the sin was so very common that
   people did not know when they were covetous and that the man who was
   most covetous of all was the last person to suspect himself of it! I
   feel persuaded that it is so. Covetousness breeds an insensibility in
   the heart, a mortification in the conscience, a blindness in the mind!
   It is as hard to convict a man of it as to make a deaf ear hear of its
   own deficiencies. You cannot make a horseleech see the impropriety of
   desiring to suck-- to all your expostulations it renders the one
   answer, "Give, give."

   Covetousness goes about in disguise. In the "Holy War," we read that
   when Diabolus sent traitors to lurk about the town of Mansoul, he sent
   among the rest a young fellow named Covetousness. But when he entered
   into the town of Man-soul, he took the name of Mr. Prudent Thrifty and
   he was engaged at once as a servant. I think it was in the house of Mr.
   Conscience, the Recorder. He seemed such a likely young man, this youth
   of the name of Prudent Thrifty. Now, mind you, Friends, when you are
   taking a servant, that you do not engage one with the name of Prudent
   Thrifty, for I have information that he comes of the family of the
   Greedies and that his true name is, "Covetousness," though it may be
   long before you find it out! His near relations are the Screws, the
   Skinflints, and the Grab-Alls, but he will not admit them, but always
   mentions his great-uncle, Squire Prudence and his mother's brother,
   Professor Economy, of the University of Accumulation. You will have
   need to carry your eyes in your head if you mean to practice the
   precept, "Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content
   with such things as you have."

   I am exceedingly glad that the Apostle Paul had met with certain
   covetous Hebrews. This Epistle was written by a Hebrew of the Hebrews,
   to the Hebrews! And Hebrews, from Jacob, downwards, were never quite
   free from this sin. They are not so today. I am glad he met with some
   of them because, in giving an exhortation to them, he let drop one of
   the choicest pearls in all the treasury of God's Word--a pearl which
   Gentiles will prize as much as their brethren, the Jews. Here it
   is--"For He has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you." This is
   the reason why we must not be covetous! There is no room to be
   covetous, no excuse for being covetous, for God has said, "I will never
   leave you, nor forsake you." We ought to be content! If we are not
   content, we are acting insanely, seeing the Lord has said, "I will
   never leave you, nor forsake you." If we have God's Presence, God's
   help, God's Covenant favor, God's gracious Providence, God's Covenant
   engagements for our good--what more can we need?

   I. The first observation I am going to make upon this most weighty text
   is this--THAT A WORD OF THE LORD IS OF GREAT WEIGHT TO A BELIEVER. Paul
   said, "Let your conversation be without covetousness." And there was
   weight in that. He added, "Be content with such things as you have."
   And there was weight in that, also, for there was

   Inspiration at the back of each sentence. But when he went on to say,
   "FOR HE HAS SAID," and to bring in the Person of God as distinctly
   speaking to each one of us, saying, "I will never leave you, nor
   forsake you," then he felt that he had brought the weightiest argument
   that he, himself, as an Inspired man, could think of! When Jehovah
   Himself speaks, there is no excuse for doubting, questioning, or,
   answering back! When God Himself deals with our souls, we are like wax
   under the seal--at least we desire to be so.

   I want you, my Hearer, to discern whose child you are by this. I
   observe, growing up everywhere, a trifling with the Word of God, a
   questioning of this and a questioning of that. I am not half so much
   concerned about the false doctrine that is being taught when the
   teacher of it thinks he gets it from the Bible, as I am when I find men
   treating the Bible as though it were just nothing at all, or, at least,
   an exceedingly small matter! If the Scripture stands in their way, our
   modern divines drive a tunnel through it as readily as men make a
   railroad through a hill! They toss the sacred Book on one side, as if
   it were quite a common document which might be treated with
   indifference, since the age has outgrown its Bible. Now, mark this--by
   this shall you know whether you are a child of God, or not--by the
   respect that you have to your Father's Word. If you have small respect
   for that Word, the evidences of a bastard are upon you!

   If you tremble at God's Word. If you stand in awe of it. If you can
   read the 119th Psalm through and can join with David in intense delight
   in the Law of God, you have the traits of a true-born child of God--and
   the Book is yours-- with all that it contains! But if not, you are one
   of the children of that Evil One who questioned the Word of the Lord in
   the beginning and continues to deny it to this day! If you pick and
   choose in the teachings of Inspiration. If you believe this and slight
   that, you make yourself a judge of that which is your Judge--and you
   have not the tokens of a child of God! See well to this, for there is
   more in this test than quibblers will allow. That which they lightly
   esteem is precious in the sight of the Lord! If you are a child of God,
   you may find it necessary to protest against what I say on my own
   authority, for what am I but a poor creature like yourself? If you are
   a child of God, you may have to stand out against even that which is a
   settled doctrine among renowned divines, for we know no human authority
   in the Church of God!

   But if you are a child of God, a single text will be enough for you. I
   set a solitary passage of God's Word against a Sanhedrim of
   philosophers! They may argue and dogmatize as they will, but one Word
   from the mouth of the Lord has more weight than all their counsels! If
   God's Light and God's Word are not in them, we need not pay any
   attention to them. Even the babe in Grace shall triumph, by the aid of
   God's Word, over the most learned and mighty of those who despise the
   Book! The day is coming when all this "modern thought" will pass away
   like the leaves in autumn. How soon shall the white frost of scientific
   infidelity pass from off the face of the Lord's green pastures! O
   Jerusalem, those who invade you shall be as the foam upon the waters!
   Where is the scribe? Where are the counters of the towers? God has made
   nothing of the great ones and made foolishness of the wisdom of this
   world! By this shall you know the children of God--one Word of God has
   weight and authority with them--but the seed of the serpent still say,
   "Yes, has God said?"

   See then the argument--"Let your conversation be without covetousness;
   and be content with such things as you have: for He has said." That "He
   has said" is the hammer which drives the nail home and clinches it with
   every true child

   of God!

   II. My second observation is this--THE WORD OF THE LORD MAY HAVE A
   THOUSAND FULFILMENTS. When man makes a promise and he keeps it, that
   promise is done with. You cannot expect a banker to pay a check a
   second time. The merchant who duly meets his bill, once, has met it
   once and for all, and the document is, from that time, of no value. But
   when God makes a promise He fulfils it, fulfils it and fulfils it,
   again, and again, and again, to the same man and to hundreds of other
   men! The Lord's promise once given is never recalled! He does as good
   as give forth each Inspired promise every moment anew--He is forever
   promising that which is once promised in His Word! He has made a
   promise for all time when He has once made it. So long as there shall
   be need of such a promise, God will never speak in secret, in a dark
   place of the earth and revoke what He has said--

   "Engraved as in eternal brass

   The mighty promise shines!

   Nor can the po wers of darkness erase

   Those everlasting lines"

   Now, I do not think this particular promise is recorded anywhere in the
   Old Testament in these exact words. There are great differences between
   the Hebrew and the Septuagint and, this particular Greek text, "He has
   said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you," is not to be found with
   exact accuracy in either. I suspect that this is, in fact, a household

   Word of the Lord our God, which, though you find the line of it in
   Scripture, need not to have been expressly recorded there, because,
   essentially, and from the very nature of things, it must be true of
   Jehovah our God. He who is the God of Grace and of Immutable Love, has
   virtually said, by His very Nature, to those that seek His face, "I
   will never leave you, nor forsake you." All that we know about God,
   says, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." All that we have ever
   experienced about God, all that our fathers have experienced, goes to
   show that Jehovah does not forsake His people, nor cast away those whom
   He did foreknow.

   Still, this promise is in the Word of God--if not in the letter of it,
   exactly--yet in the full meaning and spirit of it, which is more. For
   instance, we meet with this promise, probably, first of all, when Jacob
   fell asleep, after he had left his father's house, a lone man, to go
   off to a land which he had never seen. You will remember, in the 28th
   chapter of Genesis, how it was recorded that Jacob lay down in a
   certain place which would seem to have been a lonely, rugged den. And
   as he lay and slept, he dreamed a dream and beheld a wondrous ladder
   set upon the earth, the top of which reached to Heaven and, behold, the
   angels of God ascended and descended on it! Then it was that the Lord
   said to him, "I am with you and will keep you in all places where you
   go and will bring you, again, into this land, for I will not leave you
   until I have done that which I have spoken to you of."

   That is a blessed shape of the promise, is it not?--"I will not leave
   you until I have done that which I have spoken to you of." That
   assurance meant--"I will bless you and I will bless your future seed. I
   will give you all the blessedness which you are able to receive at My
   hands and I will not leave you till I have fulfilled with you the
   Covenant of which you are the heir." So the Lord, in effect, says to
   each Believer at this hour, "I will not leave you till I have done that
   which I have spoken to you of." All the processes of Grace shall be
   carried out in each humble, trustful soul! Our heavenly Father may be
   heard to say to each one of us by the Holy Spirit--"I have washed you
   from your sin in the precious blood of Christ. I will also deliver you
   from the stain, the power and the indwelling of sin. I will perfect
   you. I will lead every thought captive to My love. I have already made
   you to be a partaker of My Grace and you shall surely be a partaker of
   My Glory."

   Come, child of God, is not that a blessed promise as Jacob received it?
   "Alas," you say, "I do not know how to get a similar hold upon the
   promise." Ah, that is the point! But there is a Word of the Lord in
   that vision which I should greatly like you to notice. The Lord said to
   Jacob, "I am the Lord God of Abraham, your father, and the God of
   Isaac: the land whereon you lie, to you will I give it, and to your
   seed." Brothers and Sisters, if you can lie down on a promise, the Lord
   has given it to you! There Jacob lies. He stretches himself out at full
   length and with all his weight, in all his weariness, he lies down and
   goes to sleep. And by that act he takes possession of the land where he
   lies! What a sweet and sure mode of inheriting promises, namely, by
   resting on them! Behold the promise and just say, "I believe this to be
   the sure and true Word of the Lord. I will gladly lie down on it." Let
   your faith be serenely confident and then the promise rested on is
   yours! If you can lie down upon a promise, it is yours. Oh, for faith,
   then, to stretch ourselves upon the blessed Word of our text at this
   moment! He has said, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." Let us
   each one say, O my God, I do believe this to be true and I hereby
   venture my body, soul and spirit upon this promise! For time and for
   eternity I trust my all with You!

   Furthermore, our text occurs in the Book of Deuteronomy. We find Moses
   delivering this same Word of God, or one even more nearly like it than
   the Genesis edition, to the whole house of Israel just before they were
   about to cross into the land of Canaan to take possession of their
   inheritance. In the 31st of Deuteronomy, at the 6th verse, Moses said
   to the people, "Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be
   afraid of them: for the Lord your God, He it is that does go with you;
   He will not fail you, nor forsake you." When God's people are beginning
   a long and fierce warfare and when their enemies seem like giants in
   their sight, let them sharpen their swords upon this assurance, "He has
   said, I will not fail you, nor forsake you." Go on, then, though you
   seem as grasshoppers in the sight of your foes and in your own sight!
   Though there is very much land to be possessed, yet plunge into the war
   without fear, for, "He has said, I will not fail you, nor forsake you."
   We are able to overcome the world, the flesh and the devil, since the
   Lord our God will be with us as our strength and our song, our sword
   and our shield!

   In this same chapter of Deuteronomy you get the same text given to
   Joshua, who was the leader of the host, as also in the first chapter of
   the Book of Joshua, at the fifth verse, where the Lord expressly tells
   him, "I will not fail you, nor forsake you." If you, my Brother, are
   called to be a leader among God's people, your heart, I know, will
   sometimes grow

   very heavy. In the midst of my own band of worthies I am often sore put
   to it and you will be the same. You may meet defeats where you hoped
   for victories and faint hearts where you looked for heroes. But the
   Lord, who calls you to play the part of a Joshua among His people, will
   be Jesus to you, if you are Joshua for Him! He will stand at your side
   as the Captain of the Lord's host and you shall surely win the victory.

   This is the same Word which was afterwards spoken to David in his gray
   old age when he was about to resign the scepter to his son, Solomon.
   Solomon had to build a great and exceedingly magnificent house for the
   Lord--and it was no small enterprise for so young a man. Therefore
   David, in the first Book of the Chronicles, at the 28th chapter, and
   the 20th verse, says to him, "Be strong and of good courage, and do it:
   fear not, nor be dismayed: for the Lord, even my God, will be with you;
   He will not fail you, nor forsake you, until you have finished all the
   work for the service of the house of the Lord." Beloved, God was with
   Solomon in his colossal enterprise! He did build the Temple. Whatever
   treasure was needed came in due time. Whatever art and skill were
   required--and the Temple needed skill of a very unusual order for that
   early age of the world--yet everything was forthcoming! Tyre and Sidon
   yielded themselves as the servants of the God of the Hebrews for the
   building of the Temple! To the astonishment of the age, the great
   Temple was built and became the Glory of all lands, for the Lord did
   not fail His servant!

   You see, then, we have found four cases in which this promise was
   fulfilled. It held good after it had been already carried out! Are you,
   my Brother, leaving your father's house as a young man? Are you about
   to enter upon a very perilous course of life that will be set thick
   with trials, like the life of Jacob with Laban? "Fear not, for God will
   not fail you, nor forsake you." On the other hand, are you as a child
   of God fighting with inward sin, because the Canaanite is still in the
   land? Is the inward spiritual battle very severe just now? Yet, "He has
   said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you." Or, are you responsible
   for others? Are you called to watch for souls and to lead others to the
   conflict? Be not cast down nor disquieted, as you will be very apt to
   be if you look to yourself, for this is an office involving sore
   travail! Find your strength in this Word of God--"He has said, I will
   never leave you, nor forsake you." Is it that God has put into your
   hands some great work to do for His name? Is your whole life to be as a
   temple, adorned with the riches of faith and the glories of hope and
   love? Fear not, you shall finish your design! You shall make a temple
   for God to dwell in. Go boldly on in the matter to which God has called
   you! Go to the quarries, or to the gold mines and do as God bids you,
   for, "He has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you."

   So you see the promise is, in many ways, fulfilled. I have seen a check
   for a million pounds. I have seen only one in my life. I handled it. It
   is now on the wall of a friend's house, framed and glazed, but it is
   worth nothing as money. I suppose the million pounds were paid--the
   check is so marked. It is of no use to anyone. If a thief were to get
   in and steal it, it would be of no use to him. But God's promises are
   always useful--you may receive them and still receive them--over and
   over again! They stand forever true and they are true this night to you
   and to me! If the world shall last 10,000 years, as I hope it may not,
   yet the promise will remain as a nail fastened in a sure place--"I will
   never leave you, nor forsake you."

   Thus have we had two observations. And I will now make a third with
   great brevity.

   III. The WORD OF THE LORD IS TO BE APPROPRIATED BY EACH CHILD OF GOD
   AND ACTED ON. "He

   has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you."

   I like this singularity of the person. You see, Paul had been saying in
   general, "Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content
   with such things as you have." And then he changes from the plural and
   writes, "for He has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you."
   When the Lord speaks in this instance, His promise is in the singular.
   He speaks to us with that--I do not know what to call it unless I use a
   French word--sweet tu-toiage, which is the language of endearment, the
   chosen speech of love. When one man speaks to another and means him to
   know that his promise is assuredly and altogether for him and that he
   is most lovingly his friend, he cannot do better than use the singular
   and personal pronoun. "I will never leave you, nor forsake you."

   Take the "you," plural, out of all God's promises, and put the singular
   "you" in its place, for you are permitted to do so! We make fearful
   failures with God's promises through not appropriating them. I have
   heard of a Sunday school teacher who performed an experiment which I do
   not think I shall ever try with Sunday school children, for it might
   turn out exactly as it did in his case. He had been trying to
   illustrate what faith was and, as he could not get it into the minds of
   his children, he took his watch, and he said, "Now, I will give you
   this watch, John. Will you have it?" John fell think-

   ing what the teacher could mean and did not seize the treasure. He said
   to the next, "Henry, there is the watch. Will you have it?" The boy
   replied, "No, thank you, Sir," with a very proper modesty. He went by
   several boys, till, at last a youngster who was not so wise or
   thoughtful as the others, but rather more believing, said, "Thank you,
   Sir," and put the watch into his pocket! Then the other boys woke up to
   a startling fact--their companion had received a watch and they had
   not! One of the boys enquired of the teacher, "Is he to keep it?" "Of
   course he is," said the teacher, "I put the watch before you and said
   that I gave it to you, but none of you accepted it." "Oh," said the
   boy, "if I had known you meant it, I would have taken it." And all the
   boys were in a dreadful state of mind to think that they had lost the
   watch. Each one cried, "I did not think you meant it, but I thought."
   Each one said, "Please, teacher, I thought." Each one had his theory
   except the simple little boy who believed what he was told and got the
   watch!

   Now, I wish that I could always be such a simple child as literally to
   believe what the Lord says and live by that belief. The Apostle drives
   us to such practical faith when he says, "Let your conversation be
   without covetousness; and be content with such things as you have: for
   He has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you."

   You smiled just now. I do not think that there was any harm in your
   doing so, but I will tell you what we must not smile at, and that is, I
   believe that nine out of 10 of you do not believe that God has said to
   you, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." You think you do, but
   you do not! You also have got some most powerful reason why you dare
   not take the watch--I mean the promise. You are so wise that you feel
   that you cannot expect the Lord to interfere in any way for you. No,
   no, no--either you are not worthy of it (which is quite correct)--or
   else you do not like to take things quite so literally, or there is
   some other reason why you cannot literally accept the Divine assurance!
   There are, perhaps, one or two fools among us who have got a hold of
   God's Word and actually believe it to be a matter of fact. But I do not
   think that many are so simple. Those who do so are generally poor
   obscure persons, but I should greatly envy them if I were not one of
   their number. With all my heart I do believe, "He will never leave me,
   nor forsake me."

   When the service is over, I know who will go away with dancing feet and
   sparkling eyes, to sleep sweetly through the night and wake tomorrow
   morning fresh as the lark with a song on his tongue. It is that poor
   simpleton of a Christian who really believes his God and says, "Yes, He
   will never leave me, nor forsake me!" Though he has scarcely a shoe to
   his foot; though he has scarcely a copper in his pocket; and though he
   is brought very low and has to live from hand to mouth, yet if he has
   grasped the promise, he has such a wellspring of delight within him
   that his soul shall be satisfied in time of drought and in the days of
   famine he shall be filled to the fullest! Oh, to be full of that
   blessed folly which treats God as He ought to be treated and believes
   what He says and acts accordingly--and finds it to be true! If you have
   a sham god, a sham faith, sham troubles and sham experiences, why, you
   are, yourself, altogether a sham! But he that believes in a real God
   and has such a real faith in God as a child has in its mother shall
   find God's promises to be the verity of verities!

   IV. A further observation is this--EACH WORD OF GOD HAS ITS OWN
   USEFULNESS. This particular Word,

   that we have before us, is an illustration of this fact.

   This particular text is an extraordinarily useful one, for, first, if
   you notice, it covers all time. "I will never leave you, nor forsake
   you." Well, if God will never leave me, He will not leave me now. If He
   will never leave me, no time is excluded from the word, "never."
   However dark or however bright, it says, "never." Suppose I am going to
   live till I am 90 or a 100--what then? You will call me a poor old
   soul, but He has said, "I will never leave you." Suppose I should be
   very sick, indeed, and my reason should begin to fail? Even then, "He
   has said, I will never leave you." Might there not occur a few minutes
   in which the Lord may forget me? Certainly not, "for He has said, I
   will never leave you, nor forsake you." Is not this a blessed cover for
   the whole of life and all the exigencies of it? It matters not how long
   we live! We cannot outlive--"I will never leave you." You that are
   familiar with the Greek text know that there are five negatives here.
   We cannot manage five negatives in English, but the Greeks find them
   not too large a handful. Here the negatives have a fivefold force. It
   is as though it said, "I will not, not leave you; I will never, no
   never, forsake you." Perhaps a verse of one of our hymns hits it off as
   nearly as can be--

   "The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,

   I will not, I will not desert to his foes.

   That soul, though all Hell should endeavor to shake,

   I'll never, no never, no never forsake."

   Our text covers all space, as well as all time. Suppose we emigrate.
   Suppose we are compelled to go to a backwoods settlement of America or
   Canada, or away to Australia or New Zealand? This promise will go with
   us all the way--"I will never leave you, nor forsake you." Suppose we
   have to take to sea and lead the risky life of a sailor? We will sail
   with this at the masthead--"I will never leave you." But suppose we
   should get into prison? Does not Jesus visit those who are prisoners
   for His name's sake? Has He not said, "I will never leave you?" Suppose
   we go up in the world and fall under great responsibilities? This goes
   up with us, "I will never leave you." Suppose, more likely, we go down
   in the world-- this goes down with us, "I will never leave you, nor
   forsake you."

   And then it covers all circumstances. "I will never leave you." I may
   get to be a very childish old body. "I will never leave you." But my
   dear children may all be dead and I may be quite a solitary person. "I
   will never leave you." But every friend may turn tail and desert me. "I
   will never leave you." But I may be in such a state that nobody will
   acknowledge me. "I will never leave you, nor forsake you."

   I find the first Greek word has something of this meaning, "I will
   never sit loose by you," or, "I will never relax." That is the root of
   the word. I will never let you slip. I will never let you go, as it
   were, from Me though holding you loosely.

   The other word has in it something of the idea of a person remaining in
   a spot and another person going away from him and so forsaking him. The
   Lord seems to say, "I will never leave you where I cannot be with you.
   I will never let you stand alone. I will always be with you."

   This is a blessed, blessed promise! You see it takes in all
   contingencies, however serious. It takes in all anticipations, however
   doleful. It takes in all suppositions, and it includes all actualities.
   "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." Oh, dear! We sometimes sit
   down and imagine all manner of dreadful, dolorous things. I will not
   repeat what things I have said to myself, for I do not want you to know
   how foolish I sometimes am! But I have heard persons bemoaning
   themselves like this--"Perhaps I may lose my job. I may not get
   another. I may starve." What comes of, "I will never leave you, nor
   forsake you?" Another says, "I fear I shall live to be very old. I do
   not know how I shall be supported. I shall get into the workhouse and
   have to be buried by the parish! I cannot bear to think of it." Friend,
   do you not, after all, believe the Word, "I will never leave you, nor
   forsake you"?

   I will tell you this morsel of my own faults. Sometimes I have said, "I
   suffer so much. I become so ill. I shall be so long away from the
   Tabernacle. The congregation will be greatly injured. Perhaps I shall
   never be able to preach again." I have struggled to this pulpit when I
   could hardly stand. And when the service was over and I have been
   weary, the wicked whisper has come, "Yes, I shall soon be useless. I
   shall have to stay in my bed, or be wheeled about in a chair, and be a
   burden instead of a help." This has seemed a dreadful prospect, but, "I
   will never leave you, nor forsake you," has come in and I have shaken
   off my fears and, by His Grace, have rejoiced in the Lord my God!

   Suppose we were to lose our eyes? We would still see God and God would
   see us! Suppose we were to lose our hearing? We would still hear our
   Father's voice! Suppose we should gradually fail in every faculty? The
   Holy Spirit would still comfort us and be with us! Many children of God
   have been very happy in the most deplorable circumstances. And suppose
   we should die? Ah, well, that is the best thing that can be, for then
   we shall go Home to be with our heavenly Father forever!

   I cannot, under the influence of this grand text, find room for doubt
   or fear! I cannot stand here and be miserable tonight! I am not going
   to attempt such a thing, but I cannot be despondent with such a text as
   this, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." I defy the devil,
   himself, to mention circumstances under which I ought to be miserable
   if this text is true! Child of God, nothing ought to make you unhappy
   when you can realize this precious text!

   Some of you cannot bask in this sunshiny promise. It is not yours! The
   words are "I will never leave you." This implies that God must be with
   us--and if He is not with us, the promise is not ours. You cannot take
   home to yourself the promise, "I will never leave you," if you have
   nothing to do with God! "I will not forsake you"--does not this, also,
   take something for granted? If the Lord has never been with you; if He
   has never forgiven you; if you have never sought His face; if you have
   never accepted His mercy in Christ Jesus, why, then, the promise is not
   yours and you have cause for trembling rather than for rejoicing! God
   is against you! He fits His arrow to the string. He prepares His bolts
   against you! Tremble, and submit yourself to Him! Oh, that you would do
   so at once--and trust in Jesus and live!

   If the Lord is with you and if you are with Him, the promise stands
   forever, "I will never leave you." If you have trusted in Him--if you
   are trusting in Him--He has said, "I will never forsake you." Go away
   and rejoice, O child of God! You must have troubles. Where could we go
   to have no cares? Unless a man could leap over the edge of the
   universe, or fly from under this cloudy sky, how could he escape from
   care? It you were to dive to the bottom of the sea, this crooked
   serpent would bite you. If you could fly above the clouds, this eagle
   would pursue you. If you were to hide in the heart of the earth, the
   death damp would overpower you. But with all actual trouble, with all
   possible trouble, with all impossible trouble, if you bear this promise
   with you, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you," you may sing
   hallelujahs both in life and in death! And with such music you may wing
   your way to the world of bliss! Let us begin the music right now by
   singing right heartily--

   Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

   Praise Him all Creatures here below!

   Praise Him above, you heavenly host!

   Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!"
     __________________________________________________________________

The Dying Thief in a New Light

   (No. 1881)

   A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, JANUARY 31, 1886,

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING,
   AUGUST 23, 1885.

   "But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, Do you not fear God,
   seeing you are in the same condemnation? And we, indeed, justly; for we
   receive the due reward of our deeds: but this Man has done nothing
   wrong. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when You come into
   Your Kingdom." Luke 23:40-42.

   A GREAT many persons, whenever they hear of the conversion of the dying
   thief, remember that he was saved in the very article of death and they
   dwell upon that fact, and that, alone. He has always been quoted as a
   case of salvation at the 11th hour and so, indeed, he is. In his case
   it is proven that as long as a man can repent, he can obtain
   forgiveness. The Cross of Christ avails even for a man hanging on a
   gallows and drawing near to his last breath. He who is mighty to save
   was mighty, even during His own death, to pluck others from the grasp
   of the Destroyer, though they were in the act of expiring.

   But that is not everything which the story teaches us and it is always
   a pity to look exclusively upon one point--and thus to miss everything
   else--perhaps miss that which is more important! So often has this been
   the case that it has produced a sort of revulsion of feeling in certain
   minds, so that they have been driven in a wrong direction by their wish
   to protest against what they think to be a common error. I read the
   other day that this story of the dying thief ought not to be taken as
   an encouragement to death-bed repentance! Brothers, if the author
   meant--and I do not think he did--that this ought never to be so used
   as to lead people to postpone repentance to a dying bed, he spoke
   correctly. No Christian man could or would use it so injuriously--he
   must be hopelessly bad who would draw from God's long-suffering an
   argument for continuing in sin!

   I trust, however, that the narrative is not often so used, even by the
   worst of men, and I feel sure that it will not be so used by any of
   you. It cannot be properly turned to such a purpose--it might be used
   as an encouragement to thieving just as much as to the delay of
   repentance. I might say, "I may be a thief because this thief was
   saved," just as rationally as I might say, "I may put off repentance
   because this thief was saved when he was about to die." The fact is,
   there is nothing so good but men can pervert it into evil if they have
   evil hearts! The justice of God is made a motive for despair and His
   mercy an argument for sin! Wicked men will drown themselves in the
   rivers of the Truth of God as readily as in the pools of error! He that
   has a mind to destroy himself can choke his soul with the Bread of
   life, or dash himself in pieces against the Rock of Ages. There is no
   doctrine of the Grace of God so gracious that graceless men may not
   turn it into licentiousness.

   I venture, however, to say that if I stood by the bedside of a dying
   man, tonight, and I found him anxious about his soul, but fearful that
   Christ could not save him because repentance had been put off so late,
   I would certainly quote the dying thief to him--and I would do it with
   good conscience--and without hesitation. I would tell him that, though
   he was as near to dying as the thief upon the cross was, yet if he
   repented of his sin and turned his face believingly to Christ, he would
   find eternal life. I would do this with all my heart, rejoicing that I
   had such a story to tell one at the gates of eternity! I do not think
   that I would be censured by the Holy Spirit for thus using a narrative
   which He has, Himself, recorded--recorded with the foresight that it
   would be so used. I would feel, at any rate, in my own heart, a sweet
   conviction that I had treated the subject as I ought to have treated
   it--and as it was intended to be used for men in extremis whose hearts
   are turning towards the living God. Oh, yes, poor Soul, whatever your
   age, or whatever the period of life to which you have come, you may now
   find eternal life by faith in Christ!--

   " The dying thief rejoiced to see That Fountain in his day And there
   may you, though vile as he, Wash all your sins away."

   Many good people think that they ought to guard the Gospel, but it is
   never so safe as when it stands out in its own naked majesty! It needs
   no covering from us. When we protect it with provisos, guard it with
   exceptions and qualify it with observations, it is like David in Saul's
   armor--it is hampered and hindered and you may even hear it cry, "I
   cannot go with these." Let the Gospel alone and it will save! Qualify
   it and the salt has lost its savor. I will venture to put it thus to
   you. I have heard it said that few are ever converted in old age and
   this is thought to be a statement which will prove exceedingly
   awakening and impressive for the young. It certainly wears that
   appearance, but, on the other hand, it is a statement very discouraging
   to the old! I object to the frequent repetition of such statements, for
   I do not find their counterpart in the teaching of our Lord and His
   Apostles!

   Assuredly our Lord spoke of some who entered the vineyard at the 11th
   hour of the day. And among His miracles, He not only saved those who
   were dying, but even raised the dead! Nothing can be concluded from the
   Words of the Lord Jesus against the salvation of men at any hour or
   age! I tell you, that in the business of your acceptance with God,
   through faith in Christ Jesus, it does not matter what age you are! The
   same promise is to each of you, "Today, if you will hear His voice,
   harden not your hearts." And whether you are in the earliest stage of
   life, or are within a few hours of eternity, if you fly for refuge,
   now, to the hope set before you in the Gospel, you shall be saved! The
   Gospel that I preach excludes none on the ground either of age or
   character!

   Whoever you may be, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be
   saved," is the message we have to deliver to you! If we address to you
   the longer form of the Gospel, "He that believes and is baptized shall
   be saved," this is true of every living person, be his age whatever it
   may! I am not afraid that this story of the dying and repenting thief
   who went straight from the cross to the crown, will be used by you
   wrongly, but if you are wicked enough to use it so, I cannot help it.
   It will only fulfill that solemn Scripture which says that the Gospel
   is a savor of death unto death to some, even that very Gospel which is
   a savor of life unto life to others!

   But I do not think, dear Friends, that the only specialty about the
   thief is the lateness of his repentance. So far from being the only
   point of interest, it is not even the chief point! To some minds, at
   any rate, other points will be even more remarkable. I want to show you
   very briefly that there was a specialty in his case as to the means of
   his conversion. Secondly, a specialty in his faith. Thirdly, a
   specialty in the result of his faith while he was here below. And,
   fourthly, a specialty in the promise won by his faith--the promise
   fulfilled to him in Paradise.

   I. First, then, I think you ought to notice very carefully THE
   SINGULARITY AND SPECIALITY OF THE MEANS BY WHICH THE THIEF WAS
   CONVERTED.

   How do you think it was? Well, we do not know. We cannot tell. It seems
   to me that the man was an unconverted, impenitent thief when they
   nailed him to the cross because one of the Evangelists says, "The
   thieves, also, which were crucified with Him, cast the same in His
   teeth." I know that this may have been a general statement and that it
   is reconcilable with its having been done by one thief, only, according
   to the methods commonly used by critics, but I am not enamored of
   critics even when they are friendly. I have such respect for Revelation
   that I never, in my own mind, permit the idea of discrepancies and
   mistakes--and when the Evangelist says, "they," I believe he meant,
   "they," and that both these thieves did, at the beginning of their
   crucifixion, rail at the Christ with whom they were crucified. It would
   appear that by some means, or other, this thief must have been
   converted while he was on the cross. Assuredly nobody preached a sermon
   to him, no evangelistic address was delivered at the foot of his cross
   and no meeting was held for special prayer on his account. He does not
   even seem to have had an instruction, or an invitation, or an
   expostulation addressed to him-- and yet this man became a sincere and
   accepted Believer in the Lord Jesus Christ!

   Dwell upon this fact, if you please, and note its practical bearing
   upon the cases of many around us. There are many among my hearers who
   have been instructed from their childhood, who have been admonished,
   warned, entreated, invited and yet they have not come to Christ--while
   this man, without any of these advantages--nevertheless believed in the
   Lord Jesus Christ and found eternal life! O you that have lived under
   the sound of the Gospel from your childhood, the thief does not comfort
   you, but he accuses you! What are you doing to abide so long in
   unbelief? Will you never believe the testimony of Divine Love? What
   more shall I say to you? What more can anyone say to you?

   What do you think could have converted this poor thief? It strikes me
   that it may have been--it must have been-- the sight of our great Lord
   and Savior! There was, to begin with, our Savior's wonderful behavior
   on the road to the Cross. Perhaps the robber had mixed up with all
   sorts of society, but he had never seen a Man like this. Never had
   cross been carried by a Cross-Bearer of His look and fashion. The
   robber wondered who this meek and majestic Person could be. He heard
   the women weep and he wondered, in himself, whether anybody would ever
   weep for him. He thought that this must be some very singular Person
   that the people should stand about Him with tears in their eyes. When
   he heard that mysterious Sufferer say so solemnly, "Daughters of
   Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but for your children," he must have been
   struck with wonder! When he came to think, in his death-pangs, of the
   singular look of pity which Jesus cast on the women and of the
   self-forgetfulness which gleamed from His eyes, he was smitten with a
   strange relenting--it was as if an angel had crossed his path and
   opened his eyes to a new world--and to a new form of manhood, the likes
   of which he had never seen before.

   He and his companion were coarse, rough fellows. This was a delicately
   formed and fashioned Being, of superior order to himself, yes, and of
   superior order to any other of the sons of men! Who could He be? What
   must He be? Though he could see that He suffered and fainted as He went
   along, he marked that there was no word of complaining, no note of
   execration in return for the reviling cast upon Him. His eyes looked
   love on those who glared on Him with hate! Surely that march along the
   Via Dolorosa was the first part of the sermon which God preached to
   that bad man's heart. It was preached to many others who did not regard
   its teaching, but upon this man, by God's special Grace, it had a
   softening effect when he came to think over it and consider it. Was it
   not a likely and convincing means of Grace?

   When he saw the Savior surrounded by the Roman soldiers--saw the
   executioners bring forth the hammers and the nails and lay Him down
   upon His back and drive the nails into His hands and feet--this
   crucified criminal was startled and astonished as he heard Him say,
   "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." He, himself,
   had probably met his executioners with a curse, but he heard this Man
   breathe a prayer to the great Father! And, as a Jew, as he probably
   was, he understood what was meant by such a prayer. But it did astound
   him to hear Jesus pray for his murderers. That was a petition, the like
   of which he had never heard nor even dreamed of! From whose lips could
   it come but from the lips of a Divine Being? Such a loving, forgiving,
   God-like prayer proved Him to be the Messiah! Who else had ever prayed
   so? Certainly not David and the kings of Israel, who, on the contrary,
   in all honesty and heartiness imprecated the wrath of God upon their
   enemies! Elijah himself would not have prayed in that fashion, rather
   would he have called fire from Heaven on the centurion and his company.
   It was a new, strange sound to him. I do not suppose that he
   appreciated it to the fullest, but I can well believe that it deeply
   impressed him and made him feel that his Fellow-Sufferer was a Being
   about whom there was an exceedingly mystery of goodness.

   And when the Cross was lifted up, that thief hanging on his own cross
   looked around and I suppose he could see that inscription written in
   three languages--"Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." If so, that
   writing was his little Bible, his New Testament--and he interpreted it
   by what he knew of the Old Testament. Putting this and that
   together--that strange Person, incarnate loveliness, all patience and
   all majesty, that strange prayer and now this singular inscription,
   surely he who knew the Old Testament, as I have no doubt he did, would
   say to himself, "Is this He? Is this truly the King of the Jews? This
   is He who worked miracles, raised the dead and said that He was the Son
   of God--is it all true and is He really our Messiah?" Then he would
   remember the words of the Prophet Isaiah, "He was despised and rejected
   of men, a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief. Surely, He has
   borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows." "Why," he would say to
   himself, "I never understood that passage in the Prophet Isaiah before,
   but it must point to Him! The chastisement of our peace is upon Him.
   Can this be He who cried in the Psalms--'they pierced My hands and My
   feet'"?

   As he looked at Him again, he felt in his soul, "It must be He! Could
   there be another so like He?" He felt conviction creeping over his
   spirit. Then he looked again and he marked how all men down below
   rejected, despised and hissed at Him. They hooted Him and all this
   would make the case the more clear. "All they that see Me laugh Me to
   scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted
   on the Lord that He would deliver Him: let Him deliver Him, seeing He
   delighted in Him."

   Perhaps this dying thief read the Gospel out of the lips of Christ's
   enemies. They said--"He saved others." "Ah!" he thought, "did He save
   others? Why could He not save me?" What a grand bit of Gospel that was
   for the dying thief--

   "He saved others!" I think I could swim to Heaven on that plank--"He
   saved others" and, if He saved others, He can surely save me!

   Thus the very things that the enemies disdainfully threw at Christ
   would be Gospel to this poor dying man. When it has been my misery to
   read any of the wretched prints that are sent us out of scorn, in which
   our Lord is held up to ridicule, I have thought, "Why, perhaps those
   who read these loathsome blasphemies may, nevertheless, learn the
   Gospel from them!" You may pick a jewel from a dunghill and find its
   radiance undiminished! And you may gather the Gospel from a blasphemous
   mouth and it shall be, none the less, the Gospel of salvation! Perhaps
   this man learned the Gospel from those who jested at our dying Lord and
   so the servants of the devil were unconsciously made to be the servants
   of

   Christ!

   But, after all, surely that which won him most must have been to look
   at Jesus, again, as He was hanging upon the cruel tree. Possibly
   nothing about the physical Person of Christ would be attractive to him,
   for His visage was more marred than that of any man and His form more
   than the sons of men. But there must have been in that blessed face a
   singular charm. Was it not the very image of perfection? As I conceive
   the face of Christ, it was very different from anything that any
   painter has yet been able to place upon his canvas. It was all
   goodness, kindness and unselfishness--and yet it was a royal face! It
   was a face of superlative justice and unrivalled tenderness.
   Righteousness and uprightness sat upon His brow, but infinite pity and
   goodwill to men had also taken up their abode. It was a face that would
   have struck you at once as one by itself, never to be forgotten, never
   to be fully understood. It was all sorrow, yet all love! It was all
   meekness, yet all resolution! All wisdom, yet all simplicity! The face
   of a child, or an angel and yet peculiarly the face of a Man. Majesty
   and misery, suffering and sacredness were strangely combined in it. He
   was evidently the Lamb of God and the Son of Man.

   As the robber looked, he believed. Is it not amazing--the very sight of
   the Master won him? The sight of the Lord in agony, shame and death!
   Scarcely a word. Certainly no sermon, no attending worship on the
   Sabbath. No reading of gracious books; no appeal from mother, or
   teacher, or friend. The sight of Jesus won him! I put it down as a very
   singular thing, a thing for you and for me to remember and dwell upon
   with quite as much vividness as we do upon the lateness of this
   robber's conversion!

   Oh, that God in His mercy might convert everybody in this Tabernacle!
   Oh, that I could have a share in it by the preaching of His Word! But I
   will be equally happy if you get to Heaven anyway--yes, if the Lord
   should take you there without outward ministries, leading you to Jesus
   by some simple method such as He adopted with this thief! If you do but
   get there, He shall have the Glory for it, and His poor servant will be
   overjoyed! Oh, that you would now look to Jesus and live! Before your
   eyes He is set forth, evidently crucified among you. Look to Him and be
   saved, even at this hour!

   II. But now I want you to think with me a little upon THE SPECIALITY OF
   THIS MAN'S FAITH, for I think it was a very singular faith that this
   man exerted towards our Lord Jesus Christ.

   I greatly question whether the equal and the parallel of the dying
   thief's faith will be readily found outside the Scriptures, or even in
   the Scriptures!

   Observe that this man believed in Christ when he literally saw Him
   dying the death of a felon, under circumstances of the greatest
   personal shame! You have never realized what it was to be crucified.
   None of you could do that, for the sight has never been seen in our day
   in England. There is not a man or woman here who has ever realized in
   their own mind the actual death of Christ. It stands beyond us. This
   man saw it with his own eyes and for him to call Him, "Lord," who was
   hanging on a gallows, was no small triumph of faith! For him to ask
   Jesus to remember him when He came into His Kingdom, though he saw
   Jesus bleeding His life away and hounded to death, was a splendid act
   of reliance! For him to commit his everlasting destiny into the hands
   of One who was, to all appearance, unable, even, to preserve His own
   life, was a noble achievement of faith! I say that this dying thief
   leads the van in the matter of faith, for what he saw of the
   circumstances of the Savior was calculated to contradict rather than
   help his confidence! What he saw was to his hindrance rather than to
   his help, for he saw our Lord in the very extremity of agony and
   death--and yet he believed in Him as the King shortly to come into His
   Kingdom!

   Remember, too, that at that moment when the thief believed in Christ,
   all the disciples had forsaken Him and fled. John might be lingering at
   a little distance and holy women may have stood farther off, but no one
   was present to bravely champion the dying Christ. Judas had sold Him,
   Peter had denied Him and the rest had forsaken Him! And it was then

   that the dying thief called Him, "Lord," and said, "Remember me when
   You come into Your Kingdom." I call that splendid faith! Why, some of
   you do not believe even though you are surrounded with Christian
   friends--even though you are urged on by the testimony of those whom
   you regard with love! But this man, all alone, comes out and calls
   Jesus his Lord! No one else was confessing Christ at that moment--no
   revival was around him with enthusiastic crowds--he was all by himself
   as a confessor of his Lord. After our Lord was nailed to the tree, the
   first to bear witness for Him was this thief. The centurion bore
   witness afterwards, when our Lord expired, but this thief was a lone
   confessor, holding on to Christ when nobody would say, "Amen" to what
   he said. Even his fellow thief was mocking at the crucified Savior, so
   that this man shone as a lone star in the midnight darkness. O Sirs,
   dare you be Daniels? Dare you stand alone? Would you dare to stand out
   amidst a ribald crew and say, "Jesus is my King. I only ask Him to
   remember me when He comes into His Kingdom"? Would you be likely to
   proclaim such a faith when priests and scribes, princes and people were
   all mocking at the Christ and deriding Him? Brothers, the dying robber
   exhibited marvelous faith and I beg you to think of this the next time
   you speak of him.

   And it seems to me that another point adds splendor to that faith,
   namely, that he himself was in extreme torture. Remember, he was
   crucified. It was a crucified man trusting in a crucified Christ! Oh,
   when our frame is racked with torture; when the most tender nerves are
   pained; when our body is hung up to die by we know not what great
   length of torment--then to forget the present and live in the future is
   a grand achievement of faith! While dying, to turn one's eyes to
   Another dying at your side and trust your soul with Him is very
   marvelous faith! Blessed thief, because they put you down at the bottom
   as one of the least of saints, I think that I must bid you come up
   higher and take one of the uppermost seats among those who, by faith
   have glorified the Christ of God!

   Why, see, dear Friends, once more, the specialty of this man's faith
   was that he saw so much though his eyes had been opened for so short a
   time! He saw the future world! He was not a believer in annihilation,
   or in the possibility of a man's not being immortal! He evidently
   expected to be in another world and to be in existence when the dying
   Lord should come into His Kingdom! He believed all that and it is more
   than some do nowadays. He also believed that Jesus would have a
   Kingdom, a Kingdom after He was dead, a Kingdom though He was
   crucified! He believed that He was winning for Himself a Kingdom by
   those nailed hands and pierced feet! This was intelligent faith, was it
   not? He believed that Jesus would have a Kingdom in which others would
   share and, therefore, he aspired to have his portion in it. But yet he
   had fit views of himself and, therefore, he did not say, "Lord, let me
   sit at Your right hand," or, "Let me share in the dainties of Your
   palace." He only said, "Remember me. Think of me. Cast an eye my way.
   Think of Your poor dying comrade on the cross at Your right hand. Lord,
   remember me. Remember me." I see deep humility in the prayer and yet a
   sweet, joyous, confident exaltation of the Christ at the time when the
   Christ was in His deepest humiliation!

   Oh, dear Sirs, if any of you have thought of this dying thief only as
   one who put off repentance, I want you now to think of him as one that
   did greatly and grandly believe in Christ and oh, that you would do the
   same! Oh, that you would put a great confidence in my great Lord! Never
   did a poor sinner trust Christ too much. There was never a case of a
   guilty one who believed that Jesus could forgive him and, afterwards,
   found that He could not--who believed that Jesus could save him on the
   spot and then woke up to find that it was a delusion. No! Plunge into
   this river of confidence in Christ! The waters are waters to swim in,
   not to drown in! Never did a soul perish that glorified Christ by a
   living, loving faith in Him! Come, then, with all your sin, whatever it
   may be--with all your deep depression of spirit, with all your agony of
   conscience--come along with you and grasp my Lord and Master with both
   hands of your faith and He shall be yours and you shall be His--

   "Turn to Christ your longing eyes, View His bloody Sacrifice! See in
   Him your sins forgiven, Pardon, holiness and Heaven! Glorify the King
   of Kings, Take the peace the Gospel brings."

   I think that I have shown you something special in the means of the
   thief's conversion and in his faith in our dying Lord.

   III. But now, thirdly, as God shall help me, I wish to show you another
   specialty, namely, in THE RESULT OF HIS

   FAITH.

   I have heard people say, "Well, you see, the dying thief was converted,
   but then he was not baptized! He never went to communion and never
   joined the church!" He could not do either and that which God Himself
   renders impossible to us, He does not demand of us. He was nailed to a
   cross--how could he be baptized? But he did a great deal more than
   that, for if he could not carry out the outward signs, he most
   manifestly exhibited the things which they signified, which, in his
   condition, was better still!

   This dying thief, first of all, confessed the Lord Jesus Christ, and
   that is the very essence of Baptism. He confessed Christ. Did he not
   acknowledge Him to his fellow thief? It was as open a confession as he
   could make it. Did he not acknowledge Christ before all that were
   gathered around the Cross who were within hearing? It was as public a
   confession as he could possibly cause it to be! Yet certain cowardly
   fellows claim to be Christians though they have never confessed Christ
   to a single person--and then they quote this poor thief as an excuse!
   Are they nailed to a cross? Are they dying in agony? Oh, no, and yet
   they talk as if they could claim the exemption which these
   circumstances would give them. What a dishonest piece of business!

   The fact is that our Lord requires an open confession as well as a
   secret faith. And if you will not render it, there is no promise of
   salvation for you, but a threat of being denied at the last! The
   Apostle puts it, "If you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus,
   and shall believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead,
   you shall be saved." It is stated in another place this way--"He that
   believes and is baptized shall be saved"--that is Christ's way of
   making the confession of Him. If there is a true faith, there must be a
   declaration of it. If you are candles and God has lit you, "Let your
   light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify
   your Father which is in Heaven." Soldiers of Christ must, like her
   Majesty's soldiers, wear their uniforms--and if they are ashamed of
   them--they ought to be drummed out of the regiment! They are not honest
   soldiers who refuse to march in rank with their comrades. The very
   least thing that the Lord Jesus Christ can expect of us is that we
   confess Him to the best of our power. If you are nailed up to a cross,
   I will not invite you to be baptized. If you are fastened up to a tree
   to die, I will not ask you to come into this pulpit and declare your
   faith, for you cannot. But you are required to do what you can do,
   namely, to make as distinct and open an avowal of the Lord Jesus Christ
   as may be suitable in your present condition.

   I believe that many Christian people get into a deal of trouble through
   not being honest in their convictions. For instance, if a man goes into
   a workshop, or a soldier into a barracks, and if he does not fly his
   flag from the first, it will be very difficult for him to run it up
   afterwards. But if he immediately and boldly lets them know, "I am a
   Christian and there are certain things that I cannot do to please you,
   and certain other things that I cannot help doing, though they
   displease you"--when that is clearly understood, after a while, the
   singularity of the thing will be gone and the man will be left alone.
   But if he is a little sneaky and thinks that he is going to please the
   world and please Christ, too, he is in for a rough time--let him depend
   upon it! His life will be that of a toad under a harrow, or a fox in a
   dog kennel if he tries the way of compromise. That will never do! Come
   out! Show your colors! Let it be known who you are and what you are--
   and although your course will not be smooth, it will certainly be not
   half as rough as if you tried to run with the hare and hunt with the
   hounds--a very difficult piece of business that!

   This man came out, then and there, and made as open an avowal of his
   faith in Christ as was possible.

   The next thing he did was to rebuke his fellow sinner. He spoke to him
   in answer to the ribaldry with which he had assailed our Lord. I do not
   know what the unconverted convict had been blasphemously saying, but
   his converted comrade spoke very honestly to him. "Do you not fear God,
   seeing you are in the same condemnation? And we, indeed, justly; for we
   receive the due reward of our deeds: but this Man has done nothing
   wrong." It is more than ever necessary in these days that believers in
   Christ should not allow sin to go unrebuked and yet a great many of
   them do so. Do you not know that a person who is silent when a wrong
   thing is said or done may become a participator in the sin? If you do
   not rebuke sin--I mean, of course, on all fit occasions and in a proper
   spirit--your silence will give consent to the sin and you will be an
   aider and abettor in it. A man who saw a robbery and who did not cry,
   "Stop, thief!" would be thought to be in league with the thief. And the
   man who can hear swearing, or see impurity and never utter a word of
   protest may well question whether he is right, himself. Our "other
   men's sins" make up a great item in our personal guilt unless we rebuke
   them. This our Lord expects us to do. The dying thief did it and did it
   with all his heart--and in doing so far exceeded large numbers of those
   who hold their heads high in the Church!

   Next, the dying thief made a full confession of his guilt. He said to
   him who was hanged with him, "Do you not fear God, seeing you are in
   the same condemnation? And we, indeed, justly." Not many words, but
   what a world of meaning was in them--"we, indeed, justly." "You and I
   are dying for our crimes," he said, "and we deserve to die." When a man
   is willing to confess that he deserves the wrath of God--that he
   deserves the suffering which his sin has brought upon him--there is
   evidence of sincerity in him. In this man's case, his repentance
   glittered like a holy tear in the eye of his faith, so that his faith
   was jeweled with the drops of his penitence. As I have often told you,
   I suspect the faith which is not born as a twin with repentance, but
   there is no room for suspicion in the case of this penitent confessor.
   I pray God that you and I may have such a thorough work as this in our
   own hearts as the result of our faith.

   Then, see, this dying thief defends his Lord right manfully. He says,
   "We, indeed, justly, but this Man has done nothing wrong." Was not that
   beautifully said? He did not say, "This Man does not deserve to die,"
   but, "This Man has done nothing wrong." He means that He is perfectly
   innocent! He does not even say, "He has done nothing wicked," but he
   even asserts that He has not acted unwisely or indiscreetly--"This Man
   has done nothing wrong." This is a glorious testimony of a dying man to
   One who was numbered with the transgressors and was being put to death
   because His enemies falsely accused Him. Beloved, I only pray that you
   and I may bear as good a witness to our Lord as this thief did! He
   outruns us all. We need not think much of the coming of his conversion
   late in life--we may far rather consider how blessed was the testimony
   which he bore for his Lord when it was most needed! When all other
   voices were silent, one suffering penitent spoke out and said--"This
   Man has done nothing wrong."

   See, again, another mark of this man's faith. He prays and his prayer
   is directed to Jesus. "Lord, remember me when You come into Your
   Kingdom." True faith is always praying faith. "Behold, he prays," is
   one of the most sure tests of the new birth. Oh, Friends, may we abound
   in prayer, for thus we shall prove that our faith in Jesus Christ is
   what it ought to be! This converted robber opened his mouth wide in
   prayer. He prayed with great confidence as to the coming Kingdom and he
   sought that Kingdom first, even to the exclusion of all else. He might
   have asked for life, or for ease from pain, but he prefers the
   Kingdom--and this is a high mark of Grace.

   In addition to thus praying, you will see that he adores and worships
   Jesus, for he says, "Lord, remember me when You come into Your
   Kingdom." The petition is worded as if he felt, "Only let Christ think
   of me and it is enough. Let Him but remember me and the thought of His
   mind will be effectual for everything that I shall need in the world to
   come." This is to impute Godhead to Christ! If a man can cast his all
   upon the mere memory of a person, he must have a very high esteem of
   that person. If to be remembered by the Lord Jesus is all that this man
   asks, or desires, he pays to the Lord great honor. I think that there
   was about his prayer a worship equal to the eternal hallelujahs of
   cherubim and seraphim. There was in it a glorification of his Lord
   which is not excelled even by the endless symphonies of angelic spirits
   who surround the Throne of God! Thief, you have well done!

   Oh, that some penitent spirit here might be helped thus to believe,
   thus to confess, thus to defend his Master, thus to adore, thus to
   worship--and then the age of the convert would be a matter of the
   smallest imaginable consequence!

   IV. Now, the last remark is this--There was something very special
   about the dying thief as to OUR LORD'S

   WORDS TO HIM ABOUT THE WORLD TO COME. He said to him, "Today shall you
   be with Me in Paradise." He

   only asked the Lord to remember him, but he obtained this surprising
   answer, "Today shall you be with Me in Paradise."

   In some respects I envy this dying thief, for this reason--that when
   the Lord pardoned me and pardoned the most of you who are present, He
   did not give us a place in Paradise that same day. We are not yet come
   to the rest which is promised to us. No, you are waiting here. Some of
   you have been waiting very long. It is 30 years with many of us. It is
   40 years, it is 50 years with many others since the Lord blotted out
   your sins, and yet you are not with Him in Paradise. There is a dear
   member of this Church who, I suppose, has known the Lord for 75 years
   and she is still with us, having long passed the 90th year of her age.
   The Lord did not admit her to Paradise on the day of her conversion. He
   did not take any of us from Nature to Grace and from Grace to Glory, in
   a day. We have had to wait a good while. There is something for us to
   do in the wilderness and so we are kept out of the heavenly garden.

   I remember that Mr. Baxter said that he was not in a hurry to be gone
   to Heaven and a friend called upon Dr. John Owen, who had been writing
   about the Glory of Christ, and asked him what he thought of going to
   Heaven. That great Divine replied, "I am longing to be there." "Why,"
   said the other, "I have just spoken to holy Mr. Baxter and he says

   that he would prefer to be here, since he thinks that he can be more
   useful on earth." "Oh," said Dr. Owen, "my Brother Baxter is always
   full of practical godliness, but for all that I cannot say that I am at
   all desirous to linger in this mortal state. I would rather be gone."
   Each of these men, seems to me, to have been the half of Paul. Paul was
   made up of the two, for he was desirous to depart, but he was willing
   to remain because it was necessary for the people. We would put both
   together and, like Paul, have a strong desire to depart and to be with
   Christ, and yet be willing to wait if we can do service to our Lord and
   to His Church. Still, I think he has the best of it who is converted
   and enters Heaven the same night! This robber breakfasted with the
   devil, but he dined with Christ on earth and supped with Him in
   Paradise! This was short work, but blessed work! What a host of
   troubles he escaped! What a world of temptation he missed! What an evil
   world he left! He was just born, like a lamb dropped in the field, and
   then he was lifted into the Shepherd's bosom straight away!

   I do not remember the Lord ever saying this to anybody else. I dare say
   it may have happened that souls have been converted and have gone Home
   at once, but I never heard of anybody that had such an assurance from
   Christ as this man had. "Verily, I say unto you"--such a personal
   assurance! "Verily I say unto you, Today shall you be with Me in
   Paradise." Dying thief, you were favored above many, "to be with
   Christ, which is far better," and to be with Him so soon!

   Why is it that our Lord does not thus imparadise all of us at once? It
   is because there is something for us to do on earth. My Brothers and
   Sisters, are you doing it? Are you doing it? Some good people are still
   on earth, but why? But why? What is the use of them? I cannot make it
   out. If they are, indeed, the Lord's people, what are they here for?
   They get up in the morning and eat their breakfast and, in due course
   eat their dinner, their supper and go to bed and sleep. At a proper
   hour they get up the next morning and do the same as on the previous
   day. Is this living for Jesus? Is this life? It does not come to much.
   Can this be the life of God in man?

   Oh, Christian people, do justify your Lord in keeping you waiting here!
   How can you justify Him but by serving Him to the utmost of your power?
   The Lord help you to do so! Why, you owe as much to Him as the dying
   thief! I know I owe a great deal more. What a mercy it is to have been
   converted while you were yet a boy, to be brought to the Savior while
   you were yet a girl! What a debt of obligation young Christians owe to
   the Lord! And if this poor thief crammed a life full of testimony into
   a few minutes, ought not you and I, who are spared for years after
   conversion, to perform good service for our Lord?

   Come, let us wake up if we have been asleep! Let us begin to live if we
   have been half dead. May the Spirit of God yet make something of us, so
   that we may go as industrious servants from the labors of the vineyard
   to the pleasures of Paradise! To our once crucified Lord be Glory
   forever and ever! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Retrospect--"The Lord Has Blessed"

   (No. 1882)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Inasmuch as the Lord has blessed me until now." Joshua 17:14.

   THE PASTOR'S RETURN. THREE SPECIALLY- SELECTED SERMONS TO HIS CHURCH,
   CONGREGATION, READERS AND FRIENDS, CONSISTING OF

   A RETROSPECT, A PROSPECT [No. 1883] AND AN EXHORTATION [No. 1884.]

   IT is not an easy task to divide land among different claimants. Joshua
   divided Canaan with strict impartiality. He was a man of God and he was
   also shrewdly wise, as you may gather from many of his speeches. But,
   for all that, he could not satisfy everybody. He who would please all
   attempts the impossiblel God Himself is quarreled with. If it is the
   design of Providence to please men, it is a melancholy failure. Do we
   not find men everywhere dissatisfied with their portions? This man
   would like his lot if it were not where it is and that man would be
   perfectly satisfied if he had a little more. One would be contented
   with what he has if he could always keep it, while another would be
   more pleased if life could be shortened. There is no pleasing men! We
   are like the sons of Joseph in the chapter before us, ready to complain
   of our inheritance. It should not be so. We who have pined in the
   wilderness of sin should rejoice that we have entered the land of
   promise and we ought to be glad to have a portion among the people of
   the Lord. Contentment should be natural to those who are born of the
   Spirit of God, yes, we ought to go beyond contentment and cry, "Blessed
   be the Lord, who daily loads us with benefits."

   Brethren, the best advice that I can give to each man among you is that
   he should endeavor to make the best of the portion which God has given
   him, for, after all, Joshua had not arbitrarily appointed Ephraim and
   Manasseh their lots, but they had fallen to them by the decree of God.
   Their portions had long before been marked out by a higher hand than
   Joshua's. You and I ought to believe that--

   "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will."

   Let us fall back upon predestination and accept the grand Truth of God
   that, "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord." An all-wise
   God disposes His people according to His sovereign will. Let us not
   seek to alter our destiny, but let us try to make the best of our
   circumstances. This is what Joshua exhorted Ephraim and Manasseh to do.
   "You have a hill country crowned with forests: hew them down. You have
   fat valleys occupied by Canaanites: drive out the present inhabitants."
   O Sirs, if we would but thoroughly enjoy what God has freely given us,
   we would be happy to the fullest and even anticipate the joys of
   Heaven! We have a deep river of delights in the Covenant of Grace, yet
   we are content to paddle about its shores. We are only up to our
   ankles, the most of us, whereas the waters are "waters to swim in." A
   great sun of everlasting love shines upon the globe of our life with
   tropical force, but we get away to the North Pole of doubt and
   fear--and then complain that the sun has such little heat--or that he
   is so long below the horizon. He who will not go to the fire ought not
   to complain that the room is cold! Did we heartily feed upon what the
   Lord has set on

   our table, accept the ring which He has prepared for our finger and
   wear the garments which He has provided for our comfort, we might, here
   on earth, make music and dancing before the Lord!

   I am going to speak upon my text thus--First, here is a confession,
   which I think many of us will be very happy to make--"Inasmuch as the
   Lord has blessed me until now." Secondly, here is an argument, which is
   stated after the manner of logic--"Inasmuch as the Lord has blessed me
   until now, therefore," so and so.

   I. We look at our text, then, first of all, as A CONFESSION--"The Lord
   has blessed me until now."

   I will not at present speak to those of you upon whom the blessing of
   God has never rested. Remember, my dear Hearers, that every man is
   either under the curse or under the blessing. They that are of the
   works of the Law are under the curse. Those upon whom their sin is
   resting are under the curse, for a curse always attends upon sin.
   Though we read no denunciation service; though we do not speak to you
   from Ebal and Gerizim, with the blessing and the curse, yet rest
   assured that there is, before the living God, a separation of the
   precious from the vile, and each day there is a judgment which, in
   God's apprehension, puts some upon the right hand with the, "Come, you
   blessed," and others upon the left hand with the, "Depart, you cursed."
   This will be finally done in "that day of days for which all other days
   were made." At this hour, my Hearer, if you are not the blessed of the
   Lord, you are resting under the dark shadow of a curse from which I
   pray God you may at once escape! Faith in Him who was made a curse for
   us is the only way to the blessing.

   But I speak to as many as have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, of
   whom the Lord says, "Surely, blessing I will bless you."

   You can say at this time, "God has blessed me until now." He has
   blessed you with those blessings which are common to all the house of
   Israel. Ephraim and Manasseh had received a blessing when God blessed
   Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, seeing they were in the loins of Abraham. You
   and I, who are in Christ, are partakers of all Covenant blessings in
   Christ Jesus. "If children, then heirs," and if we are children of God,
   then we are heirs of all things. I like to think of the old Scottish
   woman who not only blessed God for the porridge as she ate it, but
   thanked God that she had a Covenant right to the porridge! Daily
   mercies belong to the Lord's household by Covenant right and that same
   Covenant right which will admit us into Heaven, above, also gives us
   bread and water here below. The trifles in the house and the jewels of
   the house belong equally to the children. We may partake of the common
   mercies of Providence and the extraordinary mercies of Grace without
   stint. None of the dainties of the royal house are locked up from the
   children. The Lord says to each Believer, "Son, you are always with Me
   and all that I have is yours." "You are Christ's and Christ is God's"
   and, therefore, "all things are yours."

   Can you not say--"The Lord has blessed me until now"? Has He ever
   denied you one of the blessings common to the covenanted family? Has He
   ever told you that you may not pray, or that you may not trust? Has He
   forbidden you to cast your burden on the Lord? Has He denied you
   fellowship with Himself and communion with His dear Son? Has He laid an
   embargo on any one of the promises? Has He shut you out from any one of
   the provisions of His love? I know that it is not so if you are His
   child! And you can heartily exclaim, "The Lord has blessed me until
   now." "Such honor have all the saints." By His gracious past of love,
   the Lord guarantees to His redeemed a future of equal blessedness, for
   His loving kindness never departs from those on whom it lights.

   But then, dear Friends, besides this, Ephraim and Manasseh had special
   blessings, the peculiar blessing of Joseph which did not belong to
   Judah, or Reuben, or Issachar. In the end of the Book of Genesis, you
   will see how Jacob blessed the two sons of Joseph and you will observe
   with what prodigality of benediction he enriched them among his sons.
   "Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose
   branches run over the wall." Moses also, before he died, seemed to glow
   with a Divine fervor when he came to the tribe of Joseph! He blessed
   him, in some respects, above his brothers. Now, I think that many of
   you may say, "Though I am least of all His saints, yet in some respects
   the Lord has especially blessed me until now." I believe that every
   flower in a garden which is tended by a wise gardener could speak of
   some particular care that the gardener takes of it. He does for the
   dahlia what he does not for the sunflower. Something is needed by the
   rose that is not required by the lily. And the geranium calls for an
   attention which is not given to the honeysuckle.

   Each flower wins from the gardener a special culture. The vine has a
   dressing all its own and the apple tree a pruning peculiar to itself.
   There is a blessing for the house of Manasseh and a blessing for the
   house of Ephraim. And so is there a special benediction for each child
   of God. All the names of the tribes were written on the breastplate,
   but there was a dif-

   ferent color in the jewel allotted to each tribe and I believe that
   there is a specialty of Grace about every child of God. There is not
   only an election from the world, but an election out of the elect!
   Twelve were taken from the disciples; three were taken out of the
   12--one greatly beloved was taken out of the three. Uniformity of love
   does not prevent diversity of operations. As a crystal is made up of
   many crystals, so is Grace composed of many Graces. In one ray of the
   light of Grace there are seven colors. Each saint may tell his
   companion something that he does not know and in Heaven it will be a
   part of the riches of Glory to hold commerce in those specialties which
   each one has for himself alone.

   I shall not be you, neither will you be me. Neither shall we two be
   like another two, or the four of us like any other four, though all of
   us shall be like our Lord when we shall see Him as He is! I want you
   each to feel at this hour--"The Lord has blessed me until now."
   Personally, I often sit down alone and say, "Why this to me?" I cannot
   but admire the special goodness of my Lord to me. Sister, have you
   never done the same? Have you not said to yourself, in deep humility,
   "Surely, I have been a woman highly favored?" Do you not, my Brother,
   often feel that the name given to Daniel might be given to you, "O man
   greatly beloved"? Perhaps you are greatly tried, but then, you have
   been graciously sustained! Perhaps you are free from troubles--then you
   are bound to bless the Lord for a smooth path. A peculiarity of love
   colors each gracious life. As God is truly everywhere, yet specially in
   certain places, so does He manifest His love to all His people and yet
   each one enjoys a specialty of Grace. "The Lord has blessed me until
   now."

   I think, besides this, that these two tribes which made up the house of
   Joseph also meant to say that, not only had God blessed them with the
   common blessings of Israel and the special blessing of their tribe, but
   also with actual blessings. As far as they had gone, they had driven
   out the Canaanites and taken possession of the country. They had not
   received all that was promised, but God had blessed them until now.
   Come, Brothers and Sisters, we have not driven out all the Canaanites
   yet, but we have driven out many of them! We are not what we hope to
   be, but we are not what we used to be! We cannot yet see everything
   clearly, but we are not blind as once we were! We have not overcome
   every sinful propensity, but no sin has dominion over us, for we are
   not under the Law, but under Grace! We do not know all that the Lord
   will yet teach us, but what we do know, we would not lose for 10,000
   worlds! We have not seen our Lord as He is, but we have seen Him--and
   the joy of that sight will never be taken from us. Therefore, before
   the Lord and His assembled people, we joyfully declare that "The Lord
   has blessed us until now."

   Let us expand this confession a little, and speak thus--

   First, all the blessings that we have received have come from God. Do
   not let us trace any blessing to ourselves, or to our fellow men, for
   though the minister of God may be as a conduit to bring us refreshing
   streams, yet all our fresh springs are in God and not in men. Say, "The
   Lord has blessed me until now." Trace up every stream to the fountain,
   every beam to the sun and say, "I will bless the Lord as long as I
   live, for He has blessed me. Every good gift which has come to me has
   come from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither
   shadow of turning." Trite as the thought is, we have often to recall
   God's people to the confession--that all the blessings of the Covenant
   come from the God of the Covenant.

   The Lord has given each one of us a great multitude of blessings. He
   has blessed us in His promises. Oh, that we did but know how rich we
   are! He has blessed us in His Providence--in the brightness and in the
   darkness of it--in its calms and in its storms, in its harvests and in
   its famines. He has blessed us by His Grace. I shall not dwell upon
   these themes--I would need a century for my sermon if I did! But He has
   blessed you, Beloved, who are in Christ, with all heavenly blessings in
   Christ Jesus, according as He has chosen you in Him from before the
   foundation of the world! Never will you be able to reckon up, even in
   eternity, the total sum of the benedictions which God has bestowed upon
   you in promise, in Providence and in Grace! He has given you "all
   blessings" in Christ and that is the short way of putting it. He has
   given you more than you know of, more than you have asked for, more
   than you can estimate! He has given you not only many things, but all
   things, in Christ Jesus, and He has declared that, "No good thing will
   he withheld from them that walk uprightly." The Lord has, indeed,
   blessed us until now!

   And, mark you, there has been a continuity of this blessing. God has
   not blessed us, and then paused, but He has blessed us "until now." One
   silver thread of blessing extends from the cradle to the grave. "He has
   blessed us until now." When we have provoked Him; when we have
   backslidden from Him; when we have been making an ill use of His
   blessings, yet He has kept on blessing us with a wondrous perseverance
   of love. I believe in the perseverance of the saints because I believe
   in the perseverance of the love of God, or else I would not believe in
   it. The Lord Himself puts it so--"I

   am God, I change not; therefore, you sons of Jacob are not consumed."
   There is an unconquerable pertinacity in the love of God! His Grace
   cannot be baffled or thwarted, or turned aside--His goodness and His
   mercy follow us all the days of our lives.

   In addition to that continuity, there is a delightful consistency about
   the Lord's dealings. "The Lord has blessed us until now." No curse has
   intervened. He has blessed us and only blessed us. There has been no,
   "yes" and "no," with Him--no enriching us with spiritual blessings and
   then casting us away. He has frowned upon us, truly, but His love has
   been the same in the frown as in the smile. He has chastened us sorely,
   but He has never given us over unto death.

   And, what is more, when my text says, "The Lord has blessed me until
   now," there is a kind of prophecy in it, for, "until now," has a window
   forward as well us backward! You sometimes see a railway carriage or
   truck fastened on to what goes before--but there is also a great hook
   behind. What is that for? Why, to fasten something else behind, and so
   to lengthen the train. Any one mercy from God is linked on to all the
   mercy that went before it--but provision is also made for adding future
   blessings! All the years to come are guaranteed by the ages past! Did
   you ever notice how the Bible ends? It closes with that happiest of
   conclusions--marriage and happiness--the marriage of the Lamb is come
   and His bride has made herself ready. Infinite felicity closes the
   volume of revealed history! Earthquakes, falling stars and the pouring
   out of vials follow with terrible speed--but it all ends in everlasting
   bliss and eternal union! Even thus shall it be with us, for the Lord
   has blessed us until now.

   Until now--until now--He has blessed us and it implies that He will
   always bless us. Never will the silver stream of His love cease to
   flow! Never will the ocean of His Grace cease to wash the shores of our
   life. He is, He must be to His people the blessed and blessing God.
   "Surely blessing I will bless you," is a word of Jehovah that stands
   fast forever and ever! Thus far is our confession of gratitude.

   II. Now we come to THE ARGUMENT, which I wish to press home upon all my
   dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ. The tribe of Joseph says,
   "Inasmuch as the Lord has blessed me until now."

   What is the inference from that fact? The argument that the sons of
   Joseph wanted to draw was peculiarly Jewish--it was the inference of
   business. It was the plea that they should have more because they had
   so much. Because they had one lot, therefore they were to have two
   portions in the promised land. I want no man to infer that because God
   has blessed him in Providence, he is to expect to have still more
   riches and still more pleasure. Ah, no! Do not wish to have your
   portion in this life, lest you get it, for then you will be as the
   ungodly.

   Their argument, again, was one of grumbling. They said, "God has
   blessed us until now," as much as to say, "If we do not get two
   portions, we shall not say that God is still blessing us, but we will
   draw a line and say until now." God has many very naughty children.
   They fall into quarrels with their heavenly Father. "Ever since that
   dear child died," says one, "I never felt the same towards God." "Ever
   since my mother was taken away," cries another, "I have always felt
   that I could not trust God as I used to do." This is shocking talk!
   Have done with it! If you quarrel with God, He will say to you, "It is
   hard for you to kick against the pricks." There is no happiness but in
   complete submission. Yield and all will end well, but if you stand out
   against the Most High, it is not God's rod that makes you smart--it is
   a rod of your own making. End this warfare by saying, "It is the Lord:
   let Him do what seems good to Him." Do not say, "He blessed me up to a
   certain point and then He changed His mind." This is a most slanderous
   falsehood!

   Let us say, rather, "The Lord has blessed me until now and this is
   cause for holy wonder and amazement. Why should the Lord have blessed
   me?"--

   "Pause, my soul! Adore and wonder! Ask, 'Oh, why such love to me?'
   Grace has put me in the number Of the Savior's family! Hallelujah!

   Thanks, eternal thanks to Thee." We read in 2 Samuel 7:18, 19, "Then
   went king David in, and sat before the Lord, and he said, Who am I, O
   Lord God? And what is my house, that You have brought me until now? And
   is this the manner of man, O Lord God?" Thus let each one of us be
   amazed at the great loving kindness of the Lord.

   Be full of holy gratitude. Do not say, "I will look on the bright
   side." Beloved, the Lord's ways to us are all bright! Do not say, "I
   will trust God where I cannot trace Him," but rather trace God
   everywhere! Get into the state of that

   poor man who was so greatly blessed to pious Tauler. He wished the man
   a good day. The man replied, "Sir, I never had a bad day." "Oh, but I
   wish you good weather." Said he, "Sir, it is always good weather. If it
   rains or if it shines, it is such weather as God pleases and what
   pleases God pleases me."

   Our sorrows lie mainly at the roots of our selfishness--and when our
   self-hood is dug up, our sorrow, to a great extent, is gone. Let us,
   then, utter this text tonight, "Inasmuch as the Lord has blessed me
   until now," with hearty gratitude for all His holy will. Summing up
   gains and losses, joys and griefs, let us say with Job, "The Lord gave
   and the Lord has taken away, and blessed be the name of the Lord."

   Say also, with holy confidence, "The Lord has blessed me until now."
   Speak as you find. If any enquire, "What has God been to you?" answer,
   "He has blessed me until now." The devil whispers, "If you are the son
   of God," and he then insinuates, "God deals very harshly with you. See
   what you suffer. See how you are left in the dark!" Answer him, "Get
   you behind me, Satan, for surely goodness and mercy have followed me
   all the days of my life! And if God takes from me any earthly good,
   shall I receive good at the hand of the Lord and shall I not receive
   evil?" He who can stand to this stands on good ground! "In all this Job
   sinned not, nor charged God foolishly." But he who gets away from this,
   drifts I know not where! Come, let us, each one, bless the Lord and
   say, "If He should treat me harshly in the future, I will still praise
   Him for what He has done until now."

   I remember saying to myself, when I was in sorrow for sin, that if God
   would only forgive me my sin and give me rest from my despair, if I had
   to live in a dungeon on bread and water, all the rest of my life, I
   would do nothing else but sing to His praise." I am afraid that I have
   not fulfilled that promise, but I confess my wrong in not having done
   so. You, my Brothers and Sisters, I dare say, made much the same
   spiritual covenant with God and you have not stood to it. Let us unite
   our sincere confessions and say, each one, "The Lord has blessed me
   until now; therefore blessed be His name."

   Furthermore, if this be true, let us resolve to engage in enlarged
   enterprises. If the Lord has blessed us until now, why should He not
   bless us in something fresh? I need to say something to you as a
   Church, dear Friends, for the text is a Church text, and the, "me,"
   here comprehends all the tribe of Joseph. Let us joyfully say as a
   Church, "The Lord has blessed us until now." Strangers will excuse us
   if we have a little mutual joy in what the Lord has done for us during
   a considerable period of time. Those who have been with me from our
   earliest days, when we were a mere handful of people, may well rejoice
   that the Lord taught us to pray and to trust when we were so few and
   feeble. And then He visited us with favor and greatly multiplied us!
   And since then He has continued to bless us without pause or stint.
   These 33 years He has been with us, we have never been without
   conversions, never without fresh labor for Christ and fresh projects--
   and never a failure, never a schism, or a division of heart!

   I am amazed and humbled by the Lord's goodness. We have gone from
   strength to strength in the Lord's work. I have been feeble and, I fear
   I may be so still, but the Lord has not ceased to work by you who are
   with me. Well, what then? College, Orphanage, Colportage, Evangelists,
   Mission Halls--34 of them, Sunday schools, and so forth. What then?
   "Stop," says the devil. You would like us to stop, would you not, foul
   Fiend? But we shall do nothing of the kind! Wherever you are, O Fiend,
   in this city, it is our business and our desire to fight with you and
   drive you out! We cannot cease to be active, for the Lord has blessed
   us until now. "You will get to meddling with too much, and get too many
   irons in the fire." None of them in your fire, O Satan!

   Brothers and Sisters, we must have more fire, and more irons in it! I
   beseech you, do not slacken in any way, but press on! Let us do more.
   Have I an alabaster box anywhere? Is it lying by? Perhaps the smell may
   begin to ooze out. It is not safe in the drawer. It may get cracked and
   broken. Let me have the privilege of breaking it, myself, and pouring
   it on my Master's feet, that I may anoint them with the most precious
   thing I have! Can you not think of something you could do for Jesus,
   each one of you personally? Cannot the whole Church say to itself, "We
   must keep our institutions going at a greater rate for Christ's sake"?
   The world is very dark and needs more light; the poor are very hungry
   and need bread and the ignorant are very faint to know more.

   Did you say, "Now, do not project anything"? I do not know that I
   shall, but at the same time, I am not sure that I shall not! If the
   Lord has blessed us until now, let us go a little further. When certain
   Brethren raise a stone of Ebenezer, they sit down on it. That is not
   what the stone is meant for. I have a commission to put spikes on the
   top of those stones! You must not dream of sitting down upon--"Until
   now has the Lord helped us." The voice from the Throne of God says

   "Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward." Though the
   sea rolls before you, forward! Forward, in God's name! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Prospect--"He Will Keep"

   (No. 1883)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come
   to You. Holy Father, keep through Your own name those whom You have
   given Me that they may be one, as We are. While I was with them in the
   world, I kept them in Your name: those whom You gave Me I have kept,
   and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the Scripture
   might be fulfilled." John 17:11,12.

   THE PASTOR'S RETURN. THREE SPECIALLY- SELECTED SERMONS TO HIS CHURCH,
   CONGREGATION, READERS AND FRIENDS, CONSISTING OF

   A RETROSPECT, A PROSPECT [No. 1883] AND AN EXHORTATION [No. 1884.]

   WHAT a wonderful intercommunion and fellowship exists between the
   Father and the Son in the matter of redemption! It is the Father who
   gave the Son--it is the Son who gave Himself. It is the Father who gave
   us to the Son--it is the Son who has bought us with a price and has
   kept us by His hand. Here, in the text, the Father who gave, receives
   back from the Son, the Son praying to Him in these terms, "Holy Father,
   keep through Your own name those whom You have given Me." We cannot
   doubt the personality of the Father and of the Son, nor their essential
   unity. There are not three Gods, but one God. The Father and the Son,
   though two in one sense, are one in another. I delight to see the
   traces of the Trinity in every act of Grace. From the first
   transactions of Covenant love, even to the ingathering of the whole
   election of Grace and the introduction of the chosen into Glory, we
   hear the sound of that voice which of old said, "Let Us make man." The
   three Divine Persons work together in absolute union for the production
   of one grand result. "Glory be unto the Father, and to the Son, and to
   the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be,
   world without end! Amen."

   Observe that our text is all about keeping. Three or four times over we
   have some tense or other of the word, "keep." "Holy Father, keep those
   whom You have given Me." "While I was with them in the world, I kept
   them." Greatly do we need keeping. You have been redeemed, but you must
   still be kept. You have been regenerated, but you must be kept. You are
   pure in heart and hands, but you must be kept. You are quickened with
   the Divine life, you have aspirations after the holiest things, your
   love to Christ is intense--but you must be kept. You have had a deep
   experience and you know the temptations of the enemy--but still, you
   must be kept. The sunlight of Heaven rests upon your honored brow. You
   are near the gates of Glory, but you must be kept. The same hand that
   bought you must keep you--and the same Father who has begotten you,
   again, unto a lively hope, must keep you to His eternal Kingdom and
   Glory. All Glory be unto Him who is able to keep us from falling! Let
   all those unite in the song who are kept by the power of God! Here lies
   our topic and we will not wander far from it.

   First, we will notice a choice pastorate which was enjoyed by some of
   God's people. Secondly, we shall observe that this choice pastorate,
   was, after all, but a temporary privilege. And, thirdly, we shall see
   that those who enjoyed it were

   brought, by-and-by, to the exact place where we must always be and,
   therefore, were made the objects of a blessed prayer, "Holy Father,
   keep through Your own name those whom You have given Me."

   I. First, here is A CHOICE PASTORATE. Our little children sing--

   "I think when I read that sweet story of old, When Jesus was here among
   men, How He called little children like lambs to his fold. I should
   like to have been with them!" And so forth. Might not you and I well
   wish that we had been numbered with the 12, or that we had been among
   the Marys? It was certainly a choice privilege to be one of the
   Apostles who were the intimates of Christ, the bodyguard of Jesus.
   These men saw Him in His privacy, understood His dark sayings and read
   His heart. That privilege cannot be ours. Let us think of them without
   envy and learn something from them.

   You notice what the Savior did for the 12 who were round about
   Him--"While I was with them in the world, I kept them." This care was
   continuous. It looks as if He did this above everything else. He kept
   them. He was a guard to His people. He made this the chief employment
   of His life. While He went about doing good and reclaiming the
   wandering, He never diverted His care from His people. Loving them as
   His own, He loved them to the end. In this chapter you have "the ruling
   passion strong in death." He has kept them in life and now He says, "I
   am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to
   You." And the one thought of His heart is, "What is to become of them?
   While I was with them, I kept them. What will they do, now, that I am
   taken from them? They will have nobody to resolve their doubts, nobody
   to abate their discords, no one to answer their adversaries, no one to
   cheer them into holy confidence. What will the poor babes do when their
   Nurse has gone? What will the half-instructed scholars do when their
   Teacher shall be taken up from among them?" He closes His life on earth
   by commending them to the keeping of His heavenly Father!

   Surely, Brothers and Sisters, this teaches us that this care is always
   needed. Sheep never outgrow the necessity for their being kept by the
   Shepherd. If the 11 always required keeping, I am sure that you and I
   do. We are not better than Thomas, or Peter, or John. We have among us
   many a Thomas who will not believe without a superfluity of evidence.
   We have many a Peter, rash and impetuous, and many a John who would
   call fire from Heaven upon the adversaries of the cause! We are full of
   flaws and failures, are we not? We shall crumble to the dust if the
   Lord does not keep us! Is there one man among us that can live unless
   the Eternal Life shall continue to flow into him? I am sure there is
   not!

   We are all so greatly dependent upon the continual keeping of our Lord,
   that I look with joy to a care always personal. I read with pleasure
   that the Lord, Himself, all the while that He was here, kept those whom
   the Father gave Him--those 11 priceless gems were always in His
   custody. I bless His name that they enjoyed a ministry so tenderly
   personal--"While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your
   name." He lays stress upon His personal care--"I kept them." The Good
   Shepherd kept the sheep, not by proxy, but by His own hands. There is
   no nourishment for the child like that which comes from its own
   mother's breast--and a child of God only thrives as he lives upon
   Christ, Himself. Those of us who are under-shepherds exercise a very
   poverty-stricken ministry compared with that of our Lord, but we should
   at least give the best we have. We should be willing, night and day
   with tears, to the utmost of our strength and even beyond it, to help
   the feeble and cheer the faint, if by any means we may preserve the
   flock of God committed to our imperfect charge. Do you not wish that
   you had Christ for your Pastor? You may well wish it! But it cannot be,
   for He has ascended. Truly, it was a choice privilege to the 11 that
   Christ could say of them, "while I was with them in the world, I kept
   them in Your name."

   What must have been the effect of the personality of Christ upon those
   eleven? There are some men whose influence upon others has, for lack of
   a better word, been called, "magical." History tells us of warriors who
   have been courageous and skillful in the marshalling of battalions--and
   these have inspired their soldiers with boundless loyalty, grappling
   them to themselves with hooks of steel. Certain heroes have been
   absolutely supreme over their fellow men--a willing homage has been
   rendered to them. The influence of the Christ upon those who actually
   lived with Him must have been superlative. Think of it! There were but
   11 of them, but He so molded them that the little handful of seed
   brought forth a harvest, the fruit of which did shake like Lebanon!
   They were nothing but peasants when they came under His hand, but when
   they left it, they were the fathers of a new age! They were the
   Patriarchs of 12 tribes of a new Israel! The Apostles, after they had
   been with Jesus, were men of a superior mold. Though they had little
   human learning, they were the best educated men on the earth! Each man
   of them was more than a prince, in having touched the skirts of Deity,
   in bearing

   upon his face the brightness of the eternal Godhead, in speaking with a
   word which, like the Word of God Himself, was utterly irresistible!
   They were men anointed above their fellows, men to the fullness of
   manhood, men beyond the utmost height to which the schools could have
   trained them. What a privilege to have had Jesus, Himself, for one's
   own private Tutor!

   Our Lord's care was most successful. Of the 11, not one was lost. I
   should not have marveled at all, apart from what we know of our Lord's
   gracious power, if the whole 11 had gone back. They were very fickle,
   at first, and extremely ignorant. And, at the same time, they were
   strongly tempted. Influences which made some go back and walk no more
   with Jesus would, naturally, have had the same power over them if Jesus
   had not kept them. Yet of those whom the Father gave Him, not one of
   them was lost! His marvelous pastorate was so successful that He could
   say, "Of those whom You have given Me I have lost none." Thomas, John,
   Peter, James--they are all kept. The training of the Master has
   qualified each one for his lofty office. Oh, that you and I may be
   helped by Divine Grace to keep with us all the souls God has given us,
   that we may, at last, say of all our Hearers, "Here am I and the
   children that You have given me!" Our Lord's was a wonderful pastorate,
   was it not?

   But, nevertheless, it was attended with an awful sorrow, for He says,
   "None of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the Scripture
   might be fulfilled." Our Savior never meant us to understand that Judas
   was one of those whom the Father gave Him. He never made a mistake
   about that. Very early he said, "I have chosen you 12 and one of you is
   a devil." He had spoken distinctly about the character and doom of
   Judas. Some have asked, "How could Jesus have all knowledge and yet
   permit a man like Judas to be one of the twelve?" Brethren, He did it
   advisedly, with wisdom aforethought, for He knew that often, in the
   ages to come, people would say, "Can this Christianity be true which
   has such false-hearted traitors in its midst, which has such sellers of
   the Master even among its leaders?" He allowed that objection to come
   up at the very first and suffered a covetous traitor to be one of the
   twelve.

   The Savior sometimes seemed to speak of Judas as if he were one of His,
   but then He was speaking popularly and according to the method of
   common conversation. He permits the Evangelist to call him, "one of the
   twelve," as if He would let us feel that men may go very far on the way
   to Heaven and have everything except the essential matter--and yet may
   perish. When Judas cast out devils and in Christ's name did many
   wonderful works, it would have been impossible for any but the
   Omniscient God to have seen any difference between him and any other of
   the twelve. In some respects Judas excelled others of the Apostles! He
   probably had not half the faults of Peter, nor half the doubts of
   Thomas. There were fine qualities within him, but they were all
   leavened by that supreme covetousness which mastered him and made him
   the son of perdition. He seemed very near to being all that he should
   be, yet the Master described him in this prayer, not as one that would
   be lost, but as one that was already lost. "None of them is lost but
   the son of perdition."

   He calls him "the son of perdition" and you may be sure that He did not
   give him that name without great sorrow. The Watcher over the sons of
   men could not lose even Judas without deep regrets. He sighs, "He that
   eats bread with Me has lifted up his heel against Me." Among the bitter
   herbs of His Passover, none was more like to wormwood and gall than
   that word, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, one of you shall betray
   Me." As there is inexpressible sweetness in the doctrine of the Final
   Perseverance of the Saints, so there is an unutterable horror in other
   doctrines which guard it, such as that which our Lord lays down in the
   words, "if the salt has lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted?
   It is therefore good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden
   under foot of men." Final Perseverance is a rose of Heaven's own
   garden, but it is set with thorns--and those thorns are such cases as
   those of Judas and of others that drew back unto perdition.

   See, then, in this choice pastorate of our Master, the great need there
   is of keeping. Let us pray for Him to keep us to the end.

   II. Secondly, and very briefly, let us speak of A TEMPORARY PRIVILEGE.
   The eleven were not to have Christ with them always. He was to ascend
   unto His Throne and then they were to fall back on another mode of
   living, common to all saints.

   Now, why was Christ with them at all? It was because they were very
   weak. They needed fostering and nurturing. Look, Brothers and Sisters,
   you had great joys in your early days. You then enjoyed raptures and
   transports. It may be you have not had them lately, for you have
   traveled to Heaven at a steadier pace. My mother dandled me upon her
   knee when I was a babe, but she never thought of nursing me when I
   became a man. Certain spiritual joys are the privilege and

   the necessity of our religious babyhood, but we outgrow them. The Lord
   took the eleven when they were in their infancy and He was with them in
   the world and kept them. Why, then, did He go away? Why, for this
   reason, that they might grow to spiritual manhood! If He had always
   remained with them, working miracles and teaching them by His personal
   Presence, they would always have been mere children. It was expedient
   for them that He should go, for then the Holy Spirit came upon them and
   they rose into the full vigor of manhood! While Jesus was with them,
   they were little children, but in His absence they became men in
   Christ, quitting themselves valorously through faith in His name. Many
   joys of sense are allowed to trembling saints which are taken from them
   when they become strong in the Lord.

   You also, dear Friends, have enjoyed a profitable pastorate and you are
   now about to lose it. You have not been under Christ's personal
   teaching, that could not be--but you have been under the teaching of
   some man whom God has very greatly blessed in the ministry of His Word.
   Alas, you are now going far from the much-loved means of Grace! I pray
   God that you may now grow stronger. Now that the plant is put out into
   the cold, may it have strength and vigor enough to bear the frost! I
   see my gardener hardening off young plants and it may be the Lord is
   about to do the same with you. A boat in the builder's yard has been
   gradually fashioned to perfection and beautified with abundant care.
   But it must be launched! It must be washed by the rough sea. It must
   know the wear and tear of storms. Israel must not always fatten in
   Goshen--the tribes must be led into the wilderness and must be
   conducted over stony places--for thus the Lord brings His chosen to
   their promised rest.

   Please note that, choice as the privilege was of having Jesus, Himself,
   to be their Pastor, apart from the Grace of God this special gift had
   no power in it. The Lord Jesus Christ might preach, but He could not
   touch the heart of the son of perdition! He looked on Peter and Peter
   went out and wept bitterly, but the Lord might have looked till Dooms
   Day at Judas and there would have been no tears of penitence in Judas's
   eyes. Alas, Judas heard every sermon that Christ preached, saw all the
   mighty deeds that He did--even saw the bloody sweat upon His face in
   the Garden of Geth-semane--and kissed that face with traitorous lips!
   No ministry of itself can turn a heart of stone into flesh. "You must
   be born from above." Though the Son of God, Himself, is the Preacher,
   yet when the congregation goes out, 11 in whom there is the Grace of
   God are blessed--but the son of perdition remains just what he
   was--hardened even to the end.

   Let this be a warning to such as are not profited under the Word when
   faithfully preached. Beware lest you perish under the Gospel and so
   perish with a vengeance! If, however, a choice ministry is about to be
   removed from any of you, let this thought minister a measure of comfort
   to you, that, after all, the essential thing is not to be taken from
   you, for even in the absence of the best outward ministry, the Spirit
   of God can bless you! But without that Spirit of God, even the ministry
   of Christ, Himself, in the days of His flesh, could not have been
   effectual to you!

   III. So now I come, in the last place, to show you where the Master
   left His disciples, where we all are, where we may well be content to
   be! We are all the objects of A BLESSED PRAYER. "Holy Father, keep
   through Your own name those whom You have given Me that they may be
   one, as We are." Beneath this Divine petition we all find shelter!

   Notice how He begins--"Father." Oh, yes, it is the Father who keeps us!
   Children of God, who can be a better keeper for you than your Father?
   To whom can you cry with such certainty of being heard as to your
   Father in Heaven? Whose heart will so soon be moved? Whose ears will be
   so quick to hear? Whose feet will be so swift to save as your Father's?
   The Lord Jesus was tender to us when He selected that title of the
   great God and did not say, "Jehovah," or "Elo-him, keep Your people,"
   but, "Father, keep them."

   And then He puts it, "Holy Father," but why that? Why, just because the
   keeping means, keep us holy, and who can make us holy but the Holy God
   and who can keep us holy but He who is, Himself, holy? Who will have
   such an intense interest in our growing holiness as One whose name is
   the Holy Father? Beloved, I love well this title--it commends itself to
   my faith and breeds assurance in my soul! If the blessed hand of Jesus
   has put me into the bosom of the Holy Father that I may be kept, why,
   the keeping is sure and certain! The Holy One will never suffer us to
   be polluted or defiled!

   Carefully note that the prayer is still--"Keep them: keep them." What
   keeping do you and I require? I was thinking of the various forms of
   keeping that we, as a Church, might seek. We need keeping from discord.
   "Holy Father, keep them that they may be one." It is a very wonderful
   thing when a dozen people agree for a dozen weeks. We are such an odd
   lot of people--I did not mean you in particular, but I mean all members
   of Christian Churches--that it is really no wonder when we disagree.
   The wonder is that we have been so long and so heartily united! I
   praise and bless God for our years of spiritual harmony. Knowing that
   despite our imperfections, our tendencies to self-exaltation, the
   easiness of

   misunderstanding one another, the readiness with which we provoke and
   are provoked without cause, it is very amazing to me that we should
   have had no strifes or divisions. "Holy Father, keep us." Let us pray
   that prayer very often! We do not know how soon we may be all sixes and
   sevens. Let us pray God that we may not fall foul of one another
   through the entrance of some serpents of discord into our happy
   paradise.

   But, Brothers and Sisters, to be kept in unity is not enough--we need
   keeping from error. The world swarms with false doctrines like Egypt
   with frogs in the day of her plague! You cannot put your head outside
   the door without having a flight of heresies buzzing around you. As
   some cities on the Continent have been full of cholera, so has this
   city been full of "modern thought" and I will not attempt to decide
   which is the worse of the two! But it is a great mercy to be kept from
   the silly love of novelties and to be helped to adhere to the old
   faith, to cling to the old Cross. Happy is he who is determined to know
   nothing save Jesus Christ and Him crucified! "Holy Father, keep us." We
   have seen some go to the east and some to the west, some to the moon
   and some to the stars, some to perfection and some to licentiousness.
   Keep us, Holy Father! Keep us staunch in Your Truth even to the end!

   But it would not be enough for us to be kept united and firm in the
   Truth of God--we need, also, to be kept from sin. Saints must be kept,
   or they will soon be sinners. How have I seen the brightest men
   tarnished with the foulest lusts! How have I mourned as I have known
   those who preached holiness with wondrous power to practice unholiness
   in their private lives! You and I are so ready to be upset by a sudden
   squall of temptation, especially such as carries much sail and little
   ballast, that we have need to pray each one, for himself, and then for
   all his Brothers and Sisters, "Holy Father, keep us: keep us from all
   evil."

   Nor would that be enough, for there is such a thing as being kept
   perfectly moral, outwardly proper and decorous and yet our hearts may
   gradually subside into spiritual death. Have you never seen it? It was
   not putridity--it was not even ghastliness. The corpse was
   washed--washed with rosewater--and there were touches of paint on the
   cheeks and lips that almost veiled the work of death. Fitly draped and
   with a smile upon its countenance, it looked a welcome to you, yet it
   was a corpse! Could you have thought it? O Church of God, beware of
   accepting the semblance of life! In the battles between the Spaniards
   and the Moors, when the Cid, Rodrigo Diaz, had fallen in the fight, the
   Spaniards set his body upright upon his milk-white steed and went forth
   to battle with his corpse at their head! How often had his presence
   made victory secure to his comrades! Until the Moors discovered that
   the mighty arm was palsied by death, they fled before the sword of the
   great Cid! But when once they knew that the uplifted falchion was held
   in a dead hand, they recovered spirit.

   And so you can make a dead church sit upright in the saddle, wearing
   all its harness of war, and you can make it bear aloft the great sword
   of the Lord and, for a time, its death may be unsuspected. But once let
   the world find out the dreadful secret and its hour of defeat has come!
   A dead church, like a dead lion, is sport for children! A church devoid
   of spiritual life is the laughing stock of devils. God keep us that we
   never fall into the condition of spiritual decay! Pray from the bottom
   of your hearts, my Brothers and Sisters, in unison with the sweet
   prayer of our living, loving Lord, "Holy Father, keep through Your own
   name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one, as We are."

   Observe, further, that our Lord Jesus Christ asks that we may be kept
   through God's own name. It requires the very name of God to keep a
   Christian!

   By the word, "name," is sometimes meant the whole Character of God, the
   whole royal power and prerogative of God. Frequently, power is meant by
   the word, "name." There is no keeping one of us, much less the whole
   ship's company, except the sacred name of God shall exert all its power
   to keep off our foe. The Savior concludes with this plea, "Holy Father,
   keep through Your own name those whom You have given Me." I do not know
   whether it will strike you, but it strikes me as very touching. He
   seems to say, "Father, You did give these to Me. They are very precious
   to Me. They are My jewels. Now I am going away and, therefore, I must
   leave them. O My Father, keep for Me the sweet tokens of Your own love
   to Me! These are Your forget-me-nots and I have valued them, therefore
   I ask you, while I go up to yonder bloody tree and die and, when
   afterwards I come to You and enjoy My eternal rest, take care of these
   whom You have given Me."

   It is like a husband who has obtained his bride, but now finds that he
   must go away from her. He gives her back to her father who originally
   gave her to him and says, "Take care of her for my sake. As you love
   me, take care of her." We are talking about you, you believers in
   Christ! Listen, therefore, with diligence. "The Father Himself loves
   you." The

   Father gave you to Jesus because He loved Jesus. He wanted Jesus to
   have that which would give Him most delight and so He gave you to Him!
   And now that Jesus cannot be with you by His bodily Presence, He gives
   you over to the great Father, from whose loving hands He first received
   you, and He says, "Holy Father, keep them." Do you think the Father
   will answer the Son's request? I am sure that He will. I feel safe in
   those Almighty hands in which Jesus has placed me--

   "I know that safe with God remains,

   Protected by His power,

   All that to Jesus appertains,

   Till the decisive hour."

   Remember that double-handed safety of which Jesus speaks in John 10:28,
   29--"They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of
   My hand. My Father, which gave them to Me, is greater than all; and no
   man is able to pluck them out of My Father's hand."

   Do you belong to Christ, dear Hearer? You are not alone in being owned
   by that royal Proprietor--many of us are the sheep of His flock and the
   children of His love. We are going to gather around our Lord's table.
   Will you go away, or will you come with us and say, "We belong to Him
   and we would share His banquet of love?" If you must go away this once,
   hasten to put yourself right, that you may obey your Lord in the
   future. End this forgetfulness of your dying Lord, I pray you! Give
   yourself to Jesus and that shall be the best evidence that the Father
   gave you to Jesus, for never did a heart give itself to Jesus except as
   the result of the eternal purpose of God and the work of the Spirit
   within. Beloved Hearer, yield yourself to the Well-Beloved, whose love
   shall henceforth be your joy, your safeguard, your perfection, your
   bliss! Yield yourself, now, without an hour's delay!

   Let the Lord's people now come and keep the feast with joy and
   gladness, singing praises unto the name of the Great Keeper of Israel
   who does neither slumber nor sleep!
     __________________________________________________________________

Exhortation--"Set Your Heart"

   (No. 1884)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Now set your heart and your soul to seek the Lord your God." 1
   Chronicles 22:19.

   THE PASTOR'S RETURN. THREE SPECIALLY- SELECTED SERMONS TO HIS CHURCH,
   CONGREGATION, READERS AND FRIENDS, CONSISTING OF

   A RETROSPECT, A PROSPECT [No. 1883] AND AN EXHORTATION [No. 1884.]

   THIS exhortation may be most fitly directed to those who are already
   saved. It was first given to the elders of Israel and we would gladly
   hope that they were already good men and true, but, secondly, the
   language might be very fitly addressed to the unconverted. There may be
   a little straining in this latter case, for we can hardly call the
   Lord, their God as yet, but still we shall venture to say to the
   unconverted who have come up with God's people, "Set your heart and
   your soul to seek the Lord your God."

   I. Let us take it, first, in ITS REFERENCE TO GOD'S OWN PEOPLE. You
   have already found the Lord. There is a sense in which you have not to
   seek Him, for you already know Him, but, in another sense, you are
   still to seek Him, for seeking the Lord is a description of the whole
   of the Believer's life. After he has found God as his salvation, he has
   to seek him as his Friend, as his Sanctifier, as his Example. Until
   they come to that glorious perfection which belongs to the better
   world, Christian men have something, still, to seek.

   Our first enquiry is, "What are they to seek?" Beloved Friends, I say
   to you, as David said to the princes of Israel, "Seek the Lord your
   God." Do it by endeavoring to obey Him in everything. Let it be our
   study to test everything that we do by God's Holy Word. Let us not
   willfully sin, either in commission or in omission. Let us be very
   particular to seek out the will of the Lord so as to fulfill not only
   commands which are plain, but those about which there is a question. In
   the service of God nothing is little and, loyalty to the great Royalty
   of God comes out in tenderness of conscience concerning little things.
   He that carelessly offends in trifles, shall fall by little and little.
   The greatest catastrophes in moral life come not usually all of a
   sudden, but by slow degrees. The dry rot enters into the timbers of the
   house of human character--and when it has silently worked its
   mischief--the house falls with a shock.

   It is not the wind of temptation that brings it down--that may be the
   apparent instrument--but the sly, secret rot that has all the while
   been going on, is the real destroyer. Therefore let us pledge ourselves
   unto God to live more and more watchfully, seeking the Lord with our
   heart and soul in everything--in private, in the family, in business
   and in the House of God. He that walks hastily without consideration
   will assuredly err, but he that takes counsel of God and watches to
   know what the will of the Master may be, shall walk uprightly and
   surely. O Christian, set your heart to this, that the Lord Jesus is
   your absolute Lord and Master and that, at every point, you will
   scrupulously endeavor to do His will, yielding a cheerful obedience as
   the fruit of the Spirit within your soul!

   Seek the Lord, also, as David wanted these princes to do, in the
   building up of His Temple. He says, "Set your heart and your soul to
   seek the Lord your God. Arise, therefore, and build the sanctuary of
   the Lord." Beloved, it ought to be the main business of the life of
   every Christian to build up the Church! It ought to be mine and I trust
   that it is. I know that this is the main business of many of my
   Brothers and Sisters here, since for its sake they forego many an hour
   of leisure and to it they give the best of their faculties. We are sent
   here on purpose to build the city of God which is His Church. The
   foundations have been laid in the fair vermilion of our Savior's
   precious blood. Stone upon stone, the walls have risen. It is ours to
   help with the construction, in quarry or in forest, with saw or with
   axe. If we cannot do great works, we must weave the hangings, or
   fashion the pins, or twist the cords. It should be the main objective
   of our life to seek the Lord by building up His Church. Oh, how I wish
   that all Christians thought so! Alas, many fancy that the work of the
   Church is to be left to a dozen or two of us--that the minister is to
   do his best with a few friends--but the bulk of the people are to be
   excused the glorious liberty of the service of the blessed God! Come,
   my Brothers and Sisters, one and all, seek the Lord with all your heart
   and soul in the building up of His Church! Let nothing be lacking to
   the Church of God in the Tabernacle which is as a city set upon a hill!

   Let all you do, whether it is of personal obedience or in connection
   with the Church, be done with a single eye to God's Glory. O Christian
   men and women, what have you to do with worldly honor? What have you to
   do with ease? The target towards which your life's arrow should speed
   is the Glory of Him who made you, who has redeemed you with His
   precious blood and has created you a second time that you may be for
   Him, and for Him alone! Know you not that the Lord's portion is His
   people? Jacob is the lot of His inheritance. How heartily we ought to
   respond to the Lord's choice of us by glorying that we are Christ's
   chosen servants and that now, the one thing for which we live is to
   reflect the Glory of His blessed name! To this are you called, O you
   elect and redeemed of the Most High! This is your high destiny! Answer
   to it on earth as you hope to fulfill it in Heaven! Seek the Lord! That
   is what is intended in the text--to render obedience and to labor for
   the building of His Temple and the honor of His name.

   Next, let us enquire, how are they to seek? Here is the text--"Set your
   heart and your soul to seek the Lord your God." Does not that intend a
   fixity of purpose? "Set your heart and your soul." There are plenty of
   flimsy creatures about--whose manhood has long ago evaporated--who are
   "everything by turns and nothing long." These fritter away life like
   fluttering butterflies of the garden. They stay not long enough in any
   place to gather sweetness even from the choicest flowers. The genuine
   man of God who is going to serve the Lord, puts his foot down and you
   might as well hope to pluck up the North Pole as to move him from his
   chosen sphere! He has looked ahead and he sees on what tack he ought to
   steer--and he will hold the tiller to that point--over mountain waves,
   or through the trough of the billows, he still will speed his way! He
   has looked to his chart, settled his course and he is not to be turned
   aside. You who are men must now serve your God with a determination
   that cannot be shaken. Resolve that you will glorify God by holding
   fast His Truths and by following in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus,
   for the times are flippant and only the resolute can master them.

   You see that David says, "Set your heart." That is, have an intense
   affection towards God's service and Glory. A man never does a thing
   well if his heart is not in it. No painter has attained to excellence
   unless he has mixed his colors, not only with his brains, but with the
   life-blood of his heart! Success comes not to heartless efforts.
   Certainly it is so in the service of the living God. He will not accept
   a sacrifice which lacks the life-blood of a warm, affectionate intent.
   Brothers and Sisters, nobody is good by accident. No man ever became
   holy by chance. There must be a resolve, a desire, a panting, a pining
   after obedience to God or else we shall never have it! Set your heart,
   then, to seek the Lord your God.

   There are other parts of your nature besides your heart. Your soul has
   in it, among other things, an intellect. I would that all who serve God
   would serve Him with their intellect, for many seem to jog on in the
   service of God like old horses that have gone their round so often that
   they now crawl over the road in their sleep! Alas, the first big stone
   in the road throws them over! Let us resolve neither to leave our heads
   nor our hearts at home when we come into God's House. The whole man
   should be present and energetic when God is to be honored! We ought to
   plot and plan how to win a soul as earnestly as we contrive to make a
   profit in our trade. We ought as much to speculate and scheme to
   glorify God as we meditate how to advance our business. Our inventive
   genius should be more concerned to set jewels in the Redeemer's crown
   than to perfect the most beautiful work of art. Let our motto be--"All
   for Jesus"--for He has redeemed us altogether. Every thought of
   throbbing brain, every affection of beating heart, every movement of
   cunning hand--all should

   be for Him at its best--and kept well at work for His royal service.
   The yoke of Christ should be laid not merely on the shoulder, but on
   every part, power and passion of our entire manhood. So should it be.
   God grant it may be so!

   And then, if I am again asked the question, "How ought we to seek the
   Lord?" I answer--by the union and concentration of all our faculties.
   Our life should be comparable to sunlight--and holy zeal, like a
   magnifying glass--should focus upon a given spot and cause it to burn
   its way to success. He will never do much for God who attempts to serve
   a dozen masters. I have been called upon this week by several persons
   to give my aid in trifling matters of politics, finance and social
   arrangement. "Why," I said to the applicants, "there are hundreds of
   people who can attend to these matters quite as well as I can." "Yes,
   Sir, but we want your weight and influence." I replied, "My weight and
   influence belong to Another. I am very willing to help you in any good
   thing if I can do it without diverting my attention from the service of
   my Master, but my time is not my own. I have to preach the Gospel--you
   can get any blind fiddler to canvass for your candidate. I must attend
   to my Master's business and let the dead bury their dead."

   I would have you Christian people, while you attend to everything that
   is just, right, kind, proper and of good repute--everything that can
   benefit your fellow men, or help the cause of liberty and
   righteousness--yet, still keep your souls undivided and entire for the
   service of your God! Throw your life into your religion! Do not be like
   the man whose child at Sunday school was asked, "Is your father a
   religious man?" "Yes, Sir," she said, "Father has religion, but he has
   not done much at it lately." I am afraid there are many of that sort.
   They have not taken their coats off at it! They have not thrown their
   whole souls into it! Brothers and Sisters, if you follow Christ, follow
   Him fully! If you mean to be Christians, be Christians! If you are
   worldlings, give your hearts to the world, or you will make nothing of
   it--it would be a pity to halt between two objects so as to miss both!
   If Jehovah is God, serve Him with your heart, with the concentrated
   energy of your entire nature at its best! See, Christian people, to
   what you are called.

   But the text also tells us when we are to seek the Lord. It has a
   little word in it--a golden monosyllable it is! It is a word which
   comprehends the whole almanac, every day in the week, all the year
   round. "Now set your heart and your soul to seek the Lord your God."
   Now is the only time worth having because, indeed, it is the only time
   we ever have! While I speak, it is gone and another, "now," has come
   up. Take your moments on the wing and use them as they fly. Now, now,
   now! Let us give ourselves, heart and soul, to the service of the Lord
   our God NOW!

   When did David mean by his, "now"? I think he meant, first, when the
   people had an efficient leader. "I am dying," he said, "but there is
   Solomon, my son. He is a man of peace and God has said that he shall
   build His Temple; therefore arise and seek the Lord." It is a grand
   thing for any Church when God sends them one who can lead them, about
   whom they are united in judgment and with whom they can hopefully march
   to the conflict. Alas, I know several Churches that have been sadly
   troubled by the deaths of faithful ministers. I pray you, if you are
   members of a Church which has a God-sent minister still alive and at
   its head, set your heart and your soul now to serve God! While He
   spares His servant to lead you on to success, take care that you follow
   with holy enthusiasm. "Now" is the time for activity!

   He means, also, when God is with you. Read the 18th verse, "Is not the
   Lord your God with you?" When God is with you, get to work! What can
   you do if God is gone? And how soon you will drive Him away unless you
   work while you are in His company! God never came upon earth to live
   among sluggards and to have communion with drones. Two cannot walk
   together unless they are agreed and one thing they must assuredly be
   agreed on is the rate at which they mean to walk--they cannot walk
   together except at the same pace! Jesus Christ never travels slowly. It
   is quick marching with Him! Ho, you laggards, quicken your steps or He
   will leave you far behind! Serve the Lord with greater diligence, or
   you will lose delight in His ways. While God is with you, O gracious
   men, set your hearts and your souls to seek Him!

   Note, again, that David says, "Has He not given you rest on every
   side?" That is another set time when we ought to serve the Lord with
   all our might. When we have rest from care, then our care should be to
   please the Lord. You, my Brother, are released from all that affliction
   which wearied you a few weeks ago--therefore praise the Lord! Your
   enemies are quiet, your anxieties do not harass you as they used to
   do--therefore extol your God! Serve God with all your might when He
   deals out His favor to you. When there has been dull weather and no
   wind, how eagerly the mariner hails the first breath of air! If there
   is but a capful of wind, he labors to make headway with it. He uses
   every movement that would flutter a handkerchief! So it ought to be
   with God's people--they should turn the least favor to advantage--and
   much more the greater. When God gives us rest, joy and peace, let us
   make a Sabbath of it and consecrate the gladsome hours to His highest
   Glory.

   But, indeed, this "now," as I have said, is of general acceptation.
   Now, you young men in the prime of your vigor, set your heart and your
   soul to the service of God! We need more men for our Evangelists'
   Association. We are very short of preachers--preachers to go to rooms,
   mission halls and suburban villages to declare Christ to the people.
   Now, then, set your heart and soul to the service of God while you are
   young. Sunday schools around us are pining for lack of teachers. Young
   men and women, you are the people to undertake such service as this! Do
   not stand back. There is nothing like serving God in your youth. As
   soon as you are saved, yourselves, seek to rescue others! The Christian
   man who does not give God the morning of his days is not very likely to
   give Him much of the evening. He who does not rise with the lark is not
   likely to sing like he does!

   If I speak thus to the young, I would speak with equal force to the
   middle-aged. Now, my Brothers and Sisters, we have had some
   experience--we are no longer children--we know a little of the good way
   and some of that little was learned in a painful school. I have had my
   knuckles rapped very often to make me learn how to make simple
   up-strokes and down-strokes--and now I desire to fill my page with my
   Master's name. If we have learned anything, let us set our heart and
   our soul to serve the living God with all the wisdom and experience
   which Grace has given us.

   You, upon whose heads I see the snows of many a winter--you whose bare
   heads show how often the rough winds of age have swept over your
   brows--surely with so short a time to live it becomes you to set your
   heart and your soul to serve the Lord! If men knew how brief their time
   is, how much would they quicken their service if they really loved
   Christ as He ought to be loved! At this hour this is my one message to
   old and young, to myself and to you--let us be up and doing!

   Beloved Brothers and Sisters, you who have been with me these many
   years and you who have lately come among us, let us begin again! Let us
   set our hearts and our souls with dogged determination to serve the
   Lord. If the work is difficult, a hard thing can always be cut with
   something harder. You can cut a diamond with a diamond. Oh, to have a
   divinely hardened resolution that will cut through anything for Christ!
   Comrades, we will win souls for Jesus, or we will break our hearts over
   it! God help us, for His name's sake!

   II. Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I have done with you now. You can
   sit still and pray while I talk to the others. I have now to SPEAK TO
   THOSE WHO ARE UNCONVERTED, just whispering to you, dear Friends, that I
   should like to spread the big net and take many in it--and they will be
   taken if the Holy Spirit is here in answer to our prayers.

   To you who are unconverted, I would earnestly say set your hearts on
   true religion and be not content with the outward form of it. Observe
   that David had gathered these noblemen and gentlemen around his bed to
   urge them to build a Temple, but he was a spiritual man and he knew
   that Temple building was not everything, although he valued it highly.
   He knew that there was something better than outward service and so he
   said to these men, "Now set your heart and your soul to seek the Lord
   your God." By all manner of means attend the House of God, though you
   are not a Christian--but go with the desire that God will bless the
   Word and make you a Christian! While you diligently attend to the
   outward ordinances of God's House, I pray you do not trust in them, but
   seek the Lord your God, Himself.

   Baptism is the duty of every Believer, but it is not the duty of
   anybody except a Believer--I pray you do not put the sign in the place
   of the thing signified! Do not trust in Baptism! Why, if you were not
   only immersed, but immersed in a thousand seas, this would not help you
   to salvation! You must be born again! You must seek the Lord. There is
   no salvation in an outward ceremony! If any of you come to the Lord's
   Table, I pray you do not come with any view of getting Grace by coming,
   or finding salvation in the eating of a morsel of bread and the taking
   of a sip of wine. The elements upon the table cannot help you! The
   communion will be injurious to you if you are not a true Believer.
   Examine yourself whether you are in the faith and so eat of that
   bread--but do not dare to eat of it unless in your very heart you have
   first known the Lord and are feeding upon Him!

   I put this to every person who is not yet converted. Do not rest in
   hymn singing, Church going, Chapel going, bending your knees in private
   prayer, or in anything else that comes of yourself. Your salvation lies
   outside of yourself, in Christ Jesus. Fly away to Jesus! Tarry not in
   any outward signs or symbols. Build the Temple, by all means, but first
   of all set your heart and your soul to seek the Lord!

   Now observe that the end which we would persuade you to, by God's good
   Spirit, is that you seek the Lord Himself. Do not merely seek to know
   doctrine, or to learn precepts. Seek the Lord! There is such a Person
   as Jesus Christ the Lord. Seek Him. The keynote of the Gospel is from
   the lips of Jesus, "Come unto Me, and I will give you rest." Seek not

   your minister, your hymnal, your prayer book, or even your Bible--seek
   the Lord! Some think to find salvation in the Bible and fancy that
   Bible reading is the way of salvation, but it is not. "You search the
   Scriptures," says Christ, "for in them you think you have eternal life:
   and they are they which testify of Me. And you will not come to Me,
   that you might have life." If you put Bible reading in the place of
   coming to Christ by faith, you will miss the mark! You must come to a
   personal Savior in your own person by putting your trust in Him. Trust
   in Jesus, not in a doctrine, nor in a command, but in Him--and then you
   will be saved. You must trust in Him of the five wounds; in Him of the
   bloody sweat; in Him of the crown of thorns; in Him of the deadly
   Cross. Trust in Him at once! This, alone, is the way of salvation. "Set
   your heart and your soul to seek the Lord," for He says to you by my
   mouth, "Look unto Me and be you saved, all the ends of the earth, for I
   am God, and beside Me there is none else."

   But now observe--for I want to force this home, as God shall help
   me--that you must seek Him at once with all your heart and soul. That
   is to say, I believe that when a man is awakened, the first thing he
   ought to do is to find assured salvation. I have heard of a man who
   went upstairs to seek the Lord, with the desperate resolve that he
   would do no business till he was right with God. He did not open his
   shop shutters, for he had resolved to find a Savior before he took
   another penny across the counter. I cannot judge that man to have been
   unwise in the reckoning of God and the holy angels, for the first
   necessity of life is a renewed heart! If I thought that I was struck
   with a serious disease, I would not wait until it grew incurable, but I
   would go to a physician and have the matter attended to before it went
   further. Wouldn't you?

   Act with the same speed as to your souls. Oh, men and women, there is
   but a step between you and Hell unless God's mercy shall interpose! How
   can you trifle! It is no trifling matter. A lost soul--what mourning
   can equal the sorrow of it? Hang the heavens in sackcloth! Darken the
   sun; extinguish the moon! Silence all mirth! Hush all music! Harps of
   Heaven, be still! You angels, cease your sonnets! The funeral of a lost
   soul is the most awful solemnity that can be conceived. Such a funeral
   may be needed for you within an hour! What did I say? There may not
   remain a minute! Your breath fails and you are lost. Oh, Sirs, I pray
   you, make short work of your rebellious delays! Put everything aside
   and seek the Lord with heart and soul!

   And does not that mean that if anything hinders your finding salvation,
   you must have done with it? Does certain company hinder your religious
   thought? Do not go into such society! Is an allowable pursuit
   detrimental to your finding Christ? Do not follow it! It might be death
   to you, though it is sport for others. You must have Christ--see that
   you do have Him. That prayer of our hymn--

   "Give me Christ, or else I die,"

   ought to be in your heart and on your lips. Put everything else away
   until you get an answer to that petition. Follow after everything that
   may help you to find Christ. When I was seeking Christ, I was in the
   House of God whenever the doors were opened. I heard a preacher who did
   not speak home to my heart and, therefore, I went to hear another. I
   did not care who the preacher was, or what he was, if I could but find
   Christ under him.

   Neither was I particular whether I stood or sat, or whether I had a
   soft cushion to sit on, or none at all! I wanted Christ and I declare
   that if I had been forced to sit on the gallery front, I would not have
   minded where I was so that I could have found the Savior! Any hayloft
   would have done for me, if I could have found forgiveness. Prayer
   Meetings, little gatherings of godly people--why I was sure to be at
   them if I knew of them--for I wanted to find the Savior. You will have
   the Savior when your whole heart and soul are after Him. Remember, the
   Lord will not save you while you are dreaming or dancing. He took Eve
   out of the side of Adam when Adam slumbered, but He will not take sin
   out of you when you are asleep. You must be awakened up in some way or
   other. You must be startled, if not with thunderbolts, yet with the
   sweet heart-searching love of Christ. You must be thoroughly awake and,
   when you are so, then, seeking the Lord in that fashion, you shall not
   be long before you find Him!

   Lastly, when are we to seek Him? The text says, "now." I forget what
   day of the month this is. It does not matter. You will never forget the
   day of the month in which you seek the Lord and find Him. Who among us
   ever forgot his natural birthday? Yet you are more likely to remember
   the day in which you begin to live unto God. A friend writes to me, and
   says, "Dear Sir, my birthday was on such a day and such another day."
   For the minute I thought, "Dear man! Has he been born twice?" Then I
   guessed his meaning. Is not the second birthday much the better of the
   two? Born to sorrow the first time--born to bliss the second time! Born
   in sin the first time--born in Christ the second time. Born in depraved

   nature at first--born in the image of Christ Jesus at last! Oh, how
   happy the men who have that better birthday! May it come to you at this
   good hour! There is never a better time in which to seek the Savior
   than just now. Stop not for anything. "I must get better," cries one.
   Must you? Is that what you do when you seek a surgeon? Do you say, "I
   must get a little better before I go"? You will never go at all if you
   wait to be better, for when you feel better, you will say, "I need not
   go now." Is not that the style? No time is like time present.

   There is an old saying that, "Half a loaf is better than no bread," but
   that saying is not true spiritually. A man who has half a loaf of his
   own never seeks the Bread which came down from Heaven. The man who has
   no bread at all is in a better case, for he is more likely to come to
   the banquet of Divine Grace. Come, you starving ones, and eat of the
   Bread of Heaven! Believe and live! Faith brings God to you and you to
   God! Therefore believe and seek--seek and believe!

   The Lord send all of you home with my text ringing in your ears, "Now
   set your heart and your soul to seek the Lord your God."
     __________________________________________________________________

The Problem of the Age

   (No. 1885)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 7, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And His disciples answered Him, How can a man satisfy these men with
   bread here in the wilderness?'" Mark 8:4.

   I HAVE been, for a while, lying outside the crowd, unable either to
   feed the multitude or to bring the sick to the Master. Here and there I
   have helped one, as opportunity has occurred, but I have been called to
   rest rather than to serve. Yet all the while I have never ceased from
   constant thought about the perishing multitudes--this great city and
   its sad estate, this country, Ireland and continental nations are all
   under a cloud of deep depression. One can remove his body from the
   turmoil, but his heart is still in it. If ever there was a time when
   there was a call for the deep sympathy of all Christian people with the
   perishing multitudes, it is just now. If ever the Church should gird
   herself to do her Master's service, it is today. Never forget that the
   Church is the Spouse of Christ. She is His chosen Bride and she is,
   therefore, to unite with Him in His great enterprise among the sons of
   men. The work is salvation and that work is to be worked by means of
   Divine Truth, carried to men, externally, by human hands and,
   internally, through the Spirit of God. The Church will be false to her
   heavenly Bridegroom if she does not sympathize with the tenderness of
   His heart and enter into His gracious labor of love.

   The question before us is certainly unique if we remember that those
   who asked it had seen a former miracle of feeding the multitude. It
   would seem that those who had seen 5,000 fed would not ask concerning
   the feeding of 4,000. "How can a man satisfy these men with bread here
   in the wilderness?" Inasmuch as on one memorable occasion they had seen
   the Master multiply loaves and fishes, they might have expected Him to
   do the same again. I grant you to the fullest that it was an
   inexcusable question. I will not offer the slightest apology for it,
   but yet it is a very natural question-- natural, I mean, to that fallen
   and depraved human nature which is our daily grief. He that knows what
   human nature is will be astonished at nothing evil that it produces! I
   do not mean human nature merely unrenewed by Grace, but I mean that
   carnal nature which remains even in the disciples of Christ. This is of
   such a character that it shamefully gives way to unbelief.

   You ask me to give an instance--I point to you! Have you not often seen
   the hand of God? And yet the next time you have needed Divine help, you
   have been in anxiety and doubt. Remember how Israel saw the Red Sea
   divided and yet the people feared that they would die of thirst? When
   the riven rock had relieved them, they were next, afraid of hunger! And
   after the heavens had rained them bread, they became alarmed at the
   size of the giants who dwelt in Canaan. All that God had done seemed to
   go for nothing with them--they relapsed into their old unbelief. Are
   you and I much better? Alas, we may here see ourselves as in a mirror!
   Those who have a smooth path often boast of a vast amount of faith, or
   what they think to be faith. But those who follow a wilderness way must
   often confess to their shame that after receiving great mercy they
   still find unbelief creeping in.

   This is shameful to the last degree and should cause us bitter sorrow
   and great fear lest we should provoke the Lord to anger! Before us must
   often rise the example of those whose carcasses fell in the wilderness
   because of their unbelief. All this makes us fear that had we been with
   our Lord in the desert, we would not have behaved better than Peter and
   James and John! We, too, might have forgotten the former miracle of the
   loaves and have anxiously enquired, "How can a man satisfy these men
   with bread here in the wilderness?"

   The question, although it is thus surprising and inexcusable, may,
   however, be used this morning for our profit. It may at least do this
   good--as we shall not be able to answer it on any human lines, it will
   show us our inability--and that is what our Lord would make most clear
   before His power is revealed. I should not wonder but what He drew
   those

   people into the desert on purpose that there might be no suspicion that
   when they were fed, they had not been supplied from fields or gardens,
   or by the charity of inhabitants. It was a barren spot, out of which
   nothing could be grown! The disciples had to feel this and recognize
   this and state this--and then the Lord had a clear platform for working
   His miracle. He wants to clear you out, Brothers and Sisters! He wants
   to make you see what a weak, poor, petty, miserable thing you are! And
   when He has brought you to that, then His own arm shall be revealed in
   the eyes of all the people--and all who behold it shall give Him the
   Glory due unto His name.

   Let us come, then, to our question with the hope that it may be
   sanctified to holy ends.

   "How can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?"
   First, this is a pressing problem--how to meet the needs of the
   multitude. Secondly, press as it may, it is one of tremendous
   difficulty. But thirdly, and cheeringly, it is capable of a very
   glorious answer. There is a Man who, from His infinite resources, can
   satisfy the countless myriads of our race even in this wilderness!

   I. First, then, IT IS A VERY PRESSING PROBLEM. What is to be done for
   the perishing multitude? What is to be done to satisfy men's souls? I
   confine the question to spiritual matters at this time, though I, by no
   means, slight the dreadful social and material questions which are also
   especially urgent at this hour.

   At this present moment myriads of souls are in present need. We
   sometimes think too exclusively of salvation as having reference to the
   world to come, but it has an urgent, all-important reference to this
   present state. A man who does not know Christ is a wretched man! A man
   who has never been renewed in heart, who lives in sin and loves it, is
   a pitiable being, a lost soul over whom angels might weep! If there
   were no Heaven to miss and no Hell to merit, sin is a curse upon this
   life. It is Hell to live without a Savior! If there were no poverty in
   London, it would be quite enough to break one's heart to think that
   there is sin in it reigning over the ungodly.

   That grievous side of London life which raises "the bitter cry," is
   not, after all, the worst side of it--it is, to a great extent, the
   outer disease which marks a secret cancer at the heart! If drunkenness
   brought no consequences, if vice involved no misery it would not be
   better, but far worse, for our race. It is a more horrible thing when
   wickedness wraps itself in scarlet and fine linen and when vice, by the
   help of an abominable protectorate, is enabled to escape Scot free. Sin
   rampant without check would be even worse than the present woe! It is
   an awful thing to think that masses of our fellow men have never turned
   to their Creator with obedient hope, have never confessed their sin
   against Him and have lived without thanking Him for His mercy, or
   trembling at His justice! Great Lord, You know better than we do what
   horror dwells in the ungodliness of men! Brothers and Sisters, the
   multitudes are without the Bread of Life! Shall we not distribute it
   among them at once?

   The multitudes are, also, in awful peril as to the future. When our
   Savior looked with compassion on the multitude, He not only noticed
   their present hunger, but He foresaw what would come of it. "If I send
   them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way: for
   many of them came from far." Their immediate hunger touched the Savior,
   but He did not forget its consequences--they would go back to their
   mountain dwellings and, in the attempt to climb their terraces, one
   would fall by the hillside from need of food, and another would drop in
   the sun from sheer exhaustion. Perhaps a mother carrying her babe at
   her bosom might find it dead for lack of nourishment, or the women,
   themselves, might faint and perish by the way. This our tender Lord
   could not bear to think of. Thus, when we look into the future of a
   soul, we start back aghast from the vision!

   In these times, my Brothers and Sisters, many attempts have been made
   to represent the condition of impenitent sinners in the world to come
   as less dreadful than the plain Scripture declares it to be. I cannot
   see what practical result can arise out of such teaching except it be
   the hardening of men's hearts and placing them more at ease than they
   are, now, in their indifference with regard to their fellow men. I know
   that at this hour a master argument with my heart in seeking to save my
   fellow men is the intolerable thought that if they die without a
   Savior, they enter upon a fixed state in which they will continue in
   sin and consequent misery without hope of change. I am anxious to save
   men from Hell, at once, because I see no other day of hope for them.

   Since these things are so--and I am assured they are--every man who has
   a spark of humanity and a grain of Grace is bound to cry mightily unto
   God concerning the vast multitude of men who are passing away from
   under the sound of the Gospel and rejecting it--who are living in the
   land of Gospel light and willfully closing their eyes to it and so are
   choosing endless darkness! If you are not awakened to action, O
   Christian, by the twofold belief that sin in this life is an

   intolerable evil and that, in the world to come, it involves endless
   woe, what will bestir you? If this does not awaken your compassion for
   men! If this does not bring you heart-break, are you not hard as
   stones, unfeeling as savage beasts?

   The case of the multitude is laid upon the Church of God. The Lord
   Jesus Christ took up all the hungry thousands and laid them at the feet
   of His disciples. These were His own words, as He commissioned them,
   "Give you them to eat." It was a great honor to them to be taken into
   co-partnership with their Lord--a high privilege to be workers together
   with Him in relieving this far-spread hunger. It was a great honor, but
   what a responsibility it involved! If one of them had quietly stolen
   into the background, whispering to himself, "this is a Quixotic
   notion." If another had hidden behind a rock and said, "I shall pray
   about it, but that is all I can do"--why what a disgrace it would have
   been to them! Instead of which, they were found true-hearted to their
   Master and, the burden being laid upon them, they took up that burden
   in a fashion--and their Lord enabled them to carry it with joy. They
   had the special happiness of handing out the bread to the vast host who
   gratefully received the gift. The 12 were very popular men that day, I
   guarantee you, and they were looked upon with great envy by all who
   surrounded them! Was it not a high privilege to distribute food among
   so many hungry men, women, and children? They must have been flushed
   with excitement and filled with delight! I know I would have been. To
   go among a crowd of eager, hungry people and to feed them to the full
   is a work an angel might covet! I am sure that many generous hearts
   here are already devising ways of feeling this delight. Are you not? I
   mean literally! Will you not help to relieve the present distress by
   gifts of food and clothing?

   Returning to the spiritual aspect of the matter--the Lord has called
   His Church in these days to this work--onerous and, indeed, impossible
   without Himself! But with Him, honorable, simple and easily
   accomplished. He calls His Church to the great task of feeding the
   multitudes of London, the multitudes of our empire, the multitudes
   throughout the whole world! And since He is present to multiply our
   loaves and fishes, the pressing problem may not be abandoned in
   despair.

   Brothers and Sisters, we cannot put aside this work! We that are
   Christians cannot escape from this service! The Master has laid it upon
   us and the only way to get out of it is by renouncing His leadership
   altogether! To attempt to be a Christian and not to live for your
   fellow men is hypocrisy! To suppose that you can be faithful to Christ
   and let these multitudes die without an effort is a damnable delusion!
   He is a traitor to his Master who does not enter heart and soul into
   the great life-work of that Master--and His life-work was--"that the
   world through Him might be saved" (John 3:17). If you will say good-bye
   to Jesus, you may run away with your own loaf and your own little fish
   and eat them in secret selfishness. But if you mean to be with Christ,
   you must bring your loaf and your fish here and contribute it--you must
   bring yourself and be the personal dispenser of the multiplied bread
   and fish--and you must persevere in the distribution till the last man,
   the last woman, the last child shall be filled! Then Jesus shall have
   all the Glory of the feast, but to you will be the honor of having been
   a servitor at His royal table in the august banquet of His love.

   So you see where we are this very morning. We are called to work out a
   very pressing problem--"How can a man satisfy these men with bread here
   in the wilderness?" Let us not sleep, as do others, but let us awaken
   ourselves to work side by side with those dear and faithful Brothers
   and Sisters who are toiling manfully to hand out the Bread of Life to
   the millions of this city, the teeming myriads of this world!

   II. But now secondly, IT IS A PROBLEM OF TREMENDOUS DIFFICULTY. The
   difficulty of feeding the 4,000 was enormous, but the difficulty of
   saving the multitudes of the human race is as high above it as the
   Heaven is high above the earth! After all, this miracle only gave a
   single meal to a few thousand who soon grew hungry again--the work
   needed is to feed myriads so that they shall not hunger again, forever!
   Think of this!

   For first, what a thing it is to satisfy the needs of a single soul! I
   would like those who think the salvation of souls from sin to be easy
   to try to convert one person. Sunday school teacher, did you ever
   attempt to bring one girl to Christ, yourself? She shall be one of the
   sweetest children in the whole school, but if you have attempted her
   conversion without seeking Divine aid in prayer and without looking to
   the Spirit of God to influence that little heart for good, you have
   made a miserable failure of it! If you had to save a soul, where would
   you begin? The introduction of a holy thought into carnal minds is a
   miracle as great as to get a beam of light into a blind eye, or a
   breath of life into a dead body! How hard it is to deliver a man from
   brutish carelessness and make him think of his soul, eternity and God!
   As to renewing the stony heart, as to quickening the dead soul into
   life, who can do it? Here we enter into the region of miracles! Can you
   create a fly? When you have created the most minute creature, then talk
   about making a new heart and a right spirit!

   To "satisfy," says the text--"how shall a man satisfy these men?" To
   satisfy a soul is a work which only God can accomplish! Open your
   mouth, O man of ambition! We put the round world upon his tongue and
   when he has swallowed it, he cries, like Alexander, for another! He is
   no more satisfied with the whole world than with a pill of bread! As to
   the spiritual cravings of men, how can you satisfy them? Pardon for
   sin, a hope of eternal life, likeness to Christ--these are necessary to
   satisfy--how can we give them? The world has no such food in all its
   stores! The work is impossible at the outset, when only one claimant
   appears! How can a man satisfy the spiritual hunger of a single soul? I
   should like every Christian man to be laid low with this thought, that
   he may be driven entirely out of conceit of himself and may at once cry
   to the Strong for strength and use the simple weapon of the Gospel in
   the power of the Holy Spirit--and not in his own strength.

   But, Brothers and Sisters, what am I talking about? One soul! What of
   that? Think of the numbers who need heavenly bread! We have not only
   one soul, not only one million souls, but hard upon five millions of
   immortal beings in this single city! In this huge world what myriads
   have we? A thousand millions would not compass the countless army now
   encamping on the globe! Would we deliberately exempt one of these from
   hope? Would we desire one of these to be willfully left to perish? Must
   not all be fed, if possible? Shall not every man, woman and child, as
   far as our desire can go, partake of the feast? Well, then, where are
   we? We are altogether at sea! Why, we have not a notion of what a
   million is! It will take a very, very long time even to count to that
   number. Think of this City of London--why, you shall ride through it,
   or you shall traverse it on weary foot for a year--and at the end you
   shall only wonder more at its incalculable vastness! To supply this
   great metropolis with gracious influences is a labor worthy of a God!
   The Church of God is called to feed all these with the Bread of
   Heaven--and all those out yonder in the heathen world! O Feebleness!
   What can you do alone? Yet, O Feebleness, how gloriously God can use
   you for the accomplishment of His Divine purposes! There is the
   problem. Said I not truly that it is one of tremendous difficulty?

   What seems to have struck the disciples was the place they were in--it
   was a desert place. Perhaps you might see, here and there, a little
   bitter herbage which a goat would disdain to browse, but for the most
   part it was bare ground. Our Evangelist, in describing the first
   miracle, is quite graphic in describing the green grass, but in this
   case he says that they sat on "the ground"--the ground bare of green
   grass. There were no corn fields, nor fruit-bearing plants. There was
   literally nothing to turn to account. If the stones could have been
   turned into bread, the people might have been filled, but the ground,
   itself, yielded absolutely nothing. I may be supposed, perhaps, to
   croak when I say that the present period is as bare of all help to the
   Gospel as that ground was barren of help to the feast. The world has
   never known a period less helpful to the Gospel than the present! We
   read in the Revelation of a time when "the earth helped the woman," but
   it is not so now. I see no element favorable to the conversion of the
   world to Christ, but everything is in array against it.

   The people are not so attentive to the Gospel as once they were--the
   masses do not care even to enter the House of Prayer. In London they
   have, to a very large extent, ceased to care about the preaching of the
   Word. They are to be reached--blessed be God, they shall be
   reached--but the tendency of the times is not towards religion, but
   towards unbelief, materialism and sordid selfishness. A current, no, a
   torrent, of unbelief is roaring around the foundations of society and
   our pulpits are reeling beneath its force. Many Christian people are
   only half-believers now--they are almost smothered in the dense fog of
   doubt which is now around us. We have come into cloud-land and cannot
   see our way. Many are sinking in the slough and those of us who have
   our feet upon the Rock of Ages have our hands full with helping our
   slipping friends.

   Standing before God with a child-like faith and trusting in Him without
   question, it does not matter to us, personally, if the surrounding
   darkness should deepen into seven midnights black as Hell, for we walk
   by faith and not by sight. Though the earth were removed and the
   mountains cast into the midst of the sea, we would still hold to God
   and to His Christ in a death grip of unshaken confidence. But the mass
   of professors are not so. I constantly meet with Brethren who are
   reeling to and fro and staggering like a drunk and are at their wits'
   end! And, rejoicing that I have been given my sea-legs, I have to cheer
   them and assure them that we are not shipwrecked after all. The good
   ship is not going down! The everlasting Truth of God is as sure as
   ever! The day is not far distant when the Lord shall send us a great
   calm. It will, before long, come to pass that the infidel philosophies
   of the 19th Century will be exhibited to little children in our Sunday
   schools as an instance of the monstrous folly into which wise men were
   allowed to plunge when they refused the

   Word of the Lord! I am as sure of it as I am sure I live, that the
   present wisdom is foolery written large and that the doctrine which is
   now rejected as the effete theory of Puritans and Calvinists will yet
   conquer human thought and reign supreme! As surely as the sun which
   sets tonight shall rise tomorrow at the predestined hour, so shall the
   Truth of God shine forth over the whole earth! But this era is a desert
   place--in pulpits and out of pulpits, in social morals and in politics,
   it is a dreary wilderness. "How can a man satisfy these men with bread
   here in this wilderness?"

   The Lord has often suffered the multitude to be in straits that He
   might work gracious deliverances. Take a modern instance. One hundred
   and fifty years ago or so, there was a general religious lethargy in
   England and ungodliness was master of the situation. The devil, as he
   flew over England, thought that he had drugged the Church so that it
   would never wake again. How deceived he was! A student at Oxford, who
   had been a pot-boy down in Gloucester, found the Savior and began to
   preach Him. His first sermon was said to have driven 19 people mad
   because it awakened them to true life. Certain other scholars in Oxford
   met together and prayed--and were dismissed by the university for the
   horrible iniquity of holding a Prayer Meeting! Out of the same
   university came another mighty evangelist--John Wesley-- and he, with
   Whitefield, became the leader of the great Methodist revival! Its
   effects are with us to this day. The archenemy soon found that his
   hopes were blighted, for the Church awoke again! Poor miners were
   listening to the Gospel-- their tears were making gutters down their
   black cheeks, while seraphic men told them of pardoning love. Then
   respectable dissent awoke from its bed of sloth and the Church of
   England began to rub her eyes and wonder where she was. An evil time
   brightened into a happy era! Shall it not be so again? Have no fear
   about it! All things shall work together for good. The Lord brings the
   people into the wilderness on purpose that there it may be seen that it
   is not the earth, but Himself, that feeds the people!

   The sting of the question before us, however, I have not quite brought
   out--it was human feebleness. His disciples answered Him--"How can a
   man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?" How can a man
   do it? We are only men. If we were angels! Oh, if we were angels! Well,
   what of it? If we were angels I am sure we would be quite out of the
   business, for, "Unto the angels has He not put in subjection the world
   to come, whereof we speak?" The angels are not in the field. But how
   can a man or a woman do it? How shall a man feed this multitude? "Why,
   see," says one, "what I am! I am no great orator, I have not ten
   talents, I am a weak creature! How can I feed this multitude? What can
   I do?" This is the sting of it all to earnest hearts. "Ah," says one,
   "if I were So-and-So, what I would do!" You may thank God you are not
   anybody but yourself, for you are best as you are, though you are not
   much to speak of now. "But if I were somebody else, I could do
   something," which means this--that since God has chosen to make you
   what He has made you, you will not serve Him! But if He will make you
   somebody else--that is, if your will may be supreme, then, of course
   the house will be rightly ordered. You had better be what you are and a
   little better--and get to work and serve your Master and no longer talk
   about, "How shall a man do this or that?"

   The possibilities of a man are stupendous! God with a man, nothing is
   impossible to that man! Give us not the power of gold, or rank, or
   eloquence, or wisdom, but give us a man! Our Lord thought so when He
   went up to Heaven. He meant, as He entered the pearly gates, to scatter
   a Divine largess among His people down below--and He reached His hand
   into His Father's treasury and He took out of it--what? He took men!
   "And He gave some, Apostles and some, Prophets and some, Evangelists
   and some, pastors and teachers." These were His ascension gifts to the
   sons of men!

   Though we speak thus of what God can make of us, we are in and of
   ourselves poor creatures. We do meet with a perfect Brother, now and
   then, and I always feel inclined to break that bubble. The
   imperfections of the perfect are generally more glaring than those of
   ordinary Believers! Alas, we are all such poor, frail creatures, that
   we are driven away from all confidence in ourselves and we ask with
   emphasis the question, "How can a man satisfy these men with bread here
   in the wilderness?"

   III. I am happy, therefore, to come to a blessed conclusion in the
   third head of our discourse, by saying that, laying the emphasis on its
   weakest word, "How can a man?"--THIS QUESTION IS CAPABLE OF A VERY
   GLORIOUS ANSWER.

   I might almost say, as John the Baptist did, "There stands One among
   you, whom you know not." Though He has stood a among us all these
   centuries, yet His people scarcely know Him. Who knows Him fully? "Oh,"
   says one, "I know Christ." Yes, in a sense, but yet He passes
   knowledge. "I believe in God," says one. Are you sure you do? I
   remember reading of a certain minister who spent many days in wrestling
   prayer because he was tempted to doubt whether there

   was a God. And when he came into the full conviction of it, he said to
   his people, "You will be surprised at what I say; but it is a far
   greater thing to believe in God than any of you know." And so it is a
   greater thing to believe in Jesus than most people dream! To believe in
   the notion of a god is one thing, but to believe God is quite another
   matter. One said to me when I was troubled, "Have you not a gracious
   God?" I answered, "Certainly I have." He replied, "What is the good of
   having Him, then, if you do not trust Him?" I was sorely struck by that
   reply and felt humbled in spirit. We do not fully know what Jesus is.
   He is far above our highest thought of Him. He stands among us and we
   know Him not.

   But what I want you to think of is, that this wonderful Man can feed
   this people with bread this day--and in this wilderness. I hope to make
   you believe it by the power of the Spirit of God. Therefore I ask you,
   first, to listen to what this Man says. I read to you just now this
   narrative as we find it in the 15th of Matthew. Turn again to the 32nd
   verse--"Jesus called His disciples unto Him, and said--"Stop a moment.
   Prepare your ears for music"? No, He said, "I have compassion on the
   multitude." Oh, the sweetness of that word! When you are troubled about
   the people, troubled about Ireland, troubled about London, troubled
   about Africa, troubled about China, troubled about India--hear the echo
   of this word--"I have compassion on the multitude." If Jesus spoke thus
   to His people while here, He equally says it now that He is exalted on
   high, for He has carried His tender human heart up to Heaven with Him!
   And out of the excellent Glory we may hear Him still saying, in answer
   to His people's prayers, "I have compassion on the multitude." There is
   our hope! That heart through which the spear was thrust and out of
   which there came blood and water, is the Fountain of hope to our race!
   "I have compassion on the multitude."

   Hear Him speak, again, and I think you will grant that there is much
   sweetness in the utterance. At the end of the 32nd verse we read, "I
   will not send them away fasting." We do not wish to judge Peter and
   James and John, but it seems to me that after hearing the Master say,
   "I will not send them away fasting," they hardly ought to have said,
   "How can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?"
   They ought quietly to have replied, "Good Lord, You have asked us a
   question which You must, Yourself, answer, for You have distinctly made
   the promise, 'I will not send them away fasting!'"

   Do you think the Lord Jesus Christ means, after all, to leave this
   world as it is? It is written that, "God sent not His Son into the
   world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be
   saved." Will He forego His purpose? The chronicle of time's history
   will not wind up with this horrible state of things. The loom of
   Providence will not leave its piece of cloth with its edge so fearfully
   unraveled--it shall be finished off in due order and yet be bordered
   with threads of gold! The Glory of God shall yet illuminate history
   from the beginning even to the end. All flesh shall see the salvation
   of God and all nations shall yet call the Redeemer blessed. "I will not
   send them away fasting." The people must, therefore, eat bread from the
   Lord's hands. Great Master, the task is far too much for us, alone! But
   if You have said, "I have compassion on the multitude, I will not send
   them away fasting," then we will feed them at Your command. Your humble
   servants are waiting to do Your bidding, whatever it may be, assured
   that You will be with them in it all.

   I beg you, also, to think for a moment of what the Lord did not say,
   because He was speaking about common bread; but of what we know to be
   true of Him concerning His spiritual supplies for men. The greatest
   spiritual need of man is the pardon of sin by an Atonement. Brothers
   and Sisters, if the question were now standing, "Where shall we find an
   Atonement?" it would indeed stagger us! Blessed be God, that question
   does not remain, for the Atonement has been presented, completed and
   fully accepted! Jesus has said, "It is finished," and the real
   difficulty is over. The Cross has rolled away the stone from the
   sepulcher and hope has arisen! The application of the Atonement may be
   difficult, but it must be a small labor compared with the making of the
   Atonement. The well has been dug--the drawing of the water is an easier
   task. If Jesus died, there must be life for men! If He has prayed,
   "Father, forgive them," there must be pardon for the guilty! If Jesus
   has risen into Glory, our race cannot perish in shame! We argue from
   the Cross a millennium of Glory! This Man can satisfy the people
   because of the rich merit of His blood!

   Next, remember that this glorious Man is now invested with Omnipotence.
   His own words are, "All power is given unto Me in Heaven and in earth.
   Go you, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them." Our Jesus is
   Omnipotent. It is He who, by the infinite wisdom of God, made the world
   and without Him was not anything made that was made. Is anything hard
   for the Creator? Is anything impossible, or even difficult to Him who
   rules all things by the power of His Word? Courage, Brothers and
   Sisters--the grand question is answered! Since there is a full
   Atonement and there is an exalted Savior with all power in His hands,
   what remains to dismay us?

   Listen once more. The Spirit of God has been given. Better than
   Christ's bodily Presence among us is the Presence of the Holy Spirit.
   It was expedient that Jesus should go away that the Holy Spirit might
   abide with us as a greater blessing for the Church! Is the Holy Spirit
   gone? Has the Holy Spirit left the Church of God? Is the Church
   appalled by her difficulties though the Spirit of God is poured out
   upon her? What is she thinking? Has she forgotten herself? Has she
   become insane? Brothers and Sisters, with Jesus Himself slain as an
   Atonement--Jesus exalted as a Prince and a Savior at the right hand of
   God and with the Divine Spirit abiding with us forever--what is there
   impossible to the Church of God?

   So I close by one more point, which is this--As I have made you hear
   our Lord's words and also led you to remember the infinite resources at
   His disposal, I now want you to anticipate His working. How does the
   Christ work among men? How will He proceed when He gets fairly to work
   among the masses? There are varieties of operations, but there is a
   continuity of law running through them all. The Divine line of action
   is much the same in all cases.

   The way of the Christ was, first of all, to find out what there was
   which He could use. The little provisions provided by His followers
   consisted of a few loaves and fishes. Is it not wonderful how the Lord
   sometimes finds out little matters which have been hidden away and
   makes much of them? Scotland was once under the sway of unbelief and
   formalism-- how was it to be delivered? Thomas Boston went into a
   shepherd's hut and found a book which had become extremely scarce. It
   was Fisher's, "Marrow of Modern Divinity." Boston rejoiced in the Light
   of the Gospel which flashed in upon his soul and he began to bear
   witness to it. A great controversy followed and, what was far better, a
   great awakening! The lovers of the marrow of the Gospel soon broke the
   bones of error! See what one book may do? Sweden, too, was greatly
   blessed by the discovery in a country house of an old copy of Luther on
   Galatians. See how one voice may wake a nation?

   Brothers and Sisters, who knows what may come out of seven loaves and a
   few small fishes? Yes, the enemies may do what they like--they may
   preach what they please--they may take away one pulpit after another
   from the orthodox. They may even bury us under the rubbish of evolution
   and false philosophy--but we shall rise again! These small clouds will
   soon blow over. There may not remain one single sound expounder of the
   Gospel, but as long as God lives, the Gospel will not die! Its power
   may slumber, but before long it shall awake out of sleep and cry like a
   mighty man who shouts by reason of wine! As long as we have one match
   left, we can yet set the world on fire! As long as one Bible remains,
   the empire of Satan is in danger! Only barley loaves and a few small
   fishes were in the possession of the Apostolic company, but Jesus found
   them and began to work with them!

   The next thing was a secret and mysterious multiplication. The bread
   began to grow in the disciples' hands as before it had grown in the
   ground. Peter had a loaf in his hand and he began to break off a
   corner. To his amazement, it was just as big as before! So he broke off
   the other end and gave that to another hungry person and lo, the loaf
   was still intact! He kept on breaking as fast as he could and the loaf
   continued increasing till everybody had received his full! Wonderful
   hands they were, were they not? No, they were not--they were only the
   rough hands of weather-beaten fishermen. Those other hands which first
   took and blessed, and broke, were doing the deed all the while! It is
   wonderful how God works by our hands and yet His own hands do it all.

   Apart from human agency, the Lord can impress the minds of men and
   women and so multiply His Truth. I heard of a woman in the Isle of
   Skye, when there was very little Gospel preaching, there, who all of a
   sudden felt God was not working in Skye. She journeyed till she reached
   the ferry and then she crossed to the mainland. She asked those she met
   where she could find God. At last she met with a good woman who said,
   "I will tell you where you will find Him." She took her into a place of
   worship where Jesus was plainly set forth. She heard the Gospel and
   went back to tell others about the Savior!

   The devil's work is never done--but it is undone, again, in five
   minutes when the Grace of God is at work. Even in our ashes live our
   little fires--a breath from Heaven shall kindle them into a flame! God
   is never at a loss for agents. He could turn the Pope into an
   Evangelist, a cardinal into a reformer, a priest into a preacher of the
   Gospel! The most superstitious, the most ignorant, the most infidel,
   the most blasphemous, the most degraded may yet be made the champions
   of His Truth. Therefore let no man's heart fail him--the bread shall be
   multiplied and the people shall be fed!

   It was done by everybody distributing his portion. Peter was dividing
   his loaf and many people were specially pleased to be fed by Peter. It
   was quite right that they should be. If Peter fed them, let them be
   satisfied with Peter. Yonder was John with the same bread, breaking it
   with less impetuosity and more graciousness of manner. And yonder was

   James working away very steadily and methodically. But what of the
   difference of distribution? The bread was the same. So long as the
   people were filled, what did it matter which hand passed them their
   bread and fish? Dear Friends, do not imagine that God will bless one
   preacher, only, or one denomination only! He does bless some preachers
   more than others, for He is Sovereign, but He will bless you all in
   your work, for He is God.

   I shall never forget one day, when my dear old grandfather was alive, I
   was to preach a sermon. There was a great crowd of people and I was
   late, for the train was delayed and, therefore, the venerable man
   commenced to preach in my place. He was far on in his sermon when I
   made my appearance at the door. Looking at me, he said, "You have all
   come to hear my dear grandson and, therefore, I will stop that you may
   hear him. He may preach the Gospel better than I can, but he cannot
   preach a better Gospel, can you, Charles?" My answer from the aisle
   was, "I cannot preach the Gospel better, but if I could, it would not
   be a better Gospel." So it is, Brothers--others may break the bread to
   more people, but they cannot break better bread than the Gospel which
   you teach, for that is bread from our Savior's own hands!

   Get to work, each one of you, with your bread-breaking, for this is
   Christ's way of feeding the multitude! Let each one who has, himself,
   eaten, divide his morsel with another. Today fill someone's ear with
   the good news of Jesus and His love. Endeavor this day, each one of you
   who are Christian people, to communicate to one man, woman, or child,
   something of the spiritual meat which has made your soul glad. This is
   my Master's way, will you not drop into it? You cannot propose a
   better! None can contrive a method more likely to be successful, more
   honorable to your Lord and more beneficial to yourself! Bring your
   barley loaf, bring your little fish and put your provision into the
   common store. Take it back again from the great Master's hands filled
   with that blessing which makes it fruitful and multiplies it--and then
   feed the multitude with it! So shall you go forth with joy and be led
   forth with peace. So be it. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

God's Remembrance of His Covenant

   (No. 1886)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 14, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Nevertheless He regarded their affliction, when He heard their cry:
   And He remembered, for their sake, His Covenant, and repented according
   to the multitude of His mercies." Psalm 106:44,45.

   THIS Psalm deserves to be read very carefully. It mentions many of the
   afflictions of God's ancient people, but it clearly sets forth that
   their afflictions were the distinct result of their rebellions and
   sins. It is not so with all the afflictions of God's people. It is
   written, "As many as I love I rebuke and chasten." And again, "Every
   branch in me that bears fruit, He purges it, that it may bring forth
   more fruit." Yet it is often so to this day that the servants of God
   smart because of disobedience. They are chastened for their sin, as it
   is written, "You only have I known of all the people of the earth,
   therefore I will punish you for your iniquities." Sin in a child of God
   cannot go unchastened. The rod of chastisement is included in the
   Covenant and, if we are in the Covenant, the Lord will keep His
   promise. "If his children forsake My law, and walk not in My judgments,
   then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity
   with stripes."

   The miseries of Israel of old were distinctly the result of their sins.
   They lived under a dispensation in which there was a visible reward for
   obedience and a prompt temporal punishment for disobedience. Therefore
   one might suppose that if the people fell into affliction willfully and
   through their own fault, the Lord might see fit to leave them in it.
   Did they not procure it unto themselves? Yet such is the abundant
   compassion of our God, that as soon as ever these people, smarting
   under the result of their sin, began to cry to Him, "He regarded their
   affliction when He heard their cry." He might have justly said, "Go to
   the gods that you have set up; tell your sorrows to the calves that you
   have made. Ask succor at the hands of the dead whom you have consulted,
   or of the cruel deities to whom you have sacrificed your sons and your
   daughters." But instead of thus meeting them in righteous wrath, He is
   tender and full of compassion for them!

   I will read you the words again, for they are inexpressibly
   sweet--"Nevertheless He regarded their affliction, when He heard their
   cry." There is something very powerful about the cry of a child to its
   own parent and God, the most tender of all fathers, cannot bear to hear
   His children cry--

   "Such pity as a father has

   Unto his children dear,

   Like pity shows the Lord to such

   As worship Him in fear."

   If there are any here who are brought low and sorely distressed through
   their own wrong-doing, let them, nevertheless, cry unto the Lord.
   Though it is because of your transgressions and your iniquities that
   you are afflicted, yet you may cry unto the Lord in your trouble and He
   will save you out of your distresses. Turn unto the hand that wounds
   you and that hand will bind you up. Turn unto the Lord in repentance
   and He will turn unto you in loving kindness.

   What was the secret reason why God thus dealt with His people and heard
   their cry when they were in affliction through their sin? The secret
   reason was that, "for their sake He remembered His Covenant." If He
   looked upon His people in their sin and their sorrow, He could not see
   anything in them to justify why He should have pity upon them. What
   they endured they richly deserved and He knew that if He took away His
   rod from them, they would go and commit the same wickedness again. They
   were not to be driven by judgment nor drawn by mercies. Though they
   humbled themselves for one moment, they would soon be proud again! The
   Lord could see nothing hopeful about them, nothing in their future any
   more than in their past which should plead for mercy.

   Why should they be smitten any more? Or why should gentleness be
   further wasted on them? Was it not high time to say, "They are given to
   their idols, leave them alone, that We may see what their end will be"?
   One Divine reason prevented the infliction of justice--this, and this
   alone, sufficed--"for their sake He remembered His Covenant." If He
   could not see anything in the erring people, or hope for anything from
   them, He looked to another source for a motive and an argument for
   mercy--He looked to the Covenant which He had made of old with their
   father, Abraham, when He said, "Surely, blessing I will bless you, and
   in you and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."
   Because He had once permitted that promise to go out of His mouth, He
   would not withdraw it! And when He heard their cry, He regarded their
   affliction. Is it not a great wonder that God not only is willing to
   give mercy, should there be a manifest reason for it, but that He,
   Himself, finds and makes the reason? When there is no motive for Grace
   discoverable to our anxious eyes, there is a fountain of self-created
   mercy in the Lord's own heart--and this He causes to overflow and fill
   a channel of His own making! Though there is nothing in the creature,
   there is everything in the Covenant. If the Lord can find no plea in
   the character of the offender, He discovers an argument in Himself--He
   remembers His own Covenant and, for His own name's sake, He deals in
   mercy with the guilty!

   Now, observe that in the text it does not say, "He remembered their
   covenant." They stood at the foot of Sinai and said, "All these things
   which You have commanded, we will do!" They willingly, eagerly,
   hastily, loudly entered into a covenant with God, before whose terrible
   thunders they trembled. But that covenant they soon broke. Within a few
   days they had departed from the living God and fallen down before the
   image of an ox which eats grass! The Lord does not dwell upon the
   matter, since it would be to their destruction. He forgets their
   falseness and treachery and casts them behind His back. But what He
   does remember is His Covenant--"Nevertheless, for their sake, He
   remembered His Covenant." This proves that the Covenant referred to
   must have been one of pure Grace.

   Do you not see this? These people were in affliction through sin! If
   that Covenant had only been a Covenant of Works, in which they were to
   be rewarded for good and punished for evil, the more the Lord
   remembered that Covenant, the more He would have been bound to punish
   them for their offenses! But a Covenant which led Him to cease from
   punishing the guilty must have been one of only Grace! Is it not so? A
   Covenant was made long before that of Sinai, a Covenant of Grace which
   is called, in Scripture, "the everlasting Covenant." This was made
   known to man in that first promise which was given to him at the gates
   of Paradise and it was, afterwards, revealed more clearly in the Lord's
   Covenant with Noah and in His gracious promises to Abraham, Isaac, and
   Jacob.

   The Lord said to Abraham, "I will establish My Covenant between Me and
   you and your seed after you in their generations for an everlasting
   Covenant, to be a God unto you and to your seed after you." This same
   Covenant, after being made more fully known in promises to Moses and
   other saintly men, was stated anew in the Lord's dealings with His
   servant, David, whom He exalted as one chosen out of the people--"I
   have made a Covenant with My chosen, I have sworn unto David, My
   servant, Your seed will I establish forever and build up your throne to
   all generations." Since then the Lord has given us promises, by His
   Prophets and Apostles, and specially in the Person and ministry of His
   only-begotten Son. All these various forms of manifestation relate to
   one and the same Everlasting Covenant ordered in all things and sure,
   which God had made with men in the person of His dear Son. It was that
   Covenant which God thought upon and, when He remembered it, He was able
   to deal with them upon terms of Grace, and even to change His hand and
   no longer crush them with afflictions, for He "repented according to
   the multitude of His mercies."

   Dear Brothers and Sisters, I want to show, this morning, how this
   remembrance of the Covenant on God's part is the great ground of hope
   to all of us who are in Covenant with God. Indeed, the Lord's
   mindfulness of His Covenant is the ground of hope to everyone of you,
   whether as yet you have embraced the Gospel promise or not! Inasmuch as
   God must, according to His Law, look upon you with anger on account of
   your sin, He has devised a way by which He can have regard unto the
   voice of your cry! Remembering His Covenant, He can pass by your
   transgressions and receive you as His returning children into the bosom
   of His love!

   I. The first head of our discourse will be this--THE COVENANT EXISTS.
   God cannot remember, to any practical purpose, that which does not
   exist. Had the Covenant been repealed or abrogated, it could not have
   availed for God to remember it, except to strike the people into a more
   complete and settled despair. In love He remembered the Covenant as an
   abiding thing, according to the Word of God, "My Covenant will I not
   break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of My lips."

   Beloved, the Covenant is, in its own nature, everlasting. Dying David
   said, "Although my house is not so with God, yet has He made with me an
   everlasting Covenant, ordered in all things and sure." The Covenant is
   everlasting in its beginning, for it was made, "or ever the earth was,"
   between the first Divine Person of the sacred Trinity and the Second,
   on the behalf of His chosen. It is everlasting, also, as to its
   duration, for all things are still governed under this Covenant, and
   shall be, world without end. "And I will establish My Covenant between
   Me and you and your seed after you in their generations, for an
   everlasting Covenant." "Thus says the Lord, if you can break My
   Covenant of the day, and My Covenant of the night, and that there
   should not be day and night in their season; then may also My Covenant
   be broken with David, My servant." Sooner shall the Covenant with the
   earth concerning seedtime and harvest be broken, than this Covenant of
   Grace. By everything that is permanent in the universe and by
   everything that is permanent in the Godhead, we are made to know that
   the Covenant of Grace is a fixed and settled thing and abides today as
   it always has done, for there is no variableness nor turning with Him
   from whom every good gift comes down.

   The promises in Christ Jesus are Yes and Amen, to the Glory of God by
   us. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one jot or tittle of the
   Law shall fail, much less shall the Covenant of Divine Grace be
   disannulled. Thus says the Lord-- "The mountains shall depart and the
   hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from you, neither
   shall the Covenant of My peace be removed, says the Lord that has mercy
   on you." God, in remembering His Covenant, falls back upon everlasting
   and immutable things!

   Well may the Covenant of Grace be everlasting, for it was made with
   deliberation and foresight. If two persons enter into a contract and
   one, afterwards, wishes to escape from it, he may plead that he made
   the agreement in great haste, or under compulsion, or through being
   misinformed and over-persuaded--on any of these grounds he may object
   to the fulfillment of the covenant and thus may attempt to justify his
   failure to keep his word. Now, on God's part, nothing of the kind can
   ever be urged, for He made the Covenant, Himself, on His own
   suggestion, according to the good pleasure of His will. It was a free
   Covenant, entered into through the love of His own heart, according to
   the wise counsel of His infinite mind. He made it knowing all that
   would happen in time or in eternity! When He made the promise that
   whoever believes in Christ Jesus shall have everlasting life, He knew
   that those who believed in Christ Jesus would, nevertheless, be
   fallible creatures and would commit mistakes and sins--He made the
   promise well knowing what Believers would be!

   When He chose Abraham to be His friend, He knew what failures there
   would be in Abraham and in his seed. He made His choice deliberately,
   knowing the end from the beginning and foreseeing all the provocations
   which He would endure for 40 years in the wilderness--and how they
   would anger Him when they came to their own land. His choice of His
   redeemed was made deliberately and the promises made to them were given
   forth in the full foresight of all our unbelief, lukewarmness,
   backsliding, selfishness and folly! The Lord is not deceived in the
   subjects of His Grace. Hear how He puts it in the 48th of Isaiah, verse
   four--"Because I knew that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron
   sinew, and your brow brass." And again, verse eight--"I knew that you
   would deal very treacherously, and were called a transgressor from the
   womb." Man's love is blind, but the Lord's love sees all things--

   "He saw me ruined in the Fall Yet loved me notwithstanding all." He
   knew as well in that day when He called me, by His Grace, what I should
   be as He knows today! Every fault and folly stood clear before His
   vision and yet, notwithstanding all, He determined to give faith and,
   through faith, to give eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord!

   Dear Friends, every promise in the Bible is a part of the Covenant. The
   Covenant that now stands between the Believer and his God is on this
   wise, that you take Him to be your God and He takes you to be His
   people. He gives His promises to you and you rely upon them. He will
   bless you in this life and perfect you in the world to come. The tenor
   of the Covenant is not according to what you deserve, but according to
   the greatness of the Lord's love! In making this Covenant, it is clear
   that God knew from the beginning what He was doing. He made no mistake
   and said no more than He intended to fulfill. He deliberately said, "I
   will be their God, and they shall be My people." And in the day wherein
   we believed in Him, He guaranteed to us that we should never perish,
   neither should any pluck us out of His hand. This Covenant was made
   with such judicious deliberation and Infallible foresight, that there
   is no conceivable reason why it should be revoked. God is not a man
   that He should lie or repent.

   Moreover--and this is a point to which every child of God delights to
   turn his eyes--that covenant was sealed and ratified in the most solemn
   manner. When God made a Covenant with Abraham, there was a slaying of
   sacrifices and a dividing of their bodies and the Lord, under the image
   of a burning lamp, passed between the pieces--in this solemn
   sacrificial manner was the Covenant established. But when the Lord made
   a Covenant with us, the seal He gave was much more precious. He took
   from His bosom His only-begotten Son and He gave Him to be a Covenant
   to His people. He died to make the eternal Covenant sure. Paul speaks
   of "the blood of the everlasting covenant" and when we come to the
   communion table we hear our Lord say, "This cup is the new covenant in
   My blood." Jesus has gone into Heaven bearing with Him the blood of
   sprinkling! Can God deny His promise to His bleeding Son? Can He run
   back from the promise which He has made to the Only-Begotten in His
   death? "By His knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify many; for
   He shall bear their iniquities." Can these promises fail? Impossible!
   The very thought would be blasphemous! A Covenant which has been made
   in so solemn a manner, by the death of our great Surety and Sacrifice,
   can never be repealed, neglected, or changed!

   My dear Brothers and Sisters, we may rest fully sure that this Covenant
   will stand because the Divine Glory is wrapped up in it. Why did God
   promise to save men through faith in Christ Jesus? Why? That He might
   manifest to angels, principalities and powers, the splendor of His love
   and the riches of His Grace! He has selected for this reason the very
   worst of men, that in them He might show forth all long-suffering and
   display the magnificence of His pardoning love. He selected beings that
   were depraved and subject to grievous temptations that, by regenerating
   them by His Spirit and sustaining them by His Grace, He might display
   the greatness of His power! We are witnesses to time and to eternity of
   the Glory of the Lord! Are not these His own words--"This people have I
   formed for Myself: they shall show forth My praise"? The manifestation
   of the glorious love of God is the design of the Covenant--that where
   sin abounded, Grace might much more abound! He intends to show to all
   the ages His Truth, His faithfulness, His patience, His tenderness and
   His power. He designs to set Heaven and earth wondering until the whole
   universe breaks forth into the song-- "Who is a God like unto You, that
   pardons iniquity and passes by the transgression of the remnant of His
   heritage? He retains not His anger forever because He delights in
   mercy."

   God is more glorified in the Covenant of Grace than in creation, or in
   Providence--in fact, creation and Providence are but the temporary
   scaffold of the great house which God is building, even the God who
   inhabits the praises of Israel! The Lord cannot break His Word, nor
   forego His designs, nor forget His promises. Do not even think it! The
   crown jewels of God are staked and pawned upon the carrying out of the
   Covenant of Grace!

   Furthermore, it is not possible for God to break a Covenant. When you
   and I stand and tremble before a Divine promise for fear it should not
   be fulfilled, we cast a slur upon the truth, faithfulness and
   Immutability of God. Has He ever changed? Has He ever been false? Has
   He ever lifted His hand and sworn by Himself, because He could swear by
   no greater and by two Immutable things wherein it was impossible for
   God to lie--has He given us strong consolation and yet has He failed
   us? Far from it! Brothers and Sisters, there has been nothing in the
   past to cast suspicion upon the veracity of Jehovah! Therefore, should
   we doubt Him or distrust His Covenant?

   My text gives us an instance of a great strain that was put upon the
   Covenant. These people whom God had chosen to be His heritage
   constantly provoked Him! I cannot imagine a greater extent of sin than
   that which is pictured in this 106th Psalm. The chosen seed were
   degraded below other nations--they had forsaken their own God to go
   after alien deities. Was it ever known in any other case that a nation
   changed her gods? Yet Israel departed from the one living and true God
   willfully and wantonly, times without number! And God, instead of
   breaking His Covenant because of their treachery, had pity upon them!
   When He found them in the throes of their grief as the result of their
   sin, He turned His eyes upon His Covenant and, because of that
   Covenant, He delivered them!

   From which I gather that the Covenant purpose of God to save His own
   people shall stand fast, come what may. "If we believe not, yet He
   abides faithful: He cannot deny Himself." They that trust in the Lord,
   notwithstanding all the enormous weight of their sin, shall find Him
   faithful to His Word of pardon. He will keep His Word to sinners who
   put their trust in Him--and they shall be saved. Oh, glorious fact, the
   Covenant still exists!

   II. But, secondly, THIS COVENANT IS TOO OFTEN FORGOTTEN BY US. The
   children of Israel had quite forgotten the Covenant of their God.
   Elijah said, "They have forsaken Your Covenant." Starting aside like a
   deceitful bow

   which fails the archer in the day of battle, they had been false to
   their God and useless for those great purposes for which He had chosen
   and ordained them. Have we not failed in the same manner?

   Are not God's people at this day chargeable with forgetting the
   Covenant by their unspiritual carelessness? Have you thought of
   yourself, my Brothers and Sisters, as covenanted ones, as ones with
   whom God has entered into solemn compact, saying, "I am your shield and
   your exceedingly great reward: I am God Almighty: walk before Me, and
   be you perfect"? Have you realized your position as in covenant with
   God? When you have been staggered with its wonderful condescension and
   blessedness, as I have often been, have you not soon forgotten your
   great obligation and thought only of earthly things? Have you not
   doubted your God because you have forgotten His Covenant? When Heaven
   and earth were rejoicing, Zion said, "The Lord has forsaken me, and my
   Lord has forgotten me." Under such a slanderous charge, the Lord is
   gladly to speak with plaintive earnestness and ask, "Can a woman forget
   her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of
   her womb? Yes, she may forget, yet will I not forget you. Behold, I
   have engraved you upon the palms of My hands; your walls are
   continually before Me." Let it be realized by us and not passed over in
   a wicked carelessness, that as many as believe in Christ Jesus are in
   covenant with God and He has promised not to turn away from doing them
   good.

   This cannot be better described than as a marriage covenant, even as it
   is written in the Book of the Prophet Ho-sea--"And I will betroth you
   unto Me forever; yes, I will betroth you unto Me in righteousness, and
   in judgment, and in loving kindness, and in mercies. I will even
   betroth you unto Me in faithfulness: and you shall know the Lord." O my
   Brother and Sister Believers, as the man puts the ring on the woman's
   finger and the words are said, and she is his, and he is hers, so has
   God, by giving you faith, put the ring on your finger once and for
   all--and you are His and He is yours-- and He says to you, today, "You
   shall not be for another; so will I also be for you." Our response
   should be--"Other lords have had dominion over us, but now we are the
   Lord's alone." Oh, you covenanted ones, angels look at you with wonder!
   They regard you as the favorites of Heaven and yet you forget this and
   live as if there were no Covenant between God and you.

   Sometimes, too--and in the case of Israel it was so--we get away from
   that Covenant by wanton sin, or by negligent omission of most
   delightful duties. I need not go into the story of Israel, again. You
   see in this Psalm how they transgressed. They took no notice of the
   Covenant they had made with God, but violated all His precepts. May I
   ask whether we have not been guilty of this same sin? May not each man
   bury his face in his hands as he confesses, "My God, You know how often
   I have acted as if I were not in covenant with You. I have lived as if
   I were my own master instead of yielding myself wholly to Your service.
   I have sometimes acted as a man of the world would have done, and not
   as one that belonged to Christ"? Be ashamed and be confounded for all
   this! And then wonder and admire that Covenant still stands and the
   Lord has not recalled his gracious promises. He says, "Nevertheless I
   will remember My Covenant with you in the days of your youth and I will
   establish unto you an everlasting Covenant." This ought to yield in our
   hearts a harvest of repentance. It should bind us to God with intense
   affection that should tend towards perpetual sanctification from this
   day and onward!

   These people had forgotten their God for another reason, namely, in the
   depth of their sorrow. A great sorrow stuns men and makes them forget
   the best sources of consolation. A little blow will cause great pain,
   but I have frequently heard, in reports of assaults, that far more
   serious blows have occasioned no pain, whatever, because they have
   destroyed consciousness. So do extreme distresses rob men of their wits
   and cause them to forget the means of relief. Under the chastening rod,
   the smart is remembered and the healing promise is forgotten! The
   people of Israel, when they were under the afflicting visitations of
   God, failed to remember His Covenant from the crushing effect of their
   sorrow and despair. Is it so with any of us? I may be addressing at
   this moment an ear which has grown dull through grief, a heart that is
   forgetful because of heaviness. Do not men even forget to eat bread in
   the hour of dire calamity? Ah, my Brother! Your affliction seems more
   present to you than even God, Himself! The black sorrow that lowers
   over you eclipses all the lamps of Heaven and earth!

   May I be my Master's messenger to you, to remind you that He is still
   in covenant with you and though He causes grief, yet will He have
   compassion? He has said, "All things work together for good to them
   that love God," and He will keep His Word. He has also said, "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." Depend upon it, He will preserve you! "Cast your burden upon the
   Lord, and He shall sustain you; He shall never suffer the righteous to
   be moved." Remember, "He does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the
   children of men," but in love He corrects and chastens. Therefore,
   brush those tears away, anoint your head, wash your face and be of good
   courage, for the Lord will strengthen your heart--

   "What cheering words are these!

   Their sweetness who can tell?

   In time and to eternal days,

   'Tis with the righteous well."

   Oh that you could learn to sing in the dark like the nightingale and
   praise God out of the midst of the furnace like the three holy
   children! Oh that you may cry with Job, "Though He slay me, yet will I
   trust in Him!" This is what you should do and it may help you to do it
   if you will remember the Covenant which God has not forgotten.

   O Soul, why do you forget the Covenant? Fall back upon it and sing with
   Habakkuk, "Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit
   be on the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields
   shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and
   there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I
   will joy in the God of my salvation!" According to the Covenant, God is
   to be everything to you. The Covenant does not stipulate that you shall
   not lose your friends, nor does it promise that you shall not lose your
   property, nor that you shall have no sick-ness--the Covenant is that
   God will be everything to you. Take care that you use Him as such.
   "These things have I spoken unto you," said our Lord, "that in Me you
   might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of
   good cheer; I have overcome the world." If you have received the
   tribulation, be not satisfied till you have enjoyed the peace in Jesus
   which is equally promised! Alas, God's people forget this Covenant! We
   have said enough upon this.

   III. Though we forget the Covenant, yet GOD REMEMBERS HIS
   COVENANT--"For their sake He remembered His Covenant." What does this
   word mean? Beloved, of course the Covenant is always on the mind of
   God, for the infinitely wise God cannot forget anything. But the text
   means that He stands to His Covenant--He remembers it so as to cause it
   to abide. Even though these people had so grievously provoked Him, He
   remembers His Covenant so as to find in it a reason for pardoning their
   sin and dealing with them in a way of mercy. He meets the flood of
   their sins with the flood of His faithfulness--"Nevertheless for their
   sake He remembered His Covenant." He remembers it practically, that is,
   He puts it into effect and, in this case, He did so by repenting
   "according to the multitude of His mercies." He had formerly smitten
   them, but now He puts the rod away. He made His people to be pitied of
   all them that carried them away captive. He came to their relief and
   succor. And this is just what God will do with you, my afflicted
   Friend, if you turn to Him with cries and tears and a humble, penitent
   faith! He will remember, for your sake, His Covenant by acting in a
   covenant way towards you, according to that word in the Book of
   Zechariah, "As for you, also, by the blood of your covenant I have sent
   forth your prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water."

   Friend, God must remember His Covenant, for He can never forget what
   the making of that Covenant has cost Him. It cost Him nothing to make
   the heavens and the earth--He spoke and it was done. It costs him
   nothing to rule the nations--in the serenity of His Omnipotence, the
   Lord sits upon the floods--the Lord sits King forever. But to make the
   Covenant with man and to carry it out, cost Him His innermost Self! It
   cost Him His Only-Begotten--the eternal Son, the Well-Beloved, must die
   the death of the Cross--so that the Covenant may be established!
   Covenant-making was no trifle with God. I have heard people speak
   sneeringly of the Covenant. Indeed, no one of note preaches upon it,
   now, but yet it is the grandest of themes. It is a wondrous fact
   Godward, for it cost Him His dear Son's heart's blood. "It pleased the
   Father to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief," that this Covenant
   might be fulfilled and eternally settled!

   See how readily God turns to this Covenant. You can be sure that He
   delights in it, for no sooner do His children cry than He, at once,
   remembers for their sakes, His Covenant. It was only a cry forced from
   them by misery, but instead of upbraiding them for the past and
   shutting out their cry, He straightway remembered His Covenant! When a
   man is easily reminded of a thing, it shows that it is agreeable to him
   to think of it. We are sure that God's heart is much wrapped up in the
   Covenant of Grace since the feeble cries of His children remind Him of
   it.

   1 think, however, the reason why God remembers His Covenant most of all
   is because He remembers with whom He made it. A certain man had lived
   abroad for a while and there he found a friend with whom, for years, he
   enjoyed delightful fellowship. In due time he returned to England, to
   carry on a business, but he never forgot his friend. He had promised
   and entered into brotherly covenant, that he would help his friend's
   family and so, in due season, he received into his

   employment the young son of his old friend. And he was minded to
   instruct him and help him, and promote his interests. He had given his
   friend his right hand and said, "Trust your boy with me. I will see him
   through." The youth came to London and entered the service of his
   father's friend, with every prospect bright before him. But, alas, the
   boy proved unworthy. He fell into all sorts of vices and follies and
   grieved his friend--his father's friend. His employer said, "I shall be
   glad to get rid of this fellow for he is a burden to me. I cannot
   advance him for he is unworthy of my favor." Look how loath he is to
   deal severely with the boy, for his father's sake! He calls him into
   his private office and pleads and reasons with him. He says, "I have
   borne more with you than with anyone else in my establishment.
   Remember, it is for your father's sake. Had it not been for my promise
   to your father, I would have dismissed you long ago." One day he cries,
   "I really must dismiss him! He must go." But he thinks of the father
   and of their days of fond familiarity with each other and he cannot
   bear to deal harshly with the son of such a man and, therefore, he
   says, "I will try him again; I will still bear with him, for my
   promise's sake, which I made to his father."

   Now I am sure it was so with God and the seed of Abraham. These people
   had revolted and rebelled continually, but the Lord remembered Abraham,
   His friend. A memory rose before the Divine mind of the faithful man
   lifting the knife to slay his only son, Isaac, in obedience to the Most
   High. As the Lord saw that act of believing obedience, He seemed to
   say, "I will still have pity on his offspring--they are the most
   undeserving and provoking people that ever breathed, but I have entered
   into a Covenant with Abraham, My friend, and therefore I will have pity
   upon them." The fact is, with regard to the great God and you and me,
   that He would often say, "I must destroy them." But then He thinks of
   His dear Son upon the Cross. He hears ringing through the midnight of
   that great day of sorrow, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
   And the great heart of God is moved to pity us because of the death of
   His Son. There is merit enough in Jesus to remove all the demerit of
   our sins!

   The great God was not thinking of a dead man when He thought of
   Abraham. Our Savior tells us, "God is not the God of the dead, but of
   the living." Abraham is with God and God looked at Abraham, His living
   friend, and restrained His indignation when Abraham's children provoked
   Him. Jesus also lives! He has gone up on high; He sits at the right
   hand of God and when the Lord has looked at us and grown weary of our
   sins, He turns His eyes upon the perfections of His dear Son and He is
   well pleased, for His righteousness' sake, for He has magnified the Law
   and made it honorable. Thus the Lord turns back to the Covenant made
   with Jesus--He hears our cries and remembers, for our sake, His
   Covenant. Oh, the Grace of this! Because of Him with whom the Covenant
   of Grace is made, who is forever the Father's delight and the joy of
   His soul, the Father has compassion on us! Does it not make you pray,
   "Behold, O God, our shield, and look upon the face of Your Anointed"?
   Or, to quote our hymn, do we not say--

   "Him and then the sinner see, Look through Jesus' wounds on me?"

   The Person of the Lord Jesus is the Substance and Seal of the Covenant
   of Grace and God remembers it because He remembers Him!

   IV. I will finish with this last point, which I am sure you will feel
   to be of the utmost importance. If God remembers, for our sake, His
   Covenant, LET US REMEMBER IT. You that are the Lord's covenanted ones,
   think of the sacred promise and begin to enjoy it and live upon it
   practically. What is the Covenant? Here is one form of it--"I am God
   Almighty; walk before Me, and be you perfect." That is an early and
   condensed shape of it, that is to say, the Lord God Almighty gives
   Himself up to be our portion and we are to yield ourselves to Him, to
   walk before Him in perfect obedience. This also is the Covenant--"I
   will be their God, and they shall be My people." Come, Beloved, make
   God your God. This means--make God your everything! Say not, "I am
   poor." Not so, for God is yours and so all things are yours! Say not,
   "I am weak." Not so, God Almighty is yours--when you are weak, then you
   are strong. "But I have no wisdom." Is not the Lord Jesus made of God
   unto us wisdom, righteousness and sanctification? He that has God has
   everything!

   Will you belittle your God and limit the Holy One of Israel? Come, find
   your all in God! This is your part of the covenant, to accept God as
   being to you what He says He is. He has made Himself to be your All in
   All--accept Him as such. Did not David say, "He is all my salvation,
   and all my desire"? This is the portion and heritage of the children of
   God. "Cursed be the man that trusts in man and makes flesh his arm; but
   blessed is the man that trusts in the Lord and whose hope the Lord is."
   Cast yourself upon the Covenant and find rest in it. Sing in your heart
   of hearts--

   "He that has made my Heaven secure Will here all good provide, Since
   Christ is rich, can I be poor? What can Ineei beside?"

   "The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in
   green pastures: He leads me beside the still waters." Oh, the blessed
   result of standing to the Covenant and letting God be our All in All!

   In this Covenant it is incumbent that we rest alone in our God. You
   have not taken God to be your God if you cannot be content with Him,
   alone. Abraham forsook everything for God. He went to a country he had
   never seen, followed a path that had never been mapped out and God said
   to him, "Fear not, Abram: I am your shield." He was in the midst of
   enemies who would have destroyed him but for the mysterious protection
   which surrounded him like a shield. The Lord's word had gone forth,
   "Touch not My anointed and do My Prophets no harm." Abraham had no
   shield but his God and yet no man in the world dwelt in greater safety!
   God said to him, "I am your shield and your exceedingly great
   reward"--and so He was! Abraham once lamented that he had no seed and
   that the steward of his house was his only heir. But the Lord who had
   promised him a seed yet said to him," I am your exceedingly great
   reward." Not the seed, but his God must be his joy and crown! And
   Abraham felt it was so and, therefore, stood ready to surrender that
   seed if the Lord commanded.

   That is what the Lord would have you do, Beloved. Look not to what is
   seen with the eyes. Listen not to what is heard with the ear. Live in
   the secret place of the tabernacle of the Most High--in the place where
   faith takes the place of sense. Endure as seeing Him who is invisible.
   Penetrate into the substance which is unseen and pass by the shadow
   which is all that sense can discern. Live on the living God and then
   you know the secret of the Covenant! Your soul shall dwell at ease and
   your seed shall inherit the earth! Your soul shall be satisfied as with
   marrow and fatness and you shall praise the Lord with joyful lips!

   Remember, lastly, in order to look well to this Covenant, you must give
   yourselves wholly up to God. "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His
   righteousness." Live only to glorify God! Have no other aim or
   objective but your God. Brother, if God gives you much, glorify Him
   with it by your generous consecration. If He take it away, glorify Him
   by your patience under loss. Wherever you are, be always aiming to love
   your God with all your heart and with all your soul--and your neighbor
   as yourself and, verily, it shall be well with you and blessed shall
   you be--for God will remember, for your sake, His Covenant!

   I wish that the unconverted here would desire to be a participant in
   this Covenant. If you do so, the very desire is the gift of Divine
   Grace! Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you have entered into
   Covenant with God! He that has faith in the Lord Jesus is a child of
   the Father of the faithful and, therefore, he is a participant in the
   Covenant which God made with Abraham and his spiritual seed! O Lord of
   these poor stony hearts, raise up children unto Abraham, for Jesus'
   sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Pleading For Prayer

   (No. 1887)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 21, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Now I beseech you, Brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for
   the love of the Spirit, that you strive together with me in your
   prayers to God for me; that I may be delivered from those in Judea who
   do not believe, and that my service which I have for Jerusalem may be
   accepted of the saints; that I may come unto you with joy by the will
   of God, and may, with you, be refreshed. Now the God of Peace be with
   you all. Amen." Romans 15:30-33.

   THE Apostle of the Gentiles held a very useful and glorious office, but
   he had by no means a smooth path in life. When we read the account of
   his sufferings, persecutions and labors, we wonder how a single
   individual could have gone through them all. He was a true hero. Though
   a Hebrew of the Hebrews, he stands in the very front of the whole
   Gentile Church as its founder and teacher under God. And we owe to him
   what we can never fully estimate. When we consider the struggles of his
   life, we do not wonder that the Apostle was, sometimes, in great sorrow
   of heart and heavily burdened in spirit. He was so at the time when he
   wrote this Epistle to the Christian friends at Rome. It was a great
   delight to him to have to go to Jerusalem--it was a place which was
   much reverenced and loved by him. It was a greater privilege for him to
   go and exchange salutations with his brother Apostles and it was the
   most joyous privilege of all to be the bearer of a contribution from
   the Gentiles to relieve the necessities of the saints at Jerusalem. He
   rejoiced much more in that gift to Jewish Believers than if it had been
   anything for himself.

   But he was well aware that there were those in Judea who hated him with
   deadly hatred and would seek his life. He had been the rising hope of
   the Jewish party and he had become a Christian--therefore the bigoted
   Jews regarded him as an apostate from the faith of their fathers. They
   had, moreover, a special venom against him, since he was more bold than
   any other Christian teacher in going among the Gentiles and shaking
   off, altogether, the bonds of the Ceremonial Law. He also came out more
   clearly than any other man upon the Doctrines of Grace and salvation by
   the Cross of Christ-- and this provoked the fiercest hostility. Paul
   had also the apprehension that he would not be well received even by
   the Brethren at Jerusalem. He knew what a strong conservative feeling
   there was among the circumcision for the maintenance of the old Jewish
   Law and how he was a marked man because he had shaken off entirely that
   yolk of bondage. Thus he had fears as to foes and doubts about friends.
   His case was peculiarly difficult.

   What did Paul do when his spirit was greatly oppressed? He wrote to his
   Brothers and Sisters to pray for him! He asked the good friends at Rome
   that they would lift up their hearts earnestly and unitedly to God,
   that he might be preserved from the double evil which threatened him.
   In the last chapter of this Epistle we have the names of a great many
   of those private individuals at Rome to whom the Apostle appealed. We
   do not know any of them, except it is the Priscilla and Aquila, of whom
   we have heard elsewhere. But this great man, this Inspired Apostle of
   God who was not a whit behind the very chief of Christ's servants,
   makes his appeal to these unknown and humble individuals, that they
   would strive together with him in their prayers. I delight in this! It
   shows the lowly spirit of the Apostle Paul and it reveals to us his
   high value for the prayers of obscure men and women. He feels that he
   needs what the prayers of these people can bring to him--he is sure
   that without those prayers, he will be in danger of failure, but that
   with them he will be strong for his great enterprise. He sees what
   prayer can do and he would awaken it into powerful action.

   Does it astonish you that a man so rich in Grace as Paul should be
   asking prayers of these unknown saints? It need not astonish you, for
   it is the rule with the truly great to think most highly of others. In
   proportion as a man grows in

   Grace, he feels his dependence upon God and, in a certain sense, his
   dependence upon God's people. He decreases in his own esteem and his
   Brothers and Sisters increase! A flourishing tradesman, a man who has a
   large business is the man who needs others--he prospers by setting
   others to labor on his behalf. The larger his trade, the more he is
   dependent upon those around him. The Apostle was, so to speak, a great
   master trader for the Lord Jesus. He did a great business for his Lord
   and he felt that he could not carry it on unless he had the
   co-operation of many helpers. He did not so much need what employers
   harshly call, "hands," to work for him, but he did need hearts to plead
   for him and he, therefore, sent all the way to Rome to seek such
   assistance!

   He wrote to those whom he had never seen and begged their prayers, as
   if he pleaded for his life. The great Apostle entreats Tryphena and
   Tryphosa, and Mary and Julia to pray for him. His great enterprise
   needs their supplications! In a great battle the general's name is
   mentioned, but what could he have done without the common soldiers?
   Wellington will always be associated with Waterloo, but, after all, it
   was a soldiers' battle! What could the commander have done if those in
   the ranks had failed him? The commander-in-chief might very well have
   touched his hat to the least subaltern or to the humblest private and
   have said, "I thank you, Comrade. Without you, we could not have
   conquered." The chief troubles of the great day of Waterloo arose from
   certain very doubtful allies who wavered in the hour of battle--those
   were the general's weakness--but his hope and strength lay in those
   regiments which were as an iron wall against the enemy. Even thus, the
   faithful are our joy and crown, but the unstable are our sorrow and
   weakness.

   Every ministering servant of the Lord Jesus Christ is in much the same
   condition as Paul. True, we are of a lower grade and our work is on a
   smaller scale, but our needs are just as great. We have not all the
   Grace which Paul possessed and, for that very reason, we make the more
   pathetic an appeal to you, our friends and fellow helpers, while we use
   the Apostle's language, and cry, "We beseech you, Brethren, for the
   Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that you
   strive together with us in your prayers to God for us."

   I shall call your attention to this text with the longing in my own
   heart that I, myself, may more abundantly live in your prayers. I have
   to rejoice in the prayers of thousands of holy men and women who love
   me in the Lord. I am deeply grateful for the affectionate supplications
   of multitudes whom I have not seen in the flesh, to whom the printed
   sermons go week by week. I am a debtor, not only to the beloved people
   around me, but to a larger company all over the world. These are my
   comfort, my riches, my strength. To such I speak at this time. Beloved,
   I need your prayers more than ever! I am more and more conscious of
   their value--do not restrain them! Just now there is, to me, a special
   need of Grace on many accounts, and I hope that some of those who have
   long borne me up will give me a special portion of aid at this hour. I
   am not worthy to use the same language as the Apostle Paul, but I know
   no better, and my necessity is even greater than his--therefore I
   borrow his words, and say, "Brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake,
   and for the love of the Spirit, strive together with me in your prayers
   to God for me."

   In our text there are two things--prayer asked and a blessing
   given--"Now the God of Peace be with you all. Amen."

   I. First, here is PRAYER ASKED FOR.

   We will look at the Apostle's request for prayer in general and then,
   afterwards, we will look to the details which are mentioned in the 31st
   verse.

   First, here is a request to the people of God for prayer in general. He
   asks it for himself--"That you strive together with me in your prayers
   to God for me." He knew his own weakness. He knew the difficulty of the
   work to which he had been called. He knew that if he failed in his
   enterprise, it would be a sad failure, injurious through coming ages to
   the entire Church. He cried, "Agonize for me," because he felt that
   much depended upon him. It is like a man who is willing to lead the
   forlorn hope, but he says to his comrades, "You will support me." It is
   like one who is willing to go into a far country, bearing his life in
   his hands, but he plaintively exclaims, "You won't forget me, will you?
   Though you stay at home, will you think of me?" It reminds us of Carey,
   who says, when he goes to India, "I will go down into the pit, but
   Brother Fuller and the rest of you must hold the rope." Can we refuse
   the request? Would it not be treachery?

   It is not according to the heart of true yoke-fellows. It is not
   according to the instincts of our common humanity that we should desert
   any man whom we set in the front of the battle! If we choose a man to
   be our representative in the service of our God, we must not desert
   him! A man cannot be charged with egotism if he begs for personal
   support when he is engaged in labors for others and is not seeking
   success for himself but the success of the great cause! Under heavy
   respon-

   sibilities he does well to enlist the sympathies and prayers of those
   whom he is serving--and he has a right to have them! Beloved friends,
   if you are with me in the great battle for God and His Truth--and if
   you count me worthy to bear the brunt of this war, I beseech you, for
   Christ's sake, support me by your importunate wrestling at the Throne
   of Grace. Pray for all ministers and workers, but pray, also, for me! I
   am, of all men, the most miserable if you deny me this!

   Observe in what relationship he regards them when he puts the request.
   "Now," he says, "I beseech you, Brethren." "I beseech you." It is the
   strongest word of entreaty he can find. It is as if he said, "I go down
   on my knees to you and implore you. I ask it of you as the greatest
   favor you can do me. I ask it of you as the dearest token of your love,
   that you strive together with me in your prayers to God for me." He
   does not call them companions, or fellow workers, or friends. He
   addresses them as Brothers and Sisters. "You are my Brethren," he says,
   "I feel a love to you, you Romans, converted to God. I have a longing
   in my heart to see you and though I have not so much as spoken with
   you, face to face, yet we are Brethren. The life that is in you beats
   also in my heart. We are born again of the same Father, we are
   quickened by the same Spirit, we are redeemed by the same
   Savior--therefore, spiritually--we are Brethren. Shall not Brethren
   pray for one another?"

   He seems to say, "If you are Brethren, show this token of your
   brotherhood. You cannot go up with me to Jerusalem and share my danger,
   but you can be with me in spirit--and, by your prayers, surround me
   with Divine protection. I do not ask you to come, you Romans, with your
   swords and shields, and make a bodyguard about me, but I do beg of you,
   my true Brothers and Sisters, if you are, indeed so, to agonize
   together with me in your prayers to God for me." If there remains in
   the Christian Church any brotherhood whatever, every leader of the
   host, every preacher of the Gospel, every pastor of a Church should
   receive the proof of that brotherhood in the shape of daily
   intercession! Every sent servant of God beseeches his Brethren that
   they strive together with him in prayer to God for him--and I am not a
   whit behind any of them in the urgency of my request to the many who
   have, until now, proved themselves my Brethren! I know your love has
   not grown cold to me. I have abundant evidence of that. O my Brothers
   and Sisters, act as Brothers and Sisters to me, now, and beseech the
   Lord to bless me!

   But observe what kind of prayer he asks for--"That you strive
   together"--that you "agonize"--that is the word. You have before you,
   in this expression, a reminder of that great agony in Gethsemane, and I
   should think the Apostle had that picture before his eyes. In the
   Garden, our Lord not only prayed as was His habit, but with strong
   crying and tears He made His appeal to God. "Being in an agony He
   prayed more earnestly." He wrestled till He "sweat, as it were, great
   drops of blood falling down to the ground," but none agonized together
   with Him! That was one of the deepest shades of the picture, that He
   must tread the winepress alone and, of the people there, must none be
   with Him. Yet did our Lord seem to ask for sympathy and help--

   "Backward and forward thrice He ran, As if He sought some help from
   man," but He found none even to watch with Him one hour, much less to
   agonize with Him! The Apostle felt that an agony alone, was too bitter
   for him and he, therefore, piteously cries, "I beseech you, Brethren,
   that you agonize with me in prayer to God for me."

   Now, as the disciples ought to have sympathized with the Savior and
   entered into His direful grief, but did not, even so it may happen to
   us. But, Brothers and Sisters, I trust that the unfaithfulness to the
   Master will not be repeated upon His servants. It remains to all that
   are true Brethren in Christ, that when they see a man in agony of heart
   for Christ's sake and for souls' sake, they should bow the knee side by
   side with him and be true Brethren to him. When his labors become
   intense; when his difficulties are multiplied; when his heart begins to
   sink and his strength is failing him--then the man must wrestle with
   his God--and then his Brethren must wrestle at his side! When the
   uplifted hands of Moses are known to bring a blessing, Aaron and Hur
   must hold them up when they are seen to grow weary! When Jacob is
   struggling at Jabbok and we see him there, we must turn in and help him
   to detain the Angel of the Covenant. If one man can hold Him fast by
   saying, "I will not let You go unless You bless me," surely a score of
   you can make a cordon round about Him and speedily win the blessing!

   What may not a hundred do? Let us try the power of agonizing prayer! Do
   we know, as yet, what it means? Let us rise as one man and cry, "O
   Angel, whose hands are full of benedictions, we will not let You go,
   except You give us Your own blessing--the blessing of Your Covenant!"
   If two of you are agreed as touching anything concerning the Kingdom,

   you shall be heard. But what if hundreds and thousands of the faithful
   are of one mind and one mouth in this matter? Will you not at once cry
   unto God, "Bless Your servants! Establish the work of our hands upon
   us! Yes, the work of our hands, establish it!"? You see, it is earnest
   prayer which Paul asks for, not the prayer which foams itself away in
   words, but prayer with force, with energy, with humble boldness, with
   intensity of desire, with awful earnestness--prayer which, like a deep,
   hidden torrent, cuts a channel even through a rock! His request was,
   "that you wrestle with me in your prayers to God for me." And this is
   our request this day.

   He does not, however, wish for a single moment to exclude himself from
   the prayer, for he says, "that you agonize with me." He is to be the
   first to agonize. This should be the position of every minister. We
   ought to be examples of wrestling prayer. How I wish that you could
   realize more fully the work allotted to the Apostles when they said
   that it was not reasonable that they should leave the Word of God to
   serve tables! There was a difference about the distribution of the alms
   among the widows and the 12 declared that they could not attend to such
   a matter, for, they said, "We will give ourselves continually to prayer
   and to the ministry of the Word." This would be Heaven to me! But
   notice that at least half, and the first half of their work lay in
   prayer! Oh, if that could be our portion! If we could but have full
   space for prayer and meditation and were set free from the petty
   secularities and differences incident to Church life! Oh that we could
   have more to do with Him from whose right hand the supreme blessing
   comes--that were a joy indeed! But even if the Apostle could thus,
   himself, agonize, he did not feel satisfied, for he beseeches others to
   wrestle with him in prayer to God. He sought communion in supplication!
   Even thus would I beseech you, Brothers and Sisters, to come with me
   into the inner chamber! Come with me into the Holy of Holies! Let us,
   together, approach the Mercy Seat! Lend me the help of all the
   spiritual force you have, that we may, together, agonize in prayer to
   God so that the blessing may descend upon the enterprises now in my
   hands! You see the sort of prayer which is needed, even the effectual
   fervent prayer of righteous men--and may the Holy Spirit brace up our
   spirits that we may be able to join in such agonizing in this time of
   need.

   This verse is one of the most intense I ever remember to have read,
   even in so intense a book as this Holy Scripture. Observe the fervency
   of the pleading--"Now I beseech you, Brethren, for the Lord Jesus
   Christ's sake." What an argument! That name is full of power with true
   hearts. You owe Him everything--you owe Him your souls! You owe Him
   every hope for the future, every comfort in the present and every happy
   memory of the past! Your life would have been worse than death apart
   from Him. His love to you constrains you because you thus judge that
   when one died for all, all died, and that you so died that from now on
   you should not live unto yourselves but unto Him. Now, he says, as you
   cannot repay the Lord Jesus Christ personally, repay it to His servant
   by your prayers! Join him in his agony in remembrance of that greater
   agony in which none could join, by which you were redeemed from death
   and Hell! If there is any love to Christ in a Christian's heart, he
   must pray that the Holy Spirit would bless the ministry of the Word!
   Surely your hearts must be turned to stone if you do not plead for a
   blessing upon that ministry by which you, yourselves, have been brought
   to Christ! If I have been a spiritual father to any of you, you will
   not fail to pray for me, will you? As you love that Savior whom I
   preach, I beseech you, for the sake of Jesus Christ, that you strive
   together with me in your prayers to God for me!

   But he adds to that, another argument--"for the love of the Spirit." If
   the Spirit of God has, indeed, loved you and proved it by quickening
   and sanctifying you, then pray for His ministers! If the Spirit of God
   has created a love in you which is stronger than mere natural
   affection--a love which does not arise out of any fleshly relationship,
   or any mere association, or any casual partiality, but a love which the
   Holy Spirit, Himself, creates and fosters in your heart--then pray for
   me! If there is such love in you, not natural and temporary, but
   spiritual and, therefore, everlasting, then pray for the Lord's
   servant! If there is in you a love which may exist, no, will exist in
   Heaven, itself--if there is such a love in you, then, says the Apostle,
   I beseech you, pray for me!

   Brothers and Sisters, I say the same. Unless our profession is a lie,
   we love each other and we must, therefore, show that love by our
   prayers for one another. Especially if any of you have been brought to
   the Lord Jesus Christ by the ministry of any man whom God favors with
   His help--then that man must live forever in your hearts and be
   remembered in your prayers! You cannot escape from the obligation of
   intercession for the man who brought you to Jesus! As long as you live
   and as long as he remains faithful, you must bear him on your heart in
   supplication. It must be so--the love of the Spirit has knit us to one
   another and none can put us asunder! Ours is no feigned unity, but
   deep, true and real! In Christ Jesus, my Brothers and Sisters, there
   has been begotten in our hearts an affection for one another which
   death,

   itself, shall not destroy! We will not be separated! Then, by the love
   of the Spirit, I beseech you that you agonize together with me in your
   prayers to God for me! Every word pleads with tears--there is not a
   wasted letter in the whole verse!

   Why do you think the Apostle, at that special time, asked these
   Brethren to pray for him so? Was it not because he believed in the
   Providence of God? He was going up to Jerusalem and the Jews would seek
   to slay him. They hunted him in every place and now he was going into
   the lion's den--but he believed that God, in Providence, could overrule
   all things, so that he should not suffer injury at the hands of
   blood-thirsty zealots, but should be delivered out of their malicious
   power. We, also, believe in God that works all things! Therefore, let
   us pray that all opposition to His Gospel may be overcome.

   He believed, also, in the influence that God can have upon men's
   hearts, especially upon the hearts of His own people. He was afraid
   that the Jewish Believers would be very cold to him and, therefore, he
   prays God that His Holy Spirit may warm their hearts and make them full
   of love, so that the offerings he took to them from the Grecian
   Churches might be accepted and might foster a sense of hearty
   fellowship in the hearts of the Hebrew saints towards their Gentile
   Brethren. Do you not, also, believe that the hearts of all men are in
   the hands of the Lord? Do you not believe in the supremacy of the will
   of God over the free will of man? Do you not rejoice that there is not
   only a Providence that shapes our ends, but a secret influence which
   molds men's hearts? Therefore it is that we urge you to plead with God
   that we, also, may have acceptance with His people. We desire to render
   them much service and to enjoy their loving regard. It is painful to us
   to differ with any--but joyous to be in communion with all parts of the
   Church of our Lord Jesus Christ.

   What is more than this, the Apostle believed in the power of the
   prayers of simple people so to move the mind of God that He would exert
   His hand in Providence and His influence over the hearts of men. Never
   let us imagine that the doctrine of the fixity of events, or the
   supremacy of law, as the philosophers call it, is at all contrary to
   the Truth of God that prayer is effectual for its own ends and
   purposes. In olden times a warrior was going forth to battle for his
   country and a certain preacher of the Word said to him, "My prayer is
   made continually for you that you may be victorious." The warrior, in
   his philosophic doubt, replied that he saw no use in the promised
   prayers, for if God had determined to give him victory, he would have
   it without prayer--and if fate had decreed that he should be defeated,
   prayers could not prevent it. To which the godly man very properly
   replied, "Then take off your helmet and your coat of mail and hang up
   your sword and buckler. Go not forth to battle at all with your
   men-at-arms, for, indeed, if the Lord is to conquer your enemies, He
   can do it without your weapons! And if He will not prosper you, it is
   in vain for you to mount your war horse."

   The argument, when carried out, answers itself--there is, in truth, no
   force in it! The net result of such reasoning would be absolute
   inaction! Common sense shows us how absurd it is! All means are to be
   used, notwithstanding the eternal purpose of God, for that purpose
   includes means and their uses. We declare that among the most potent
   means in all the world is prayer--and this must not be neglected! There
   are certain ascertained forces and among those forces, always to be
   reckoned with and relied upon, is the force of the cry of God's dear
   children to their great Father in Heaven! In other words, the power of
   prayer! In prayer we present the Sacrifice of God's own Son to God's
   own Self and prevail by its means. O Brothers and Sisters, we ask your
   prayers without doubt or question! We know and are persuaded that they
   will avail much! By your power in prayer, God's power will be set in
   motion and by that force all will be accomplished which shall be for
   His Glory and for our good!

   I hope you have been interested so far. May God grant you may have been
   influenced by these remarks and excited to incessant intercession!

   In our text there is, in the next place, a statement of the Apostle's
   desires in detail. When we pray, we should make a point of praying for
   something distinctly. There is a general kind of praying which fails
   from need of precision. It is as if a regiment of soldiers should all
   fire off their guns--possibly somebody would be killed--but the
   majority of the enemy would be missed. I believe that at the battle of
   Waterloo there were no arms of precision, they had only the old Brown
   Bess and, though the battle was won, it has been said that it took as
   much lead to kill a man as the weight of the man's body. This is a
   figure of the comparative failure of indistinct, generalizing prayer!
   If you pray just anyway, if it is with sincerity, a measure of blessing
   results from it, but it will take a great deal of such praying to
   accomplish much. But if you plead for certain mercies definitely and
   distinctly, with firm, unstaggering faith, you shall richly succeed!

   Our Apostle gives his friends three things to pray for. First, he would
   have them ask that he might be delivered from them that did not believe
   in Judea. He was delivered, not perhaps in the precise manner which he
   hoped for, but he was,

   to the letter, delivered from the unbelieving Jews. Certain zealots
   bound themselves with an oath that they would not eat till they had
   slain him, but they went a long while hungry, for the arm of the Roman
   Empire was stretched forth to protect Paul against his infuriated
   countrymen! Strange, it was, that Caesar's power must be as a shield
   around the feeble servant of the mighty God! From raging mobs and
   secret confederacies, Paul was saved, apparently, by Roman soldiers,
   but secretly by Roman saints! Against all oppositions from without let
   us pray.

   They were also to ask of the Lord that his service which he had for
   Jerusalem might be accepted of the saints. This also was granted--the
   Brethren did accept Paul's embassy. He met with little difficulty. The
   contribution was accepted with much gratitude and we do not hear,
   afterwards, of bickering between the Jewish and the Gentile Believers.
   Such was done in the Apostolic college at Jerusalem to create a
   heartier feeling towards the Gentile Brethren and the Kingdom of Christ
   was, from that day on, acknowledged to be over all races and kindreds
   of men! Paul accomplished very much and had comfort in his mission to
   the mother Church. Oh that we, also, could be of service to that
   community of Christians to which we belong! Brethren, pray that our
   word may be accepted by our own Brothers and Sisters, for some of these
   are wandering from the way of the Truth of God.

   They were to pray, next, that he might come unto them with joy by the
   will of God and might, with them, be refreshed. That was to be the
   third prayer. It is to be observed that this petition was also heard,
   but it was not answered as Paul might have expected or desired. He did
   come to them according to the will of God rather than by his own will.
   He may or may not have been on his way to Spain, as he purposed--he
   certainly was on his way to prison--as he had not purposed. His first
   prayer, that he might be delivered from them that believe not in Judea,
   was not answered in the way of his never being in danger from them, or
   coming into difficulties through them--but he was delivered out of
   their hands by becoming a prisoner to the Roman governor and being
   sent, under his guardianship, to Caesar, to whom he had appealed. By
   that means he traveled to Rome at the expense of the Imperial
   Government and, on landing at Puteoli, close to Naples, he found
   friends waiting for him! And, as soon as the Roman Brethren heard of
   his landing, they dispatched a company to meet him at Appii-Forum, a
   place on the road to Rome where they stopped to change horses and to
   take refreshments.

   There he saw his prayer beginning to be answered. Further on, at a
   place called the Three Taverns, more dear friends from Rome met him,
   "whom, when Paul saw, he thanked God and took courage." The Roman
   saints had long looked for the Apostle and at last he came--an
   ambassador in bonds, a prisoner who must go to the Praetorian guardroom
   and there await the emperor's will and pleasure! They had not expected
   to see him in such a case, but they were not ashamed of his chains.
   They made a considerable journey to meet him and he was filled with
   their company and refreshed by their fellowship as he had desired. Even
   his imprisonment may have been a rest for him--it could not have
   involved such wear and tear as his former labors and persecutions!

   We read the other day that Holloway Jail is a choice place for rest and
   enjoyment to a man with a clear conscience and, I dare say that Paul
   found his confinement at Rome to be rather a refreshment than otherwise
   after his years of weariness and buffetings! There he was shut away
   from his furious persecutors. Certainly no Jew could take his life
   there! He was not afraid of being stoned while in imperial custody and
   probably he was the most at ease because he had not to preach to such
   as the Corinthians and the Galatians, from whom he had asked no prayers
   but had received much grief. He asked the Ephesians and Philippians,
   the Colossians and the Romans to pray for him--but from the others he
   would have received little benefit, for they were very weak in the
   faith and troubled with sad disorders. He was, in his imprisonment,
   clear of those fickle and quarrelsome folk who had often pained him.
   His confinement under guard would not permit his preaching himself to
   death, or wearing himself out with watching--the soldier who kept him
   would make him reasonable and so, I have no doubt, by the will of God
   he received precisely what he had asked his friends to pray for-- "that
   I may come unto you with joy by the will of God, and may with you be
   refreshed."

   It would not have been Paul's will to have come to Rome with chains on
   his wrists, binding him to a soldier, but he did so come, for this was
   the will of God and was the most sure way to his being refreshed. Paul
   refreshed the Romans and they refreshed him--and thus he had a happy
   sojourn in Rome. God was with him and he had the privilege of
   testifying of Christ before the Roman emperor and making Jesus to be
   known even in Caesar's household! Thus, Brothers and Sisters, the Lord
   heard the prayer of His servants. He will also hear our prayers--not in
   my way, not in your way--but in the way which Paul has indicated,
   namely, "by the will of God." Therefore pray for a blessing and leave
   the way of its

   coming to the good Lord who knows all things! Rest sure that it will
   come by the will of God and then it will be according to our will if we
   are in full accord with the Lord, as we ought to be.

   See the efficacy of prayer, then, in Paul's case. Though the desire did
   not seem to be accomplished, yet it was so. When the Lord does not
   appear to hear His people's prayers, He is hearing them none the less!
   Yes, rather He is answering them all the more fully and graciously!
   When the Lord replies by terrible things in righteousness rather than
   by sweet, smooth deeds of kindness, He is doubly blessing us. Do not
   vessels often sail more swiftly with a side wind than they would do
   with a directly fair wind? The sails are more under the action of a
   side wind than if it blew directly behind them. The Lord often gives
   His people side gales and these turn out to be the best they can have.
   Let us trust the Divine Wisdom and rest assured that the Lord will do
   better things for us than we can ask or even think!

   II. I have but little time left to notice THE BLESSING GIVEN, indeed,
   it occupies but one verse in the text, and that verse is the shortest
   of the four and, therefore, I may give it due consideration in a brief
   space. See how Paul, with all his anxiety to gain the prayers of his
   friends, cannot finish the chapter without uttering a benediction upon
   them. "Now the God of Peace." What a blessed name! In the Old Testament
   Scriptures He is the "Lord of Hosts." But that is never the style in
   the New Testament. The "Lord of Hosts" is God as He was revealed under
   the old dispensation in the majesty of His power, "the Lord is a man of
   war, the Lord is His name." But now that our Lord Jesus Christ has
   further unveiled the Father, we see Him as "the God of Peace." Is not
   this a greater, sweeter, and more cheering title? O God of Peace, we
   long for Your Presence with us all!

   What does Paul wish for them? "The God of Peace be with you." Not only
   "peace be with you," but, better far-- "The God of Peace"--and so the
   Source and Fountain of Peace! He wishes them not the drops, but the
   Fountain itself! Not the light, only, but the sun! He would have God
   Himself to be with us as "the God of Peace." He would have the Lord to
   fill us with an inward peace, so that we may never be disturbed in our
   minds. He would have the Lord shed abroad His own peace in our hearts,
   so that we may always feel at peace with God--no cloud coming between
   our souls and our heavenly Father--no ground of quarrel arising between
   us and the great King.

   When "the God of Peace" makes peace with us and so keeps our minds at
   peace within, He also creates peace with one another, so that we bear
   one anther's burdens and those who are strong are willing to bear the
   infirmities of the weak. "The God of Peace be with you."

   Our Apostle says, "the God of Peace be with you all"--not with some of
   you, with Priscilla and Aquila, but with Mary, Amplias, Apelles,
   Tryphena, Tryphosa and with "the beloved Persis which labored much in
   the Lord." And with "Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother." And
   "Philologus, and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas and all the
   saints which are with them." The benediction is, "The God of Peace be
   with you all." Unless all are at peace, none can be perfectly quiet.
   One Brother who is quarrelsome can keep a whole Church in turmoil! One
   fellow knocking about the boat may stop the oarsmen, rend the sails and
   run the boat on a rock! I should not like one stray shot from a rifle
   to be traveling near my windows, for even if all the other shots which
   are in the armory should lie quiet, that one flying danger might be the
   end of me! Oh that the peace of God may be with all the saints in all
   the Churches! It is a blessed benediction. Such a benediction we
   pronounce with all our heart this morning--"Now the God of Peace be
   with you all. Amen."

   Do you not think that Paul implies that this will be the result of
   their prayer? If you will but strive together with me in your prayers,
   then the God of Peace will be with you. May we not view it as the
   reward of such prayer? You have prayed for the Lord's servant and now
   God will bless you with an abundance of peace. Or did he hint that this
   is a necessary condition and cause of true prayer? When they were all
   at peace among themselves, happy in their own minds and full of
   communion with God, then they would begin to pray for God's servants.
   Put it first or last, may this peace come to you and may there be
   hearty pleading prayer to God that His blessing may rest upon the
   Church and upon the testimony of His servants.

   Now we draw to a close, Brethren. Prayer is sought most earnestly by me
   at this moment. I speak, I think, in the name of all those who have to
   stand prominent as preachers of the Gospel of Christ. We beseech you,
   our beloved Friends and fellow laborers, that you wrestle together with
   us with God on our behalf that our testimony may be with power and with
   success, for the times are very difficult. The very air is full of
   unbelief! The solid earth seems well near to tremble with
   unrest--social and political--a deep and terrible unrest that fills us
   with dark forebodings of the future. The hope

   of the world lies, under God, in the Church of Jesus Christ. Therefore
   we beseech you, Brothers and Sisters, if in other days and softer times
   you did, in a measure, hold back prayer, do so no longer, but wrestle
   for us with God! What is coming no man knows. We wish not to play the
   Cassandra, prophesying evil things continually, but who is there,
   though he is a Prophet bright-eyed as Isaiah, who can give you a good
   forecast? Are not all the signs of the times big with terror? Therefore
   to your tents, O Israel, and in your tents cry to God that a blessing
   may come upon this nation and the world!

   Men are perishing all around us! Whatever may have been the state of
   the world in Paul's day--and it was, no doubt, horrible to the last
   degree--it is not much better now! The population of the world has so
   largely increased since those days that all her problems have become
   more difficult. We are much more aware of the miseries of vast
   populations than people could have been in Apostolic times. Paul knew
   but little of the world except that portion of it which bordered on the
   Mediterranean Sea--the whole world, then, seemed to lie in a
   nutshell--but now our discoverers and geographers, our steamboats and
   telegraphs have brought a greater world close to our doors. We share
   with the sorrows of India! We groan in the darkness of Africa! The
   cries of China are at our doors and Egypt's griefs are our own! If a
   population anywhere is starving or suffering oppression, our newspapers
   declare the evil to all readers and general feeling is awakened! Our
   sympathies for humanity are called forth much more than in former times
   and, so far, this is good, but then it heaps heavier burdens upon the
   thoughtful and increases the terrible responsibility of those who are
   able to lend a helping hand! Increase of knowledge demands increase of
   prayer! "The world for Jesus" is our motto, but how can the world be
   for Jesus if the Church of Jesus does not wrestle in her prayers?

   Dear Brothers and Sisters, remember that the Truth of God, alone, if
   not enforced by the Spirit of God, will not sink into the hearts of
   men. They say, "Truth is mighty and will prevail." But this is only
   half the case. If you put the Truth of God upon a shelf and let the
   dust lie on her record, of what use will it be to men? Truth
   unknown--how can it enlighten? Truth not felt--how can it renew? There
   must, therefore, be the preacher to call attention to the Truth--but
   how shall they preach except they are sent? And how shall they be sent
   aright except in the power of the Holy Spirit? And how can we expect
   the Holy Spirit if we do not ask for His working? Therefore, we pray
   you, wrestle together with us in your prayers, that the Holy Spirit may
   go forth with the Truth of God and by the Truth of God!

   This will be to your profit. No man hears his pastor preach without
   deriving some benefit from him, if he has earnestly prayed for him. The
   best hearers who get the most out of a man are those who love him best
   and pray most for him. God can make us dry wells to you if you offer no
   prayers for us! He can make us clouds that are full of rain if you have
   pleaded with God on our behalf!

   But the master argument with which we close is that which Paul
   mentions--"For Christ's sake." Oh, for God's sake, for His name and
   Glory's sake, if you would honor the Father, if you would let Jesus see
   of the travail of His soul, wrestle together with us in your prayers
   for the Divine working! It is so, Brothers and Sisters, you know it is
   so that we are wholly dependent upon the Spirit of God! If it is so,
   that without God's blessing we can do nothing, and that God's blessing
   is given if we inquire of God for it, then I need not press you
   further--you will pray for me and for other preachers of the Word of
   God! If your hearts are right, you will, each one, resolve to offer
   special, continuous and fervent prayer in private and in your families
   and in our holy convocations--and these shall deepen into an agony
   before God-- and then a blessing shall be given us which we shall
   scarcely have room enough to receive! Lord, teach us to pray!
     __________________________________________________________________

                            The Blood of Sprinkling

   A Sermon

   (No. 1888)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, February 28th, 1886, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [1]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of
   sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. See that ye
   refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him
   that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away
   from him that speaketh from heaven."--Hebrews 12:24, 25.

   WE ARE JOYFULLY REMINDED by the apostle that we are not come to Mount
   Sinai and its overwhelming manifestations. After Israel had kept the
   feast of the Passover, God was pleased to give his people a sort of
   Pentecost, and more fully to manifest himself and his law to them at
   Sinai. They were in the wilderness, with the solemn peaks of a desolate
   mountain as their center; and from the top thereof, in the midst of
   fire, and blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and with the sound of a
   trumpet, God spake with them. "The earth shook, the heavens also
   dropped at the presence of God: even Sinai itself was moved at the
   presence of God, the God of Israel." We are not come to the dread and
   terror of the old covenant, of which our apostle saith in another
   place, "The covenant from the Mount Sinai gendereth unto bondage"
   (Galatians 4:24.) Upon the believer's spirit there rests not the
   slavish fear, the abject terror, the fainting alarm, which swayed the
   tribes of Israel; for the manifestation of God which he beholds, though
   not less majestic, is far more full of hope and joy. Over us there
   rests not the impenetrable cloud of apprehension; we are not buried in
   a present darkness of despair; we are not tossed about with a tempest
   of horror; and, therefore, we do not exceedingly fear and quake. How
   thankful we should be for this! Israel was privileged even in receiving
   a fiery law from the right hand of Jehovah; but we are far more
   favored, since we receive "the glorious gospel of the blessed God."

   Our apostle next tells us what we are come to. I suppose he speaks of
   all the saints after the death and resurrection of our Lord and the
   descent of the Holy Ghost. He refers to the whole church, in the midst
   of which the Holy Spirit now dwells. We are come to a more joyous sight
   than Sinai, and the mountain burning with fire. The Hebrew worshipper,
   apart from his sacrifices, lived continually beneath the shadow of the
   darkness of a broken law; he was startled often by the tremendous note
   of the trumpet, which threatened judgment for that broken law; and thus
   he lived ever in a condition of bondage. To what else could the law
   bring him? To convince of sin and to condemn the sinner is its utmost
   power. The believer in the Lord Jesus Christ lives in quite another
   atmosphere. He has not come to a barren crag, but to an inhabited city,
   Jerusalem above, the metropolis of God. He has quitted the wilderness
   for the land which floweth with milk and honey, and the material mount
   which might be touched for the spiritual and heavenly Jerusalem. He has
   entered into fellowship with an innumerable company of angels, who are
   to him, not cherubim with flaming swords to keep men back from the tree
   of life, but ministering spirits sent forth to minister to the heirs of
   salvation. He is come to the joyous assembly of all pure intelligences
   who have met, not in trembling, but in joyous liberty, to keep the
   feast with their great Lord and King. He thinks of all who love God
   throughout all worlds, and he feels that he is one of them; for he has
   come to "the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are
   written in heaven." Moreover, he has come "to God the Judge of all,"
   the umpire and rewarder of all the chosen citizens who are enrolled by
   his command, the ruler and judge of all their enemies. God is not to
   them a dreadful person who speaks from a distance; but he is their
   Father and their Friend, in whom they delight themselves, in whose
   presence there is fullness of joy for them. Brethren, our fellowship is
   with the Father, our God. To him we have come through our Lord Jesus
   Christ. Moreover, in the power of the Spirit of God we realize the
   oneness of the church both in heaven and earth, and the spirits of just
   men made perfect are in union with us. No gulf divides the militant
   from the triumphant; we are one army of the living God. We sometimes
   speak of the holy dead; but there are none such: they live unto God;
   they are perfected as to their spirits even now, and they are waiting
   for the moment when their bodies also shall be raised from the tomb to
   be again inhabited by their immortal souls. We no longer shudder at the
   sepulcher, but sing of resurrection. Our condition of heart, from day
   to day, is that of men who are in fellowship with God, fellowship with
   angels, fellowship with perfect spirits.

   We have also come to Jesus, our Savior, who is all and in all. In him
   we live; we are joined unto him in one spirit; he is the Bridegroom of
   our souls, the delight of our hearts. We are come to him as the
   Mediator of the new covenant. What a blessed thing it is to know that
   covenant of which he is the Mediator! Some in these days despise the
   covenant; but saints delight in it. To them the everlasting covenant,
   "ordered in all things, and sure," is all their salvation and all their
   desire. We are covenanted ones through our Lord Jesus. God has pledged
   himself to bless us. By two immutable things wherein it is impossible
   for him to lie, he has given us strong consolation, and good hope
   through grace, even to all of us who have fled for refuge to the Lord
   Jesus. We are happy to live under the covenant of grace, the covenant
   of promise, the covenant symbolized by Jerusalem above, which is free,
   and the mother of us all.

   Then comes the last thing of all, mentioned last, as I shall have to
   show you, for a purpose. We have come "to the blood of sprinkling." On
   that first day at Sinai no blood of sprinkling was presented, but
   afterwards it was used by divine order to ratify the national covenant
   which the tribes made with Jehovah at the foot of the hill. Of that
   covenant the Lord says, "which my covenant they brake, although I was
   an husband unto them." He never brake his covenant, but they brake it;
   for they failed to keep that condition of obedience without which a
   covenant founded upon works falls to the ground. We have come to the
   blood of sprinkling which has fallen upon a covenant which never shall
   be broken; for the Lord hath made it to endure though rocks and hills
   remove. This is called by the Holy Ghost "a better covenant, which was
   established upon better promises." We are come to the covenant of
   grace, to Jesus the Mediator of it, and to his blood, which is the seal
   of it. Of this last we are going to speak at this time--"The blood of
   sprinkling which speaketh better things than that of Abel."

   I shall need this morning to occupy all the time with what I regard as
   only the first head of my discourse. What is it? "The blood of
   sprinkling." It will be our duty afterwards to consider where we
   are--"we are come unto this blood;" and, thirdly, to remember what
   then? "See that ye refuse not him that speaketh."

   I. FIRST, WHAT IS IT? What is this "blood of sprinkling?" In a few
   words, "the blood of sprinkling" represents the pains, the sufferings,
   the humiliation, and the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, which he
   endured on the behalf of guilty man. When we speak of the blood, we
   wish not to be understood as referring solely or mainly to the literal
   material blood which flowed from the wounds of Jesus. We believe in the
   literal fact of his shedding his blood; but when we speak of his cross
   and blood we mean those sufferings and that death of our Lord Jesus
   Christ by which he magnified the law of God; we mean what Isaiah
   intended when he said, "He shall make his soul an offering for sin;" we
   mean all the griefs which Jesus vicariously endured on our behalf at
   Gethsemane, and Gabbatha, and Golgotha, and specially his yielding up
   his life upon the tree of scorn and doom. "The chastisement of our
   peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed." "Without
   shedding of blood there is no remission;" and the shedding of blood
   intended is the death of Jesus, the Son of God.

   Remember that his sufferings and death were not apparent only, but true
   and real; and that they involved an incalculable degree of pain and
   anguish. To redeem our souls cost our Lord an exceeding sorrowfulness
   "even unto death;" it cost him the bloody sweat, the heart broken with
   reproach, and specially the agony of being forsaken of his Father, till
   he cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Our Mediator
   endured death under the worst possible aspects, bereft of those
   supports which are in all other cases of godly men afforded by the
   goodness and faithfulness of God. His was not merely a natural death,
   but a death aggravated by supernatural circumstance, which infinitely
   intensified its woe. This is what we mean by the blood of Christ, his
   sufferings, and his death.

   These were voluntarily undertaken by himself out of pure love to us,
   and in order that we might thereby be justly saved from deserved
   punishment. There was no natural reason on his own account why he
   should suffer, bleed, and die. Far from it,--"He only hath
   immortality." But out of supreme love to us, that man might be forgiven
   without the violation of divine rectitude, the Son of God assumed human
   flesh, and became in very deed a man, in order that he might be able to
   offer in man's place a full vindication to the righteous and
   unchangeable law of God. Being God, he thus showed forth the wondrous
   love of God to man by being willing to suffer personally rather than
   the redeemed should die as the just result of their sin. The matchless
   majesty of his divine person lent supreme efficacy to his sufferings.
   It was a man that died, but he was also God, and the death of incarnate
   God reflects more glory upon law than the deaths of myriads of
   condemned creatures could have done. See the yearning of the great God
   for perfect righteousness: he had sooner die than stain his justice
   even to indulge his mercy. Jesus the Lord, out of love to the Father
   and to men, undertook willingly and cheerfully for our sakes to magnify
   the law, and bring in perfect righteousness. This work was so carried
   out to the utmost, that not a jot of the suffering was mitigated, nor a
   particle of the obedience foregone: "he became obedient unto death,
   even the death of the cross." Now he hath finished transgression, made
   an end of sin, and brought in everlasting righteousness: for he has
   offered such an expiation that God is just, and the justifier of him
   that believeth. God is at once the righteous Judge, and the infinitely
   loving Father, through what Jesus hath suffered.

   Brethren, though I have said that there was no reason why the Son of
   God should bleed and die on his own account, yet towards us there was a
   reason. Our Lord from of old in the eternal covenant was constituted
   the head and representative of all who were in him; and so, when the
   time came, he took the place, bore the sin, and suffered the penalty of
   those whom the Father gave him from before the foundations of the
   world. He is as much the representative man as the first Adam was the
   representative man; and as in Adam the sin was committed which ruined
   us, so in the second Adam the atonement was made which saves us. "As in
   Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." There was no
   other person so fit to undertake the enterprise of our redemption as
   this second man, who is the Lord from heaven. He properly, but yet most
   generously and spontaneously, came and shed his precious blood, in the
   room and place and stead of sinners, to bring the guilty near to God.

   But the text does not merely speak of the blood shed, which I have
   explained to you, but of "the blood of sprinkling." This is the
   atonement applied for divine purposes, and specially applied to our own
   hearts and consciences by faith. For the explanation of this sprinkling
   we must look to the types of the Old Testament. In the Old Testament
   the blood of sprinkling meant a great many things; in fact, I cannot
   just now tell you all that it signified. We meet with it in the Book of
   Exodus, at the time when the Lord smote all the first-born of Egypt.
   Then the blood of sprinkling meant preservation. The basin filled with
   blood was taken, and a bunch of hyssop was dipped into it, and the
   lintel and the two side-posts of every house tenanted by Israelites
   were smeared with the blood; and when God saw the blood upon the house
   of the Israelite, he bade the destroyer pass that family by, and leave
   their first-born unharmed. The sprinkled blood meant preservation: it
   was Israel's passover and safeguard.

   The sprinkled blood very frequently signified the confirmation of a
   covenant. So it is used in Exodus 24., which I read to you just now.
   The blood was sprinkled upon the book of the covenant, and also upon
   the people, to show that the covenant was, as far as it could be,
   confirmed by the people who promised, "All that the Lord hath said will
   we do." The blood of bulls and of goats in that case was but a type of
   the sacrificial blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. The lesson which we
   learn from Exodus 24:is that the blood of sprinkling means the blood of
   ratification or confirmation of the covenant, which God has been
   pleased to make with men in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Since
   Jesus died, the promises are Yea and Amen to all believers, and must
   assuredly be fulfilled. The covenant of grace had but one condition,
   and that condition Jesus has fulfilled by his death, so that it has now
   become a covenant of pure and unconditional promise to all the seed.

   In many cases the sprinkling of the blood meant purification. If a
   person had been defiled, he could not come into the sanctuary of God
   without being sprinkled with blood. There were the ashes of a red
   heifer laid up, and these were mixed with blood and water; and by their
   being sprinkled on the unclean, his ceremonial defilement was removed.
   There were matters incident to domestic life, and accidents of outdoor
   life, which engendered impurity, and this impurity was put away by the
   sprinkling of blood. This sprinkling was used in the case of recovery
   from infectious disease, such as leprosy; before such persons could
   mingle in the solemn assemblies, they were sprinkled with the blood,
   and thus were made ceremonially pure. In a higher sense this is the
   work of the blood of Christ. It preserves us, it ratifies the covenant,
   and wherever it is applied it makes us pure; for "the blood of Jesus
   Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." We have our hearts sprinkled
   from an evil conscience; for we have come unto the obedience and
   sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.

   The sprinkling of the blood meant, also, sanctification. Before a man
   entered upon the priesthood the blood was put upon his right ear, and
   on the great toe of his right foot, and on the thumb of his right hand,
   signifying that all his powers were thus consecrated to God. The
   ordination ceremony included the sprinkling of blood upon the altar
   round about. Even thus hath the Lord Jesus redeemed us unto God by his
   death, and the sprinkling of his blood hath made us kings and priests
   unto God for ever. He is made of God unto us sanctification, and all
   else that is needed for the divine service.

   One other signification of the blood of the sacrifice was acceptation
   and access. When the high priest went into the most holy place once a
   year, it was not without blood, which he sprinkled upon the ark of the
   covenant, and upon the mercy-seat, which was on the top thereof. All
   approaches to God were made by blood. There was no hope of a man
   drawing near to God, even in symbol, apart from the sprinkling of the
   blood. And now to-day our only way to God is by the precious sacrifice
   of Christ; the only hope for the success of our prayers, the acceptance
   of our praises, or the reception of our holy works, is through the
   ever-abiding merit of the atoning sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ.
   The Holy Ghost bids us enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus;
   there is no other way.

   There were other uses besides these, but it may suffice to put down the
   sprinkling of the blood as having these effects, namely, that of
   preservation, satisfaction, purification, sanctification, and access to
   God. This was all typified in the blood of bulls and of goats, but
   actually fulfilled in the great sacrifice of Christ.

   With this as an explanation, I desire to come still closer to the text,
   and view it with great care; for to my mind it is singularly full of
   teaching. May the Holy Spirit lead us into the truth which lies herein
   like treasure hid in a field!

   First. The blood of sprinkling is the center of the divine
   manifestation under the gospel. Observe its innermost place in the
   passage before us. You are privileged by almighty grace to come first
   to Mount Zion, to climb its steeps, to stand upon its holy summit, and
   to enter the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. In those
   golden streets, surrounding the hallowed shrine, you behold an
   innumerable company of angels. What a vision of glory! But you must not
   rest here; for the great general assembly, the festal gathering, the
   solemn convocation of the enrolled in heaven, is being held, and all
   are there in glad attire, surrounding their God and Lord. Press onward
   to the throne itself, where sits the Judge of all, surrounded by those
   holy spirits who have washed their robes, and, therefore, stand before
   the throne of God in perfection.

   Have you not come a long way? Are you not admitted into the very center
   of the whole revelation? Not yet. A step further lands you where stands
   your Savior, the Mediator, with the new covenant. Now is your joy
   complete; but you have a further object to behold. What is in that
   innermost shrine? What is that which is hidden away in the holy of
   holies? What is that which is the most precious and costly thing of
   all, the last, the ultimatum, God's grandest revelation? The precious
   blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot--the
   blood of sprinkling. This comes last; it is the innermost truth of the
   dispensation of grace under which we live. Brethren, when we climb to
   heaven itself, and pass the gate of pearl, and wend our way through the
   innumerable hosts of angels, and come even to the throne of God, and
   see the spirits of the just made perfect, and hear their holy hymn, we
   shall not have gone beyond the influence of the blood of sprinkling;
   nay, we shall see it there more truly present than in any other place
   beside. "What!" say you, "the blood of Jesus in heaven?" Yes. The
   earthly sanctuary, we are told, was purified with the blood of bulls
   and of goats, "but the heavenly things themselves with better
   sacrifices than these."(Hebrews 9:23) When Jesus entered once for all
   into the holy place, he entered by his own blood, having obtained
   eternal redemption for us: so saith the apostle in the ninth chapter of
   this epistle. Let those who talk lightly of the precious blood correct
   their view ere they be guilty of blasphemy; for the revelation of God
   knows no lower deep, this is the heart and center of all. The
   manifestation of Jesus under the gospel is not only the revelation of
   the Mediator, but especially of his sacrifice. The appearance of God
   the Judge of all, the vision of hosts of angels and perfect spirits, do
   but lead up to that sacrifice which is the source and focus of all true
   fellowship between God and his creatures. This is the character which
   Jesus wears in the innermost shrine where he reveals himself most
   clearly to those who are nearest to him. He looks like a lamb that has
   been slain. There is no sight of him which is more full, more glorious,
   more complete, than the vision of him as the great sacrifice for sin.
   The atonement of Jesus is the concentration of the divine glory; all
   other revelations of God are completed and intensified here. You have
   not come to the central sun of the great spiritual system of grace till
   you have come to the blood of sprinkling--to those sufferings of
   Messiah which are not for himself, but are intended to bear upon
   others, even as drops when they are sprinkled exert their influence
   where they fall. Unless you have learned to rejoice in that blood which
   taketh away sin, you have not yet caught the key-note of the gospel
   dispensation. The blood of Christ is the life of the gospel. Apart from
   atonement you may know the skin, the rind, the husk of the gospel; but
   its inner kernel you have not discovered.

   I next ask you to look at the text and observe that this sprinkling of
   the blood, as mentioned by the Holy Ghost in this passage, is
   absolutely identical with Jesus himself. Read it. "To Jesus the
   mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that
   speaketh better things than that of Abel. See that ye refuse not him
   that speaketh." He saith it is the blood that speaketh; and then he
   proceeds to say, "See that ye refuse not him that speaketh." This is a
   very unexpected turn, which can only be explained upon the supposition
   that Jesus and the blood are identical in the writer's view. By what we
   may call a singularity in grammar, in putting him for it, the Spirit of
   God intentionally sets forth the striking truth, that the sacrifice is
   identical with the Savior. "We are come to the Savior, the mediator of
   the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh; see
   that ye refuse not him." Beloved friends, there is no Jesus if there is
   no blood of sprinkling; there is no Savior if there is no sacrifice. I
   put this strongly, because the attempt is being made nowadays to set
   forth Jesus apart from his cross and atonement. He is held up as a
   great ethical teacher, a self-sacrificing spirit, who is to lead the
   way in a grand moral reformation, and by his influence to set up a
   kingdom of moral influence in the world. It is even hinted that this
   kingdom has never had prominence enough given to it because it has been
   overshadowed by his cross. But where is Jesus apart from his sacrifice?
   He is not there if you have left out the blood of sprinkling, which is
   the blood of sacrifice. Without the atonement, no man is a Christian,
   and Christ is not Jesus. If you have torn away the sacrificial blood,
   you have drawn the heart out of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and robbed
   it of its life. If you have trampled on the blood of sprinkling, and
   counted it a common thing, instead of putting it above you upon the
   lintel of the door, and all around you upon the two side-posts, you
   have fearfully transgressed. As for me, God forbid that I should glory
   save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, since to me that cross is
   identical with Jesus himself. I know no Jesus but he who died the just
   for the unjust. You can separate Jesus and the blood materially; for by
   the spear-thrust, and all his other wounds, the blood was drawn away
   from the body of our Lord; but spiritually this "blood of sprinkling"
   and the Jesus by whom we live, are inseparable. In fact, they are one
   and indivisible, the self-same thing, and you cannot truly know Jesus,
   or preach Jesus, unless you preach him as slain for sin; you cannot
   trust Jesus except you trust him as making peace by the blood of his
   cross. If you have done with the blood of sprinkling, you have done
   with Jesus altogether; he will never part with his mediatorial glory as
   our sacrifice, neither can we come to him if we ignore that character.
   Is it not clear in the text that Jesus and the blood of sprinkling are
   one? What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. Note this
   right carefully.

   Thirdly, observe that this "blood of sprinkling" is put in close
   contact with "the new covenant." I do not wonder that those who are lax
   in their views of the atonement have nothing honorable to say
   concerning the covenants, old or new. The doctrine of the covenants is
   the marrow of divinity; but these vain-glorious spirits affect to
   despise it. This is natural, since they speak slightingly of the
   atonement. What covenant is there without blood? If it be not ratified,
   if there be no sacrifice to make it sure, then is it no covenant in the
   sight of God or of enlightened men. But, O beloved, ye who know your
   Lord, and follow on to know him yet better, to you the covenant of
   promise is a heritage of joy, and his atonement is most precious as the
   confirmation of it. To us the sacrificial death of our Lord is not a
   doctrine, but the doctrine, not an outgrowth of Christian teaching, but
   the essence and marrow of it. To us Jesus in his atonement is Alpha and
   Omega, in him the covenant begins and ends. You see how it was
   confirmed by blood. If it be a man's covenant, if it be confirmed, it
   standeth; but this is God's covenant, confirmed with promises, oaths
   and blood, and it stands fast for ever and ever. Every believer is as
   much interested in that covenant as was Abraham the father of
   believers; for the covenant was made with Abraham and his spiritual
   seed; and in Christ it is confirmed to all that seed for ever by his
   most precious blood. That, also, is evident enough in the text: fail
   not to consider it well.

   But, fourthly, I want you to notice that according to the text the
   blood is the voice of the new dispensation. Observe that on Sinai there
   was "the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they
   that heard entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any
   more." You look, therefore, under the new dispensation, for a voice,
   and you do not come to any till you reach the last object in the list,
   and there see "the blood of sprinkling that speaketh." Here, then, is
   the voice of the gospel; it is not the sound of a trumpet, nor the
   voice of words spoken in terrible majesty; but the blood speaks, and
   assuredly there is no sound more piercing, more potent, more
   prevailing. God heard the voice of Abel's blood and visited Cain with
   condign punishment for killing his brother; and the precious blood of
   Jesus Christ, the Son of God, cries in the ears of God with a voice
   which is ever heard. How can it be imagined that the Lord God should be
   deaf to the cry of his Son's sacrifice? Lo, these many ages the blood
   has cried--"Forgive them! Forgive them! Accept them! Deliver them from
   going down into the pit, for I have found a ransom!"

   The blood of sprinkling has a voice of instruction to us even as it has
   a voice of intercession with God. It cries to us, "See the evil of sin!
   See how God loveth righteousness! See how he loveth men! See how
   impossible it is for you to escape from the punishment of sin except by
   this great sacrifice in which the love and the justice of God equally
   appear! See how Jehovah spared not his own Son, but freely delivered
   him up for us all."

   What a voice there is in the atonement!--a voice which pleads for
   holiness and love, for justice and grace, for truth and mercy. "See
   that ye refuse not him that speaketh."

   Do you not hear it? If you take away the blood of sprinkling from the
   gospel, you have silenced it. It has no voice if this be gone. "Oh,"
   they say, "the gospel has lost its power!" What wonder when they have
   made it a dumb gospel! How can it have power when they take away that
   which is its life and speech? Unless the preacher is evermore preaching
   this blood, and sprinkling it by the doctrine of faith, his teaching
   has no voice either to rouse the careless or to cheer the anxious. If
   ever there should come a wretched day when all our pulpits shall be
   full of modern thought, and the old doctrine of a substitutionary
   sacrifice shall be exploded, then will there remain no word of comfort
   for the guilty or hope for the despairing. Hushed will be for ever
   those silver notes which now console the living, and cheer the dying; a
   dumb spirit will possess this sullen world, and no voice of joy will
   break the blank silence of despair. The gospel speaks through the
   propitiation for sin, and if that be denied, it speaketh no more. Those
   who preach not the atonement exhibit a dumb and dummy gospel; a mouth
   it hath, but speaketh not; they that make it are like unto their idol.

   Let me draw you nearer still to the text. Observe, that this voice is
   identical with the voice of the Lord Jesus; for it is put so. "The
   blood of sprinkling that speaketh. See that ye refuse not him that
   speaketh." Whatever the doctrine of the sacrifice of Jesus may be, it
   is the main teaching of Jesus himself. It is well to notice that the
   voice which spoke from Sinai was also the voice of Christ. It was Jesus
   who delivered that law the penalty of which he was himself to endure.
   He that read it out amidst the tempest was Jesus. Notice the
   declaration--"Whose voice then shook the earth." Whenever you hear the
   gospel, the voice of the precious blood is the voice of Jesus himself,
   the voice of him that shook the earth at Sinai. This same voice shall
   by-and-by shake, not the earth only, but also heaven. What a voice
   there is in the blood of sprinkling, since indeed it is the voice of
   the eternal Son of God, who both makes and destroys! Would you have me
   silence the doctrine of the blood of sprinkling? Would any one of you
   attempt so horrible a deed? Shall we be censured if we continually
   proclaim the heaven-sent message of the blood of Jesus? Shall we speak
   with bated breath because some affected person shudders at the sound of
   the word "blood?" or some "cultured" individual rebels at the
   old-fashioned thought of sacrifice? Nay, verily, we will sooner have
   our tongue cut out than cease to speak of the precious blood of Jesus
   Christ. For me there is nothing worth thinking of or preaching about
   but this grand truth, which is the beginning and the end of the whole
   Christian system, namely, that God gave his Son to die that sinners
   might live. This is not the voice of the blood only, but the voice of
   our Lord Jesus Christ himself. So saith the text, and who can
   contradict it?

   Further, my brethren, from the text I learn another truth, namely, that
   this blood is always speaking. The text saith not "the blood of
   sprinkling that spoke," but "that speaketh." It is always speaking, it
   always remaineth a plea with God and a testimony to men. It never will
   be silenced, either one way or the other. In the intercession of our
   risen and ascended Lord his sacrifice ever speaketh to the Most High.
   By the teaching of the Holy Ghost the atonement will always speak in
   edification to believers yet upon the earth. It is the blood that
   speaketh, according to our text, this is the only speech which this
   dispensation yields us. Shall that speech ever be still? Shall we
   decline to hear it? Shall we refuse to echo it? God forbid. By day, by
   night, the great sacrifice continues to cry to the sons of men, "Turn
   ye from your sins, for they cost your Savior dear. The times of your
   ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to
   repent, since he is able to forgive and yet be just. Your offended God
   has himself provided a sacrifice; come and be sprinkled with its blood,
   and be reconciled once for all." The voice of this blood speaks
   wherever there is a guilty conscience, wherever there is an anxious
   heart, wherever there is a seeking sinner, wherever there is a
   believing mind. It speaketh with sweet, familiar, tender, inviting
   voice. There is no music like it to the sinner's ear: it charms away
   his fears. It shall never cease its speaking so long as there is a
   sinner yet out of Christ; nay, so long as there is one on earth who
   still needs its cleansing power because of fresh backslidings. Oh, hear
   ye its voice! Incline your ear and receive its blessed accents: it
   says, "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though
   your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be
   red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

   This part of my discourse will not be complete unless I bid you notice
   that we are expressly told that this precious blood speaks "better
   things than that of Abel." I do not think that the whole meaning of the
   passage is exhausted if we say that Abel's blood cries for vengeance,
   and that Christ's blood speaks for pardon. Dr. Watts puts it:--

   "Blood has a voice to pierce the skies:

   'Revenge!' the blood of Abel cries;

   But the dear stream when Christ was slain

   Speaks peace as loud from ev'ry vein."

   That is quite true; but I conceive that it is not all the sense, and
   perhaps not even the sense here intended. Revenge is scarcely a good
   thing; yet Abel's blood spake good things, or we should hardly read
   that Christ's blood speaks "better things." What does the blood of Abel
   speak? The blood of Abel speaks to a complete and believing obedience
   to God. It shows us a man who believes God, and, notwithstanding the
   enmity of his brother, brings to God the appointed sacrifice of faith,
   strictly following up, even to the bitter end, his holy obedience to
   the Most High. That is what the blood of Abel says to me; and the blood
   of Jesus says the same thing most emphatically. The death of Jesus
   Christ was the crown and close of a perfect life, it was a fit
   completion of a course of holiness. In obedience to the Great Father,
   Jesus even laid down his life. But if this be all the blood of Jesus
   speaks, as some say that it is, then it does not speak better things
   than the blood of Abel; for it only says the same things in a louder
   voice. The martyrdom of any saint has a voice for obedience to God as
   truly as the martyrdom of Jesus; but the death of our Lord says far
   more, infinitely more, than this: it not only witnesses to complete
   obedience, but it provides the way by which the disobedient may be
   forgiven and helped to obedience and holiness. The cross has a greater,
   deeper, gladder gospel for fallen men than that of a perfect example
   which they are unable to follow.

   The blood of Abel said this, too--that he was not ashamed of his faith,
   but witnessed a good confession concerning his God, even to the death;
   he put his life in his hand, and was not ashamed to stand at the altar
   of God, and avow his faith by obediently offering the ordained
   sacrifice. Now, I grant you that the blood of Jesus also declares that
   he was a faithful and true witness, who willingly sealed his witness
   with his blood. He proved by shedding his blood that he could not be
   turned aside from truth and righteousness, even though death stood in
   his way; but if that is all that the blood of sprinkling speaketh, it
   saith no better things than the blood of Abel. "Be faithful unto
   death," is the voice of Abel as well as of Jesus. Jesus must have said
   more than this by his blood-shedding.

   The blood of Abel said good things; that is implied in the fact that
   the blood of Jesus Christ says better things; and no doubt the blood of
   Abel rises to the dignity of teaching self-sacrifice. Here was a man, a
   keeper of sheep, who by his mode of life laid out his life for the good
   of those committed to his charge; and at the last, in obedience to God,
   he yielded himself up to die by a brother's hand. It was the first
   draught of a picture of self-sacrifice. Our Lord Jesus Christ also made
   a complete self-sacrifice. All his life long he gave himself to men. He
   lived never for himself. The glory of God and the good of men were
   united in one passion which filled his whole soul. He could say, "The
   zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." His death was the completion of
   his perfect self-sacrifice. But if that were all, the blood of Jesus
   saith no better thing than Abel's death saith, though it may say it
   more emphatically.

   Our Lord's blood saith "better things than that of Abel;" and what doth
   it say? It saith, "There is redemption through his blood, the
   forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace." "He his own
   self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to
   sins should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes we were healed."
   "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be
   made the righteousness of God in him." The voice of the blood is this,
   "For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and
   their iniquities will I remember no more." "The blood of Jesus Christ
   his Son cleanseth us from all sin." Now, my brethren, these are better
   things than Abel's blood could say, and they are what the blood of
   Jesus speaks to every one upon whom it is sprinkled by faith. It must
   be applied to each one of us by faith, or it says nothing to us. But
   when it falls on each believing individual, it saith to him words of
   blessing which pacify his conscience and delight his soul.

   The apostle says that "Ye are come to the blood of sprinkling." Is it
   so? Has that blood of sprinkling ever been applied to you? Do you feel
   it? Are you preserved? Are you cleansed? Are you brought nigh to God?
   Are you sanctified unto God's service by the atoning sacrifice? If so,
   then go you out, and in firm confidence that never can be shaken, make
   your glory in the blood of sprinkling. Tell every sinner whom you meet
   that if the Lord Jesus wash him he shall be whiter than snow. Preach
   the atoning sacrifice of the Lamb of God and then sing of it. Recollect
   that wondrous threefold song in the fifth chapter of the Revelation,
   where, first of all, the elders and living creatures round about the
   throne, sing a new song, saying, "Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us
   to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and
   nation." Then ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of
   thousands of angels take up the strain and cry, "Worthy is the Lamb
   that was slain." Nor is this all; for the apostle tells us, "Every
   creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and
   such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying,
   Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth
   upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever." See you not that
   they all extol the Lord Jesus in his sacrificial character as the Lamb
   slain? I have scant patience with those who dare to put this great
   truth into the background, and even sneer at it or misrepresent it of
   set purpose. Sirs, if you would be saved you must have the blood of
   Jesus sprinkled upon you. He that believeth not in Christ Jesus, in
   Jesus the atoning sacrifice, must perish. The eternal God must repulse
   with infinite disgust the man who refuses the loving sacrifice of
   Jesus. Inasmuch as he counted himself unworthy of this wondrous
   sacrifice, this marvellous expiation there remaineth no other sacrifice
   for sin, and nothing for him but that eternal blackness and darkness
   and thunder which were foreshadowed at Sinai. Those who refuse the
   atonement which wisdom devised, which love provided, and which justice
   has accepted, have signed their own death-warrant, and none can wonder
   that they perish. The Lord lead us to glory in Christ crucified. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Exodus 20:1-21; 24:1-8.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--236, 279, 291.

   * For this line of thought I am much indebted to a chapter in an
   admirable book, entitled "Every-day Life," by C. H. Waller, M. A. Shaw
   and Co.
     __________________________________________________________________

                    The Blood of Sprinkling (Second Sermon.)

   A Sermon

   (No. 1889)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Evening, February 28th, 1886, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [2]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Ye are come . . .. to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to
   the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.
   See that ye refuse not him that speaketh."--Hebrews 12:24, 25.

   IN THE FORMER part of this sermon the text grew upon me so largely that
   it was quite impossible to express all its meaning. In as condensed a
   manner as possible I explained what was meant by "the blood of
   sprinkling," and I also enlarged upon the high position which this
   precious blood occupies in the gospel dispensation; but I was obliged
   to leave for this second occasion two practical questions which the
   text is sure to raise if it be carefully thought upon.

   The doctrinal portion of our meditation was greatly blest to our
   hearts, for God the Holy Ghost refreshed us thereby: may he now fulfill
   his sacred office with equal power, by revealing the things of Christ
   to us in a way which shall cause self-examination, and arouse us to
   give more earnest heed than ever to the voice of him that speaketh from
   heaven. No theme can excel in value and excellence that of the precious
   blood of Jesus. Unless the Holy Spirit shall prepare our hearts, even
   with such a topic as this before us, we shall be nothing profited; but
   if he will show these choice truths unto us, we shall be comforted,
   quickened, edified, and sanctified by them.

   It is a considerable disadvantage to some of you that you have not
   heard the former part of the sermon; but I hope you will read it at
   your leisure, and then, if you read this in connection with it, the
   whole subject will be before you. Not that I can set it all out in
   words: I only mean that it will be before you as the ocean is before us
   when we sit on the beach, or as the heavens are before us when we gaze
   upon Arcturus with his sons. Finite language fails to convey the
   infinite; and if ever there was a text which deserved to be called
   infinite, it is that which is now before us.

   Having touched, as with a swallow's wing, the surface of our great
   theme under the first division of the sermon, I have now to speak with
   you upon the second, which is this: Where are we with reference to this
   blood of sprinkling? The text says, "Ye are come." We are not come to
   Mount Sinai, but we are come to Mount Zion; to angels and their God; to
   saints and their Mediator, and to the blood of sprinkling. This having
   had its share of our thoughts, we are to conclude with the question,
   What then? If we have come to this blood of sprinkling, what then? The
   answer is, "See that ye refuse not him that speaketh." Let us give to
   the wondrous truths revealed to us by the sacrifice of Jesus the most
   earnest heed, that our souls may hear and live. May the Holy Spirit
   enable us to hear the heavenly voice at this hour! "Faith cometh by
   hearing; may it come at this time by our reverently hearing the voice
   of the blood of sprinkling!

   II. My business under the second head of my discourse is to answer the
   question, WHERE ARE WE? I have to explain what is meant by the
   expression which is found in the twenty-second verse of the chapter "Ye
   are come." Link the twenty-second verse with this twenty-fourth, and
   read, "Ye are come to the blood of sprinkling."

   Well, first, ye are come to the hearing of the gospel of the atoning
   sacrifice. The Israelites left Egypt, and, having passed the Red Sea,
   they entered the desert, and at length came to the mount of God, even
   to Sinai, that terrible mountain. In the valley around that throne of
   God they were gathered together in their thousands. What a sight that
   vast multitude must have been! Probably two millions or more were
   encamped before the mount. Then, "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 his saints; from his right hand went a fiery law for
   them." Israel crouched in the valley below, subdued by the terrible
   majesty of the scene, and overawed by the trumpet voice which pealed
   forth from the midst of the thick darkness. The Lord spake with them,
   but their uncircumcised ears could not bear his glorious voice, and
   they entreated that Moses might act as mediator, and speak in God's
   stead.

   You and I have not come to such a terrible sight at this hour. No
   quivering mountain smokes before you, no terrible lightnings appall
   you, no thunders distress you.

   "Not to the terrors of the Lord,

   The tempest, fire, and smoke;

   Not to the thunder of that word

   Which God on Sinai spoke:

   "But we are come to Sion's hill

   The city of our God,

   Where milder words declare his will,

   And spread his love abroad."

   Among the great things which you are called upon to consider under the
   gospel is "the blood of sprinkling." Count yourselves happy that you
   are privileged to hear of the divinely appointed way of reconciliation
   with God. You are come to hear, not of your sin and its doom, not of
   the last judgment and the swift destruction of the enemies of God; but
   of love to the guilty, pity for the miserable, mercy for the wicked,
   compassion for those who are out of the way. You are come to hear of
   God's great expedient of wisdom, by which he, by the same act and deed,
   condemns sin, and lets the sinner live; honors his law, and yet passes
   by transgression, iniquity, and sin. You are come to hear, not of the
   shedding of your own blood, but of the shedding of his blood who, in
   his infinite compassion, deigned to take the place of guilty men--to
   suffer, that they might not suffer, and die, that they might not die.
   Blessed are your ears, that they hear of the perfect sacrifice! Happy
   are your spirits, since they are found where free grace and boundless
   love have set forth a great propitiation for sin! Divinely favored are
   you to live where you are told of pardon freely given to all who will
   believe on the name of the Lord Jesus, as the Lamb of God which taketh
   away the sin of the world. You hear at this hour not law, but gospel;
   not the sentence of judgment, but the proclamation of grace. "See that
   ye refuse not him that speaketh." It is no small thing for the kingdom
   of God to have come so nigh unto you. Awake to a sense of your
   privilege: you do not sit in heathen midnight, nor in Popish gloom, nor
   in Jewish mist; but day has dawned on you: do not refuse the light.

   In a better sense, going a little further, we have not only come to the
   blood of sprinkling by hearing about it, but we have come to it because
   the great God now deals with us upon methods which are founded and
   grounded upon the atoning sacrifice of Christ. If God were to deal with
   us upon the terms laid down at Sinai, he need not be long in finding
   the "two or three witnesses" to prove that we have broken his law. We
   should be ourselves compelled to plead guilty; no witnesses would be
   required. Truly, he hath not dealt with us after our sins. We are so
   faulty that we can draw no comfort from the prospect of judgment by
   law; we appeal to mercy alone; for on any other ground our case is
   hopeless. "This do, and thou shalt live" is a covenant which brings us
   no ray of comfort; for its only word to us is that thunderbolt--"The
   soul that sinneth, it shall die."

   By the works of the law none can be justified, for by that law we are
   all condemned. Read the Ten Commandments, and pause at each one, and
   confess that you have broken it either in thought, or word, or deed.
   Remember that by a glance we may commit adultery, by a thought we may
   be guilty of murder, by a desire we may steal. Sin is any want of
   conformity to perfect holiness, and that want of conformity is justly
   chargeable upon every one of us. Yet the Lord does not, under the
   gospel dispensation, deal with us according to law. He does not now sit
   on the throne of judgment, but he looks down upon us from the throne of
   grace. Not the iron rod, but the silver scepter, is held over us. The
   long-suffering of God rules the age, and Jesus the Mediator is the
   gracious Lord-lieutenant of the dispensation. Instead of destroying
   offending man from off the face of the earth, the Lord comes near to us
   in loving condescension, and pleads with us by his Spirit, saying, "You
   have sinned, but my Son has died. In him I am prepared to deal with you
   in a way of pure mercy and unmingled grace."

   O sinner, the fact that you are alive proves that God is not dealing
   with you according to strict justice, but in patient forbearance; every
   moment you live is another instance of omnipotent long-suffering. It is
   the sacrifice of Christ which arrests the axe of justice, which else
   must execute you. The barren tree is spared because the great Dresser
   of the vineyard, who bled on Calvary, intercedes and cries, "Let it
   alone this year also." O my hearer, it is through the shedding of the
   blood and the mediatorial reign of the Lord Jesus that you are at this
   moment on praying ground and pleading terms with God! Apart from the
   blood of atonement you would now be past hope, shut up for ever in the
   place of doom. But see how the great Father bears with you! He stands
   prepared to hear your prayer, to accept your confession of sin, to
   honor your faith, and to save you from your sin through the sacrifice
   of his dear Son.

   Through our Lord Jesus sovereign grace and infinite love find a free
   way to the most undeserving of the race. Through the divine sacrifice
   the Lord saith, "Come now and let us reason together: though your sins
   be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;" "Believe on the Lord
   Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Thus the rebel is treated as a
   child, and the criminal as a beloved one. Because of yonder death on
   Calvary's cruel tree, God can invite guilty men to come to him, and he
   can receive them to the bosom of his love. O my dear hearers, do
   remember this! I am not sent to scold you, but to woo you, not sent to
   thunder at you, but to let the soft cleansing drops from the heart of
   Jesus fall upon you. I beg you not to turn away, as men may well do
   when the tidings are heavy; but hearken diligently, for the message is
   full of joy. You are now in the house of prayer, addressed by one of
   the Lord's ambassadors, and the tidings are of peace through a
   propitiation which God himself has provided and accepted. We cry not to
   you, "Prepare for vengeance;" but we proclaim, "a God ready to pardon."
   We do not threaten that he will no more have mercy upon you; but we
   tell you that he waiteth to be gracious. If I had to say, "You have
   provoked him past bearing, and he now means to destroy you," what a
   miserable man should I be! How could I bring such evil tidings to my
   fellow-creatures? Then would it have been woe to me that my mother bare
   me for so hard a fate. Thank God, it is not so. By virtue of the blood
   of sprinkling the language of boundless love is heard among our
   apostate race, and we are entreated to acquaint ourselves with God, and
   be at peace.

   No, my hearer, the day of grace is not over: you are not come to Sinai.
   No, you are not yet condemned past all hope; for you are still within
   reach of Jesus the Mediator. There is forgiveness. The fountain which
   was opened of old for sin and for uncleanness is open still. If you
   have sinned like David, if you will but accept the sprinkling of the
   blood of Jesus, I am able to speak to you as Nathan did to the guilty
   king, and say, "The Lord hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die." At
   any rate, God is dealing with you now on gospel terms; he sits on Zion,
   not on Sinai; he pronounces invitations of grace, and does not utter
   the stern sentence of justice.

   Further, there is a far more effectual way of coming to the blood of
   sprinkling than this--when by faith that blood is sprinkled upon our
   souls. This is absolutely needed: the blood shed must become to each
   one of us the blood sprinkled. "How can I know," says one, "that the
   blood of Christ is upon me?" Dost thou trust thyself with Christ? Dost
   thou believe that he made an atonement on the cross; and wilt thou
   venture thy eternal destiny upon that fact, trusting in what Jesus did,
   and in that alone? If thou dost thus trust, thou shalt not trust in
   vain. Dost thou apply thy heart to the precious blood of Jesus? Then
   that precious blood is applied to thy heart. If thine heart bleeds for
   sin, bring it to the bleeding heart of Jesus, and it shall be healed. I
   showed, in the early part of this discourse, that the blood sprinkled
   on the lintel and the two side-posts of the door preserved the
   Israelites on the night of the Passover: it shall also preserve you.
   The blood sprinkled upon the defiled made them ceremonially clean: it
   shall cleanse you. Have I not often quoted those blessed words: "The
   blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin?" That blood
   put upon the sons of Aaron dedicated them to God; and if it be applied
   to you, it shall consecrate you to God, and you shall become the
   accepted servant of the Most High. Oh, what a blessed thing to know
   assuredly that we have come to the blood of sprinkling by a true and
   humble faith! Canst thou say that thou dost alone rely on Jesus for
   salvation? Canst thou call heaven and earth to witness that thou hast
   no other confidence? Then remember the word of the Lord: "He that
   believeth in him hath everlasting life. He that believeth in him is not
   condemned." "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with
   God." Are not these words full of strong assurance? Indeed, we have not
   come to Mount Sinai, the place of trembling; but to Zion, the place
   which is beautiful for situation, the joy of the earth; the vision of
   peace, the home of infinite blessedness. Conscience no longer thunders
   at you for your sins, for your sins are gone. The expiation has covered
   them: the sprinkling of the blood has put them all away. Your
   iniquities are cast into the depths of the sea; God has cast them
   behind his back. The handwriting of ordinances that was against you
   Christ has taken away, nailing it to his cross, as a record in which
   there is no more condemning force. The debt is paid, the bill is
   receipted. Who can lay anything to the charge of God's elect? O
   beloved! it is a most blessed thing to come to the blood of sprinkling.

   "The terrors of law and of God

   With me can have nothing to do;

   My Savior's obedience and blood

   Hide all my transgressions from view."

   The act of faith, whereby we accept and trust in the Lord Jesus as our
   Mediator and Sacrifice, is the true and effectual coming to the blood
   of sprinkling. May none of us forget thus to come! He is the Lamb of
   God, which taketh away the sin of the world, and those who come to him
   shall be led into full salvation. Have you thus come? If you have not,
   why do you delay? He saith, "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise
   cast out." Come to him, for he is calling you; come to him, even as you
   now are, and he will receive you without fail.

   Further, to come to this blood of sprinkling means thankfully to enjoy
   all that comes to us through the blood of sprinkling. I have intruded
   upon this somewhat already. Brothers and sisters, if you have come to
   the blood of sprinkling, believe in the full pardon which God has given
   you, and in your consequent peace with God. It is a blessed word in the
   Creed, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins." Do you believe in the
   forgiveness of sins? I have seen some of the children of God who have
   believed in Jesus, but it has been with a faith which did not realize
   the full blessing promised to it; for they were as troubled about their
   sins as if they had never been forgiven. Now, a man who receives a free
   pardon from the Queen, and goes his way out of prison, rejoices in that
   pardon as a reality, and therefore walks abroad without fear. You must
   believe in the pardon of God as a reality, and act accordingly. If he
   has absolved you for Jesus' sake, then you are absolved. Why tremble
   like a guilty wretch waiting for the verdict? Why talk about fearing
   divine wrath? If you are pardoned, the deed of grace is done, and can
   never be undone; for the gifts and calling of God are without
   repentance on his part. His remission of sin is a clear gaol delivery,
   a sure plea, a full quittance.

   "Oh! how sweet to view the flowing

   Of our Lord's atoning blood,

   With divine assurance knowing

   He has made my peace with God!"

   I want every child of God in his inmost soul to come to the blood of
   sprinkling by full assurance of his justification, and then to go on to
   enjoy constant access to the mercy-seat, and communion with the Lord
   God. We may now with holy boldness speak with God in prayer, for the
   mercy-seat is sprinkled with the blood. O pardoned one, be not backward
   to enjoy thy liberty of fellowship! Thou art clean through the blood,
   and therefore thou mayest enter into the closest communion with the
   divine Father; thou art consecrated by the blood, and therefore thou
   mayest abound in the service of thy God. Treat thy God as a child
   should treat a father, and be not so awed by his majesty as to be cast
   down and distressed because of past sin, seeing it is pardoned. Take
   the good that God provides thee; enjoy the peace the blood has bought
   thee; enter into the liberty that thy ransom price has ensured thee. Do
   not stand in feelings, and fears, and dreams; but come unto this blood
   of sprinkling, and rest there, and be filled with joy and peace through
   believing. With such a ransom found for thee, dream not of going down
   into the pit, but ascend with gladness into the hill of the Lord, and
   stand in his holy place.

   I think, once more, that this coming to the blood of sprinkling means
   also that we feel the full effect of it in our lives. The man who knows
   that Jesus shed his blood for him, and has had that blood applied to
   his conscience, becomes a sin-hating man, consecrated to him who has
   cleansed him. "The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus
   judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died
   for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto
   themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again." I
   believe that there is no fruitful source of virtue like faith in the
   precious blood of Jesus. I hope your conduct will always support me in
   this assertion. Those who are debtors for salvation to their dying Lord
   should be the most holy of men. You people who think that you will get
   to heaven by some other way than by "the blood of sprinkling" have no
   sure bonds to hold you to holiness. You trust partly to your own works,
   and partly to what Jesus has done. Well, you do not owe him much, and
   therefore you will not love him much, and therefore you will not feel
   bound to live strict, holy, gracious lives. But the man who knows that
   his many sins are all washed away through the blood of Jesus, and that
   thus he is saved, he is the man who will serve the Lord with all his
   heart. He who has received a finished righteousness and complete
   salvation is under boundless obligations of gratitude, and the force of
   these obligations will urge him to a consecrated life. Over him the
   supreme power of gratitude will exert its sacred influence, and he will
   be not only carefully obedient, but ardently zealous in the service of
   his Redeemer. We know it is so, and we mean to prove it by our daily
   conduct. Brethren, I would have you exhibit more and more the influence
   of the precious blood in sanctifying your lives. Are there not
   Christians who hold the doctrine of the atoning blood, and yet are no
   better than others? Alas! it is so. But it is one thing to hold a
   doctrine, and another thing for that doctrine to take hold upon your
   heart and influence your life. Oh, if we believed practically what we
   believe professionally, what manner of persons should we be in all holy
   conversation and godliness! Hear me, my brother, and answer the appeals
   I make to thee as in the presence of the Lord. Blood-bought; canst thou
   live for thyself? Blood-washed; canst thou defile thy garments? Marked
   with the King's own name, in the King's own blood; how canst thou yield
   thyself to other rulers? God grant that we may come unto the blood of
   sprinkling till it shall purify our nature, and fill us with an
   all-consuming enthusiasm for him whose heart was pierced for us!

   I ask you, then, to put the question closely home, "Have I come unto
   this blood of sprinkling? If not, why should I not come at once?" I
   read the other day an imaginary story, which describes the need of
   looking well to this great business. Receive it as a parable:--A little
   daughter of the house of Israel, had heard the commandment concerning
   the Passover night, and as she lay ill in her bed she cried, "Father,
   have you sprinkled the blood upon the lintel and the two side-posts?"
   Her father answered, "Not yet, my child. It shall be done." The
   daughter was distressed, and filled with fear. After waiting a little
   while she again cried, "Father, father, have you sprinkled the blood
   upon the door?" He answered carelessly, "Child, I have told Simeon to
   sprinkle it, and I have no doubt it is done." "But, father," cried she,
   "it is near midnight, and the destroying angel will soon be abroad; are
   you sure that the blood is over the door? Jehovah our God hath said
   that we must sprinkle the blood upon the lintel and the two side-posts,
   or else the destroyer will not pass over us. Father, are you sure it is
   done?" The father passed over her enquiry: he had been eating of the
   lamb with his friends, and thought that this was sufficient; he did not
   care to give too much prominence to the ghastly idea of blood. He was
   of a liberal mind, and would not believe that a merciful God would
   smite his household for so small an omission.

   Then his daughter arose from her bed, made strong by the God of Israel.
   Nothing would content her until she had been outside into the street,
   and seen for herself whether the saving mark was over the door of her
   father's house. It was almost midnight, but by the light of the moon
   she looked, and no blood-mark was there! How great was her distress!
   "Father," she cried, "make haste and bring the basin." There it stood,
   filled with blood; for the Paschal Lamb had been slain. The father, at
   her entreaty, dashed the hyssop into it, struck the lintel and the two
   side-posts and shut the door, and as he did so, the midnight hour
   arrived. They were saved so as by fire. The daughter's obedient care
   and reverence of the Lord had warded off the sword of the destroyer. Oh
   that the holy anxiety of some one now present would work the like
   blessing for other households! Ask, dear child, ask the question,
   "Father, have you come to the blood of sprinkling? Is the blood of the
   Lamb above your head, between you and God? Is it on both sides of you,
   when you come in and go out?" O soul, be thus anxious about thyself,
   and rest not till thou hast by faith been purged with hyssop, and
   cleansed by the blood of the one sacrifice for sin.

   III. The last part of our subject is this: WHAT THEN? According to our
   text, the blood of Jesus is the voice of the new dispensation. It is
   the blood which speaks, and it speaks better things than the blood of
   Abel. What then is our duty? How doth the apostle express our
   obligation? "See that ye refuse not him that speaketh."

   I would have a quarter of an hour's very quiet talk with you, without
   excitement or quibbling debate. Lend me your ears, for I speak in all
   love for your souls. I want, dear friends, that this great truth of
   atonement which I so often preach may have a fair hearing, and not be
   left to lie among the number of forgotten things.

   Do not refuse the voice of Jesus by cold indifference. God was made
   flesh, and dwelt among men, and in due time he took upon himself our
   sin, and suffered for it in his own body on the tree, that sin might be
   put away by the sacrifice of himself. By his death upon the cross our
   Lord made atonement for the sin of man, and those who believe in him
   are delivered from evil and its consequences. The main point is that
   Jesus died for us, the just for the unjust. His atoning blood has a
   voice: "See that ye refuse not him that speaketh." The text says: See
   to it; look to it; make sure of it; be careful about it. Do not miss
   the salvation of your Lord through neglect; for he who dies by
   neglecting the healing medicine will as surely perish as he who stabs
   himself. Be in earnest to accept the Savior: I beseech you so to do,
   for I am afraid that many refuse him that speaketh, because they never
   think of him, or of his sacrifice. It seems to me that if I were a
   young man I would give this matter very early notice. However deeply I
   might be engaged in business, I should feel that my first concern ought
   to be to set myself right with God. Other matters would be sure to drop
   into order if I could be right with the Lord of all. If I heard it said
   that salvation came by the blood of Christ, I think I should pull
   myself together and resolve to understand this singular statement. I
   would not let it go by me, but would endeavor to reach the bottom of
   it, and practically understand it. I would meditate much upon teaching
   so wonderful as this--that the Son of God in man's stead honored the
   justice of God by death, and so put away sin.

   When I was a youth I had a great longing to begin life on right
   principles: I longed to find deliverance from sin. I would wake up with
   the sun in summer time to read my Bible, and such books as Bunyan's
   "Grace Abounding," Baxter's "Call to the Unconverted," Alleine's
   "Alarm," and Doddridge's "Rise and Progress of. Religion in the Soul."
   In these books I tried to spell out the way of salvation; but the chief
   thing I longed to know was, "How can man be just with God? How can God
   be just with man, and yet put away his sin?" Do you not think that
   these questions are of high importance? I beg that they may not have
   the cold shoulder from you. Give this question due space. I know that a
   great many things demand your attention nowadays; but I claim for this,
   which is the innermost revelation of God that it should have an early
   and earnest hearing. God incarnate in Christ Jesus bleeding and dying
   for human sin is a marvel of love too great to be passed over without
   thought. I pray you, therefore, "refuse not him that speaketh." Do not
   say, "I pray thee, have me excused." I do not suppose that you will
   become an infidel or act as a blasphemer towards this grand truth. I
   will not accuse you of denying the fact of the atonement; but my great
   fear is lest you should be indifferent to it. If it be so, that God
   himself has come to earth to bleed and die to save guilty man, it is
   the greatest, gladdest news that ever came to our poor erring race, and
   every member of that race should receive it with hopeful attention.

   When you resolve to study the doctrine, do not approach it with
   prejudice through misapprehension. Those that hate the gospel of Christ
   are very busy in caricaturing the doctrine of the atonement. They
   assert that we preach that God was not merciful by nature, but must
   needs be appeased by the blood of his own Son. They charge us with
   saying that Jesus by his death made God loving. We distinctly teach the
   very opposite of that statement. What we do say is this, that God is
   infinitely loving--that, in fact, God is love; but that love does not
   cause him to be unjust or unholy; for that in the long run would not be
   love. God is the Judge of all the earth, and he must do right. The
   Lord, as the great moral governor, if he makes a law, and threatens a
   penalty, must execute that penalty, or else his law will lose its
   authority. If the penalty threatened be not executed, there is a tacit
   acknowledgment that it was threatened in error. Could you believe in a
   fallible God? The Lord has made a law which is perfect, and just, and
   good. Would you rather be without law? What reasonable person desires
   anarchy? He has backed up that law with a threatening. What is the use
   of a law if to break it involves no evil consequences? A government
   that never punishes offenders is no government at all. God, therefore,
   as moral ruler, must be just, and must display his indignation against
   wrong and evil of every kind. It is written on the conscience of men
   that sin must be punished. Would you have it go unpunished? If you are
   a just man, you would not. To meet the case, therefore, the Lord Jesus
   Christ, by himself bearing the penalty of death, has honored the divine
   law. He has shown to all intelligences that God will not wink at sin,
   that even his infinite mercy must not come in the way of his justice.
   This is the doctrine: do not listen to those who twist and pervert it.
   It is the love of God which has provided the great atonement by which,
   in a judgment better than ours, the law finds a glorious vindication,
   and the foundation of moral government is strengthened. Do consider
   this matter, and judge it fairly, with candid minds. We do assure you
   from God's Word that apart from the atonement of our Lord Jesus you can
   never be saved either from the guilt or power of evil. You will find no
   peace for your conscience that is worth having, no thorough and deep
   peace, except by believing in this atoning sacrifice; neither will you
   meet with a motive strong enough to rescue you from the bonds of
   iniquity. Therefore "See that ye refuse not him that speaketh." Hear,
   and your soul shall live. Cavil, and you will die in your sins.

   Do not refuse the voice of the Lord Jesus by rejecting the principle of
   expiation. If God is content with this principle, it is not for us to
   raise objection. The Lord God is infinitely more concerned to fix
   matters on a right foundation than ever we can be, and if he feels that
   the sacrifice of Jesus meets the case at all points, why should we be
   dissatisfied with it? If there were a flaw in the proceedings his holy
   eyes would see it. He would not have delivered up his own Son to die
   unless that death would perfectly fulfill the design intended by it. A
   mistake so expensive he would never have perpetrated. Who are you to
   raise the question? If God is satisfied, surely you should be? To
   refuse the atonement because we are too wise to accept so simple a
   method of mercy is the utmost height of folly. What! will ye refuse him
   that speaketh because the present phase of human madness dares to
   dispute the divine way of human redemption? I pray you, do not so.

   Once more. Do not refuse this voice of mercy by preferring your own way
   of salvation. You have, no doubt, a way of salvation in your own mind,
   for few men have given up all hope. Perhaps your chosen hope is that
   you will be saved by doing your best. Alas! no man does his best; and
   the best acts of a rebel must be unaccepted of his king. So long as he
   is a rebel his acts are those of a rebel, and of no esteem with his
   prince. Perhaps your hope lies in saying so many prayers, and going to
   church, or attending chapel; or you are so unwise as to trust to a
   minister or priest. Now, we beseech you, hear the witness of God which
   he has given us in this book, and learn that other foundation can no
   man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ the righteous.
   There is one salvation, and there can be no other; all other hopes are
   lying vanities, and arrogant insults to Jesus. God hath set forth
   Christ to be a propitiation for sin. There is no other propitiation, or
   atonement, or way of acceptance; and if you reject this way, you must
   die in your sins.

   I cannot help it if you do not like this teaching, although I shall be
   grieved if you refuse it. I can only tell you the truth, and leave it
   with your own hearts. Do not wilfully refuse it. When I meet you face
   to face in that last day, to which we all must come, I shall not be
   clear of your blood unless I tell you what is assuredly the truth--that
   in the precious blood of Christ is the only cleansing from sin, and the
   only acceptance with God. By believing in Jesus, as slain for you, you
   shall be saved; but do what you may, pray as you may, fast as you may,
   give alms as you may, you shall not enter heaven by any other road. The
   way to glory is by the way of the cross. "Without shedding of blood
   there is no remission." Look to him whom you have pierced, and mourn
   for your sins. Look not to any other, for no other is needed, no other
   is provided, no other can be accepted. Jesus is the sole messenger of
   the covenant of life and peace. "See that ye refuse not him that
   speaketh."

   "See that ye refuse not." Then there is a choice about it. If you had
   never heard the gospel, you could not have refused it; but now that you
   have heard the message, it lies within your power, and it is an awfully
   dangerous power, to refuse him that speaketh. Oh, can you, will you,
   dare you refuse my bleeding Savior--refuse the Lord of love? I see him
   now. The thorn-crown is about his brow. He is hanging on his cross
   expiring in unutterable pangs! Can you refuse him while he presents
   such a spectacle of sacrifice? His eyes are red with weeping; have you
   no tears for such sorrow? His cheeks are all distained with the brutal
   soldiers' spittle: have you no love and homage for him? His hands are
   fastened to the wood--his feet the same: and there he hangs to suffer
   in the sinner's stead. Will you not yield yourselves to him? I could
   joyfully bow before that cross-foot to kiss his dear feet distained
   with blood. What a charm he has for me! And you--do you refuse him?

   He is no mere man. It is God himself who hangs upon the cross. His body
   is that of a man, but it is in union with the Godhead. He who died at
   Calvary is God over all, and this makes his death so effectual. He whom
   you have offended, in order to be justly able to pardon you, hangs
   there and dies for you: and do you turn your back on him? O sirs, if
   you be wise you will come, as I said I fain would come, and kiss those
   bleeding feet, and look up and say, "My Lord, I am reconciled to
   thee--how could I be otherwise? My enmity is dead. How can I be an
   enemy to him that died for me? In shame, and scorn, and misery, Jesus
   dies that I may live. O Lord Jesus, thou hast wrought in me, not
   reconciliation merely, but full submission and hearty love. I joy to
   sink myself in thee, and to be thine for ever." See that ye refuse not
   my Lord. May the sweet Spirit who loves the cross, and, like a dove,
   hovers round it now, descend upon you all who hear my message! May the
   Holy Ghost apply the blood of sprinkling to you; and may you feel that,
   instead of refusing him that speaketh, you rejoice in his name!

   When the text says, "See that ye refuse not," it tacitly and pleadingly
   says, "See that ye accept him." Dear hearers, I trust you will receive
   my Lord into your hearts. When we read of refusing, or receiving, we
   perceive an action of the will. Jesus must be willingly received: he
   will not force himself upon any man. Whosoever accepts Jesus is himself
   accepted of Jesus. Never was there a heart willing to receive him to
   whom Jesus denied himself. Never! But you must be willing and obedient.
   Grace works this in you; but in you this must be. Till the heart
   entertains Jesus gladly nothing is done. All that is short of a willing
   hearing of Jesus, and a willing acceptance of his great atonement, is
   short of eternal life. Say, wilt thou have this Savior, or dost thou
   decline his love? Wilt thou give him a cold refusal? Oh, do not so;
   but, on the contrary, throw open the doors of thy heart, and entreat
   thy Lord and Savior to come in.

   I do not wonder that the Israelites asked that they might no longer
   hear the voice of thunder from the top of Sinai; it was too terrible
   for human ear; but you have no such excuse if you refuse him that
   speaketh; for Jesus speaks in notes more sweet than music, more tender
   than a mother's sonnet to her babe. Let me remind you, that he was wont
   to say, "come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I
   will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am
   meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls." He
   declared that all manner of sin and of blasphemy should be forgiven
   unto men. He stood and cried, on the last day of the feast, "If any man
   thirst, let him come unto me, and drink." I am telling you no fables;
   for Christ, who was born at Bethlehem and died on Calvary, by his own
   blood which he shed for many, assures you that there is forgiveness for
   every man of you who, confessing his sin, will come and put his trust
   in him.

   "See that ye refuse not him that speaketh;" for though you hear only my
   poor feeble voice pleading with you, with an honest, loving heart at
   the back of it, yet God the Holy Ghost is speaking, and Jesus Christ
   himself is speaking to you. Refuse me if you please, but do not refuse
   my Lord. The blood of Jesus says, "I was poured out for the guilty. I
   was shed to manifest divine love. I am sprinkled to cleanse from sin."
   Each drop as it falls creates peace of heart. Stand where that blood is
   falling. Let it sprinkle you.

   Thus the blood speaks. Will you not answer, "Lord, we come to thee, for
   thou hast drawn us. Thy wounds have wounded our hearts. Thy death has
   killed our enmity. Sprinkle us unto thyself. Bedew us with thy blood.
   Let us be accepted in the Beloved?" Amen. So may God hear us!

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Hebrews 10.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--302, 294, 580, 288.

   See "The Blood of Sprinkling," No. 1,888.
     __________________________________________________________________

               Our Lord's Prayer for His People's Sanctification

   A Sermon

   (No. 1890)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, March 7th, 1886, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [3]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth."--John 17:17.

   OUR LORD JESUS prayed much for his people while he was here on earth.
   He made Peter the special subject of his intercession when he knew that
   he was in extraordinary danger. The midnight wrestlings of the Son of
   man were for his people. In the sacred record, however, much more space
   is taken up by our Lord's intercessions as he nears the end of his
   labors. After the closing supper, his public preaching work being
   ended, and nothing remaining to be done but to die, he gave himself
   wholly unto prayer. He was not again to instruct the multitude, nor to
   heal the sick, and in the interval which remained, before he should lay
   down his life, he girded himself for special intercession. He poured
   out his soul in life before he poured it out unto death.

   In this wonderful prayer, our Lord, as our great High Priest, appears
   to enter upon that perpetual office of intercession which he is now
   exercising at the right hand of the Father. Our Lord ever seemed, in
   the eagerness of his love, to be anticipating his work. Before he was
   set apart for his life-work, by the descent of the Holy Ghost upon him,
   he must needs be about his Father's business; before he finally
   suffered at the hands of cruel men, he had a baptism to be baptized
   with, and he was straitened till it was accomplished; before he
   actually died, he was covered with a bloody sweat, and was exceeding
   sorrowful even unto death; and in this case, before he in person
   entered within the veil, he made intercession for us. He never tarries
   when the good of his people calls for him. His love hath wings as well
   as feet: it is true of him evermore, "He rode upon a cherub, and did
   fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind." O beloved, what a
   friend we have in Jesus! so willing, so speedy to do for us all that we
   need. Oh that we could imitate him in this, and be quick of
   understanding to perceive our line of service, and eager of heart to
   enter upon it.

   This chapter, which ought to be universally known as the Lord's Prayer,
   may be called the holy of holies of the word of God. Here we are
   admitted to that secret place where the Son of God speaks with the
   Father in closest fellowship of love. Here we look into the heart of
   Jesus, as he sets out in order his desires and requests before his
   Father on our behalf. Here inspiration lifts her veil, and we behold
   truth face to face. Our text lies somewhere near the middle of the
   prayer; it is the heart of it. Our Lord's desire for the sanctification
   of his people pervades the whole prayer; but it is gathered up,
   declared, and intensified in the one sentence that I have read to you:
   "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth." How invaluable
   must the blessing of sanctification be when our Lord, in the highest
   reach of his intercession, cries: "Sanctify them!" In sight of his
   passion, on the night before his death, our Savior lifts his eyes to
   the great Father, and cries in his most plaintive tones, "Father,
   sanctify them." The place whereon we stand is holy ground, and the
   subject whereof we speak demands our solemn thought. Come, Holy Spirit,
   and teach us the full meaning of this prayer for holiness!

   First, I call your attention to what it is the Savior asks--"sanctify
   them;" and then, for whom he asks it--it is for those whom his Father
   had given him. Thirdly, we shall note of whom he asks it: he asks this
   sanctification of God the Father himself, for he alone it is who can
   sanctify his people. Lastly, we will enquire how is this blessing to be
   wrought?--"Sanctify them through thy truth;" and our Lord adds an
   explanatory sentence, which was a confession of his own faith towards
   the word of the Lord, and an instruction to our faith in the same
   matter. "Thy word is truth."

   I. At the beginning, then, consider WHAT HE ASKED. What is this
   inestimable blessing which our Savior so earnestly requests at the
   Father's hand? He first prays, "Holy Father, keep them;" and again,
   "Keep them from the evil;" but this negative blessing of preservation
   from evil is not enough: he seeks for them positive holiness, and
   therefore he cries, "sanctify them." The word is one of considerable
   range of meaning: I am not able to follow it through all its shades,
   but one or two must suffice.

   It means, first, dedicate them to thy service; for such must be the
   meaning of the word further down, when we read, "For their sakes I
   sanctify myself." In the Lord's case it cannot mean purification from
   sin, because our Savior was undefiled; his nature was unblemished by
   sin, and his actions were unspotted. No eye of man, nor glance of
   fiend, could discover fault in him, and the search of God only resulted
   in the declaration that in him God was well pleased. Our Lord's
   sanctification was his consecration to the fulfillment of the Divine
   purpose, his absorption in the will of the Father. "Lo, I come to do
   thy will, O God." In this sense our interceding Lord asks that all his
   people may by the Father be ordained and consecrated unto holy service.
   The prayer means, "Father, consecrate them to thine own self; let them
   be temples for thine indwelling, instruments for thy use." Under Jewish
   law the tribe of Levi was chosen out of the twelve, and ordained to the
   service of the Lord, instead of the firstborn, of whom the Lord had
   said, "All the firstborn of the children of Israel are mine: on the day
   that I smote every firstborn in the land of Egypt I sanctified them for
   myself." (Numbers 8:17.) Out of the tribe of Levi one family was taken
   and dedicated to the priesthood. Aaron and his sons are said to have
   been sanctified. (Leviticus 8:30.) A certain tent was sanctified to the
   service of God, and hence it became a sanctuary; and the vessels that
   were therein, whether they were greater, like the altar, and the holy
   table, and the ark of the covenant, or whether they were of less
   degree, like the bowls and the snuff-dishes of the candlestick, were
   all dedicated or sanctified. (Numbers 7:1.) None of these things could
   be used for any other purpose than the service of Jehovah. In his
   courts there was a holy fire, a holy bread, and a holy oil. The holy
   anointing oil, for instance, was reserved for sacred uses. "Upon man's
   flesh it shall not be poured;" and again, "Whosoever shall make like
   unto that, to smell thereto, shall even be cut off from his people."
   These sanctified things were reserved for holy purposes, and any other
   use of them was strictly forbidden. Bullocks and lambs and sheep and
   turtle-doves, and so forth, were given by devout offerers, brought to
   the holy place, and dedicated unto God; henceforth they belonged to
   God, and must be presented at his altar. This is one part of the
   meaning of our Lord's prayer. He would have each of us consecrated unto
   the Lord, designated and ordained for divine purposes. We are not the
   world's, else might we be ambitious; we are not Satan's, else might we
   be covetous; we are not our own, else might we be selfish. We are
   bought with a price, and hence we are his by whom the price is paid. We
   belong to Jesus, and he presents us to his Father, and begs him to
   accept us and sanctify us to his own purposes. Do we not most heartily
   concur in this dedication? Do we not cry, "Father, sanctify us to thy
   service?" I am sure we do if we have realized our redeemed condition.

   Beloved brethren, if the sprinkling of the blood, of which we spake
   last Sabbath-day, has really taken effect upon us, we belong, from this
   time forth, unto him that died for us, and rose again. We regard
   ourselves as God's men, the liveried servants of the great King--that
   livery the robe of righteousness. We were as sheep going astray, but we
   have now returned unto the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls; and
   henceforth we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. If any
   should ask, "To whom belongest thou?" we answer, "I belong to Christ."
   If any enquire, "What is thine occupation?" we reply with Jonah, "I
   fear God." We are not now at our own disposal, neither can we hire
   ourselves out to inferior objects, mercenary aims, or selfish
   ambitions; for we are engaged by solemn contract to the service of our
   God. We have lifted up our hand unto the Lord, and we cannot draw back.
   Neither do we wish to withdraw from the delightful compact and
   covenant; we desire to keep it even unto the end. We seek no liberty to
   sin, nor license for self; rather do we cry, "Bind the sacrifice with
   cords, even unto the horns of the altar. Sanctify us, O Lord. Let us
   know, and let all the world know, that we are thine, because we belong
   to Christ."

   In addition to this, those who belonged to God, and were dedicated to
   his service, were set apart and separated from others. There was a
   special service for the setting-apart of priests; certain rites were
   performed at the sanctifying of dedicated places and vessels. You
   remember with what solemn service the Tabernacle was set up, and with
   what pomp of devotion the Temple itself was set apart for the divine
   service. The Sabbath-day, which the Lord hath sanctified, is set apart
   from the rest of time. To man it is a dies non, because it is the
   Lord's-day. The Lord would have those who are dedicated to him to be
   separated from the rest of mankind. For this purpose he brought Abraham
   from Ur of the Chaldees, and Israel out of Egypt. "The people shall
   dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations." The Lord
   saith of his chosen, "This people have I formed for myself; they shall
   shew forth my praise." Before long this secret purpose is followed by
   the open call: "Come out from among them, and be ye separate; touch not
   the unclean thing, and I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my
   sons and daughters." The church of Christ is to be a chaste virgin,
   wholly set apart for the Lord Christ: his own words concerning his
   people are these, "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the
   world."

   By the election of grace from before the foundation of the world this
   distinction commences, and the names are written in heaven. Thereupon
   follows a redemption peculiar and special, as it is written; "These
   were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the
   Lamb." This redemption is followed by effectual calling wherein men are
   made to come forth from the old world into the kingdom of Christ. This
   is attended with regeneration, in which they receive a new life, and so
   become as much distinguished from their fellow-men as the living are
   from the dead. This separating work is further carried on in what is
   commonly known as sanctification, whereby the man of God is removed
   farther and farther from all fellowship with the unfruitful works of
   darkness, and is changed from glory unto glory, into an ever-growing
   likeness of his Lord, who was "holy, harmless, undefiled separate from
   sinners."

   Those who are sanctified in this sense have ceased to be unequally
   yoked together with unbelievers; they have ceased to run with the
   multitude to do evil; they are not conformed to this present evil
   world; they are strangers and pilgrims upon the earth. The more
   assuredly this is true of them the better. There are some, in these
   apostate days, who think that the church cannot do better than to come
   down to the world to learn her ways, follow her maxims, and acquire her
   "culture." In fact, the notion is that the world is to be conquered by
   our conforming to it. This is as contrary to Scripture as the light is
   to the darkness. The more distinct the line between him that feareth
   God and him that feareth him not, the better all round. It will be a
   black day when the sun itself is turned into darkness. When the salt
   has lost its savor, and no longer opposes putrefaction, the world will
   rot with a vengeance. That text is still true, "Ye are of God, little
   children, and the whole world lieth in the wicked one." The seed of the
   woman knows no terms with the serpent brood but continual war. Our Lord
   saith that in this matter he came not to send peace on the earth, but a
   sword. "Because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of
   the world, therefore the world hateth you." If the church seeks to
   cultivate the friendship of the world, she has this message from the
   Holy Ghost by the pen of the apostle James: "Ye adulterers and
   adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity
   with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the
   enemy of God." He charges all who would please the world with the black
   and filthy crime of spiritual adultery. The heart which ought to be
   given to Christ and purity must not wander forth wantonly to woo the
   defiled and polluted things of this present evil world. Separation from
   the world is Christ's prayer for us.

   Put these two things together, dedication to God and separation unto
   him, and you are nearing the meaning of the prayer. But, mark you, it
   is not all separation that is meant; for, as I told you in the reading
   there are some who "separate themselves," and yet are sensual, not
   having the Spirit. Separation for separation's sake savours rather of
   Babel than of Jerusalem. It is one thing to separate from the world,
   and another thing to be separate from the church. Where we believe that
   there is living faith in Jesus, and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost,
   we are not called to division, but to unity. For actual and manifest
   sin we must separate ourselves from offender--; but we err if we carry
   on this separation where it is not authorized by the word of God. The
   Corinthians and Galatians were far from being perfect in life, and they
   had made many mistakes in doctrine, yea, even upon vital points; but
   inasmuch as they were truly in Christ, Paul did not command any to come
   out of those churches, and to be separate therefrom; but he exhorted
   them to prove each man his own work, and he labored to bring them all
   back to the one and only gospel, and to a clearer knowledge of it. We
   are to be faithful to truth; but we are not to be of a contentious
   spirit, separating ourselves from those who are living members of the
   one and indivisible body of Christ. To promote the unity of the church,
   by creating new divisions, is not wise. Cultivate at once the love of
   the truth and the love of the brethren. The body of Christ will not be
   perfected by being rent. Truth should be the companion of love. If we
   heartily love even those who are in some measure in error, but who
   possess the life of God in their souls, we shall be the more likely to
   set them right. Separation from the world is a solemn duty, indeed it
   is the hard point, the crux and burden of our religion. It is not easy
   to be filled with love to men and yet for God's sake, and even for
   their own sake, to be separated from them. The Lord teach us this.

   At the same time, this word "sanctification" means what is commonly
   understood by it, namely, the making of the people of God holy.
   "Sanctify them," that is, work in them a pure and holy character.
   "Lord, make thy people holy," should be our daily prayer. I want you to
   notice that this word here used in the Greek is not that which is
   rendered "Purify;" but it has another shade of meaning. Had it meant
   "purify," it would hardly have been used in reference to our Lord as it
   is in the next verse.

   It has a higher meaning than that. O brethren, if you are called
   Christians, there must be no room for doubt as to the fact that you are
   purged from the common sins and ordinary transgressions of mankind,
   else are you manifestly liars unto God, and deceivers of your own
   souls. They that are not moral, they that are not honest, they that are
   not kind, they that are not truthful, are far from the kingdom. How can
   these be the children of God who are not even decent children of men?
   Thus we judge, and rightly judge, that the life of God cannot be in
   that man's soul who abides wilfully in any known sin, and takes
   pleasure therein. No; purification is not all. We will take it for
   granted that you who profess to be Christians have escaped from the
   foul pollution of lust and falsehood; if you have not done so, humble
   yourselves before God, and be ashamed; for you need the very beginnings
   of grace. "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh." But
   sanctification is something more than mere morality and respectability;
   it is not only deliverance from the common sins of men, but also from
   the hardness, deadness, and carnality of nature: it is deliverance from
   that which is of the flesh at its very best, and admittance into that
   which is spiritual and divine. That which is carnal cometh not into
   communion with the spiritual kingdom or Christ: we need that the
   spiritual nature should rise above that which is merely natural. This
   is our prayer--Lord, spiritualize us; elevate us; make us to dwell in
   communion with God; make us to know him whom flesh and blood cannot
   reveal or discern. May the Spirit of the living God have full
   sovereignty over us and perfect in us the will of the Lord, for this is
   to be sanctified.

   Sanctification is a higher word than purification; for it includes that
   word and vastly more: it is not sufficient to be negatively clean; we
   need to be adorned with all the virtues. If ye be merely moral, how
   does your righteousness exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees? If ye
   pay your lawful debts, give alms to the poor, and observe the rites of
   your religion, what do ye more than others whom ye yourselves reckon to
   be in error?

   Children of God should exhibit the love of God, they should be filled
   with zeal for his glory, they should live generous, unselfish lives,
   they should walk with God, and commune with the Most High. Ours should
   be a purpose and an aim far higher than the best of the unregenerate
   can understand. We ought to reach unto a life and a kingdom of which
   the mass of mankind know nothing, and care less. Now, I am afraid that
   this spiritual sense of the prayer is one that is often forgotten. Oh
   that God's Holy Spirit might make us to know it by experimentally
   feeling it in ourselves! May "Holiness to the Lord" be written across
   the brow of our consecrated humanity!

   Beloved, this prayer of our Lord is most necessary, for without
   sanctification how can we be saved, since it is written, "Without
   holiness no man shall see the Lord?" How can we be saved from sin if
   sin has still dominion over us? If we are not living holy, godly,
   spiritual lives, how can we say that we are redeemed from the power of
   evil?

   Without sanctification we shall be unfit for service. Our Lord Jesus
   contemplated the sending of each one of us into the world even as the
   Father sent him into the world; but how can he give a mission to
   unsanctified men and women? Must not the vessels of the Lord be clean?

   Without sanctification we cannot enjoy the innermost sweets of our holy
   faith. The unsanctified are full of doubts and fears; and what wonder?
   The unsanctified often say of the outward exercise of religion, "What a
   weariness it is!" and no wonder, for they know not the internal joys of
   it, having never learned to delight themselves in God. If they walk not
   in the light of the Lord's countenance, how can they know the heaven
   below which comes of true godliness? Oh, it is a prayer that needs to
   be prayed for me, for you, for this church, and for the whole church of
   God! "Father, sanctify them through thy truth."

   II. Now I want you to notice, in the second place, FOR WHOM THIS PRAYER
   WAS OFFERED. It was not offered for the world outside. It would not be
   a suitable prayer for those who are dead in sin. Our Lord referred to
   the company of men and women who were already saved, of whom he said
   that they had kept God's Word: "Thine they were, and thou gavest them
   me." They were therefore sanctified already in the sense of being
   consecrated and set apart for holy purposes; and they were also
   sanctified in a measure already in the sense of being made holy in
   character; for the immediate disciples of our Lord, with all their
   errors and deficiencies, were holy men. It was for the apostles that
   Jesus thus prayed; so that we may be sure that the most eminent saints
   need still to have this prayer offered for them: "Sanctify them through
   thy truth." Though, my sisters, you may be Deborahs, worthy to be
   called mothers in Israel, yet you need to be made more holy. Though, my
   brethren, you may be true fathers in God, of whom the Scripture saith
   truly that we have "not many," yet you still need that Jesus should
   pray for you: "Sanctify them through thy truth."

   These chosen ones were sanctified, but only to a degree. Justification
   is perfect the moment it is received, but sanctification is a matter of
   growth. He that is justified, is justified once for all by the perfect
   work of Jesus, but he that is sanctified by Christ Jesus must grow up
   in all things into him who is the Head. To make us holy is a life work,
   and for it we should seek the divine operation every hour; for "he that
   hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God." We would rise to the
   utmost pitch of holy living, and never content ourselves with present
   attainments. Those who are most pure and honorable have yet their
   shortcomings and errors to mourn over. When the Lord turns the light
   strong upon us, we soon see the spots upon our raiment; it is indeed
   when we walk in the light as God is in the light that we see most our
   need of the cleansing blood of Jesus. If we have done well, to God be
   the glory of it; but we might have done better. If we have loved much,
   to God's grace be the praise; but we ought to have loved more. If we
   have believed, and believed steadfastly, we ought to have believed to a
   far higher degree in our Almighty Friend. We are still below our
   capacities; there is a something yet beyond us. O ye sanctified ones,
   it is for you that Jesus prays that the Father may still sanctify you.

   I want you to notice more particularly that these believers for whom
   our Lord prayed were to be the preachers and teachers of their own and
   succeeding generations. These were the handful of seed-corn out of
   which would grow the church of the future, whose harvest would gladden
   all lands. To prepare them to be sent out as Christ's missionaries they
   must be sanctified. How shall a holy God send out unholy messengers? An
   unsanctified minister is an unsent minister. An unholy missionary is a
   pest to the tribe he visits; an unholy teacher in a school is an injury
   rather than a blessing to the class he conducts. Only in proportion as
   you are sanctified unto God can you hope for the power of the Holy
   Spirit to rest on you, and to work with you, so as to bring others to
   the Savior's feet. How much may each of us have been hampered and
   hindered by want of holiness! God will not use unclean instruments;
   nay, he will not even have his holy vessels borne by unclean hands. "To
   the wicked, God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes?" A
   whole host may be defeated because of one Achan in the camp; and this
   is our constant fear. Holiness is an essential qualificatian to a man's
   fitness for being used of the Lord God for the extension of his
   kingdom; hence our Lord's prayer for his apostles and other workers:
   "Holy Father, sanctify them."

   Furthermore, our Lord Jesus Christ was about to pray "that they all
   might be one;" and for this desirable result holiness is needed. Why
   are we not one? Sin is the great dividing element. The perfectly holy
   would be perfectly united. The more saintly men are, the more they love
   their Lord and one another; and thus they come into closer union with
   each other. Our errors and our sins are roots of bitterness which
   spring up and trouble us, and many are defiled. Our infirmities of
   judgment are aggravated by our imperfections of character, and our
   walking at a distance from our God; and these breed coldness and
   lukewarmness, out of which grow disunion and division, sects and
   heresies. If we were all abiding in Christ to the full, we should abide
   in union with each other and with God, and our Lord's great prayer for
   the unity of his church would be fulfilled.

   Moreover, our Lord finished his most comprehensive prayer by a petition
   that we might all be with him--with him where he is, that we may behold
   his glory. Full sanctification is essential to this. Shall the
   unsanctified dwell with Christ in heaven? Shall unholy eyes behold his
   glory? It cannot be. How can we participate in the splendor and
   triumphs of the exalted head if we are not members of his body? and how
   can a holy head have impure and dishonest members? No, brethren, we
   must be holy, for Christ is holy. Uprightness of walk and cleanness of
   heart are absolutely requisite for the purposes of Christian life,
   whether here or hereafter. Those who live in sin are the servants of
   sin; only those who are renewed by the Holy Ghost unto truth, and
   holiness, and love, can hope to be partakers of holy joys and heavenly
   bliss.

   III. I am compelled by shortness of time to be brief upon each point;
   but I must dwell for a little upon the third subject of consideration,
   which is this--TO WHOM THIS PRAYER IS DIRECTED. "Sanctify them through
   thy truth." No one can sanctify a soul but Almighty God, the great
   Father of spirits. He who made us must also make us holy, or we shall
   never attain that character. Our dear Savior calls the great God "Holy
   Father" in this prayer, and it is the part of the holy God to create
   holiness; while a holy Father can only be the Father of holy children,
   for like begets like. To you that believe in Jesus he gives power to
   become the sons of God, and a part of that power lies in becoming holy
   according to the manner and character of our Father who is in heaven.
   As we are holy, so do we bear the image of that Lord from heaven who,
   as the second man, is the firstborn to whom the many brethren are
   conformed. The holy Father in heaven will own those as his children
   upon earth who are holy. The very nature of God should encourage us in
   our prayers for holiness; for he will not be slow to work in us to will
   and to do according to his perfect will.

   Beloved, this sanctification is a work of God from its earliest stage.
   We go astray of ourselves, but we never return to the great Shepherd
   apart from his divine drawings. Regeneration, in which sanctification
   begins, is wholly the work of the Spirit of God. Our first discovery of
   wrong, and our first pang of penitence, are the work of divine grace.
   Every thought of holiness, and every desire after purity, must come
   from the Lord alone, for we are by nature wedded to iniquity. So also
   the ultimate conquest of sin in us, and the making us perfectly like to
   our Lord, must be entirely the work of the Lord God, who makes all
   things new, since we have no power to carry on so great a work of
   ourselves. This is a creation; can we create? This is a resurrection;
   can we raise the dead? Our degenerate nature can rot into a still direr
   putrefaction, but it can never return to purity or sweeten itself into
   perfection; this is of God and God alone. Sanctification is as much the
   work of God as the making of the heavens and the earth. Who is
   sufficient for these things? We go not even a step in sanctification in
   our own strength; whatever we think we advance of ourselves is but a
   fictitious progress which will lead to bitter disappointment. Real
   sanctification is entirely from first to last the work of the Spirit of
   the blessed God, whom the Father hath sent forth that he might sanctify
   his chosen ones. See, then, what a great thing sanctification is, and
   how necessary it is that our Lord should pray unto his Father,
   "Sanctify them through thy truth."

   The truth alone will not sanctify a man. We may maintain an orthodox
   creed, and it is highly important that we should do so, but if it does
   not touch our heart and influence our character, what is the value of
   our orthodoxy? It is not the doctrine which of itself sanctifies, but
   the Father sanctifies by means of the doctrine. The truth is the
   element in which we are made to live in order to holiness. Falsehood
   leads to sin, truth leads to holiness; but there is a lying spirit, and
   there is also the Spirit of truth, and by these the error and the truth
   are used as means to an end. Truth must be applied with spiritual power
   to the mind, the conscience, and the heart, or else a man may receive
   the truth, and yet hold it in unrighteousness. I believe this to be the
   crowning work of God in man, that his people should be perfectly
   delivered from evil. He elected them that they might be a peculiar
   people, zealous for good works; he ransomed them that he might redeem
   them from all iniquity, and purify them unto himself; he effectually
   calls them to a high and holy vocation, even to virtue and true
   holiness.

   Every work of the Spirit of God upon the new nature aims at the
   purification, the consecration, the perfecting of those whom God in
   love has taken to be his own. Yea, more; all the events of Providence
   around us work towards that one end: for this our joys and our sorrows,
   for this our pains of body and griefs of heart, for this our losses and
   our crosses--all these are sacred medicines by which we are cured of
   the disease of nature, and prepared for the enjoyment of perfect
   spiritual health. All that befalls us on our road to heaven is meant to
   fit us for our journey's end. Our way through the wilderness is meant
   to try us, and to prove us, that our evils may be discovered, repented
   of, and overcome, and that thus we may be without fault before the
   throne at the last. We are being educated for the skies, meetened for
   the assembly of the perfect. It doth not yet appear what we shall be;
   but we are struggling up towards it; and we know that when Jesus shall
   appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. We are
   rising: by hard wrestling, and long watching, and patient waiting, we
   are rising into holiness. These tribulations thresh our wheat and get
   the chaff away, these afflictions consume our dross and tin to make the
   gold more pure. All things work together for good to them that love
   God; and the net result of them all will be the presenting of the
   chosen unto God, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.

   Thus I have reminded you that the prayer for sanctification is offered
   to the divine Father, and this leads us to look out of ourselves and
   wholly, to our God. Do not set about the work of sanctification
   yourselves, as if you could perform it alone. Do not imagine that
   holiness will necessarily follow because you listen to an earnest
   preacher, or unite in sacred worship. My brethren, God himself must
   work within you; the Holy Ghost must inhabit you; and this can only
   come to you by faith in the Lord Jesus. Believe in him for your
   sanctification, even as you have believed for your pardon and
   justification. He alone can bestow sanctification upon you; for this is
   the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

   IV. This is a great subject, and I have but short time; so I have, in
   the last place, to notice with much brevity HOW SANCTIFICATION IS TO BE
   WROUGHT IN BELIEVERS, "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is
   truth. "Beloved, observe how God has joined holiness and truth
   together. There has been a tendency of late to divide truth of doctrine
   from truth of precept. Men say that Christianity is a life and not a
   creed: this is a part truth, and very near akin to a lie. Christianity
   is a life which grows out of truth. Jesus Christ is the way and the
   truth as well as the life, and he is not properly received except he is
   accepted in that threefold character.

   No holy life will be produced in us by the belief of falsehood.
   Sanctification in visible character comes out of edification in the
   inner faith of the heart, or otherwise it is a mere shell. Good works
   are the fruit of true faith, and true faith is a sincere belief of the
   truth. Every truth leads towards holiness; every error of doctrine,
   directly or indirectly, leads to sin. A twist of the understanding will
   inevitably bring a contortion of the life sooner or later. The straight
   line of truth drawn on the heart will produce a direct course of
   gracious walking in the life. Do not imagine that you can live on
   spiritual carrion and yet be in fine moral health, or that you can
   drink down poisonous error and yet lift up a face without spot before
   God. Even God himself only sanctifies us by the truth. Only that
   teaching will sanctify you which is taken from God's word, that
   teaching which is not true, nor the truth of God, cannot sanctify you.
   Error may puff you up, it may even make you think that you are
   sanctified; but there is a very serious difference between boasting of
   sanctification and being sanctified, and a very grave difference
   between setting up to be superior to others and being really accepted
   before God. Believe me, God works sanctification in us by the truth,
   and by nothing else.

   But what is the truth? There is the point. Is the truth that which I
   imagine to be revealed to me by some private communication? Am I to
   fancy that I enjoy some special revelation, and am I to order my life
   by voices, dreams, and impressions? Brethren, fall not into this common
   delusion. God's word to us is in Holy Scripture. All the truth that
   sanctifies men is in God's Word. Do not listen to those who cry, "Lo
   here!" and "Lo there!" I am plucked by the sleeve almost every day by
   crazy persons and pretenders who have revelations. One man tells me
   that God has sent a message to me by him; and I reply, "No, sir, the
   Lord knows where I dwell, and he is so near to me that he would not
   need to send to me by you." Another man announces in God's name a dogma
   which, on the face of it, is a lie against the Holy Ghost. He says the
   Spirit of God told him so-and-so; but we know that the Holy Ghost never
   contradicts himself. If your imaginary revelation is not according to
   this Word, it has no weight with us; and if it is according to this
   Word, it is no new thing. Brethren, this Bible is enough if the Lord
   does but use it, and quicken it by his Spirit in our hearts. Truth is
   neither your opinion, nor mine; your message, nor mine. Jesus says,
   "Thy word is truth." That which sanctifies men is not only truth, but
   it is the particular truth which is revealed in God's Word--"Thy word
   is truth." What a blessing it is that all the truth that is necessary
   to sanctify us is revealed in the Word of God, so that we have not to
   expend our energies upon discovering truth, but may, to our far greater
   profit, use revealed truth for its divine ends and purposes! There will
   be no more revelations; no more are needed. The canon is fixed and
   complete, and he that adds to it shall have added to him the plagues
   that are written in this Book. What need of more when here is enough
   for every practical purpose? "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word
   is truth."

   This being so, the truth which it is needful for us to receive is
   evidently fixed. You cannot change Holy Scripture. You may arrive more
   and more accurately at the original text; but for all practical
   purposes the text we have is correct enough, and our old Authorized
   Version is a sound one. Scripture itself cannot be broken; we cannot
   take from it nor add to it. The Lord has never re-written nor revised
   his Word, nor will he ever do so. Our teachings are full of errors, but
   the Spirit mistaketh not. We have the "Retractations": of Augustine,
   but there are no retractations with prophets and apostles. The faith
   has been delivered once for all to the saints, and it standeth fast for
   ever. "Thy word is truth." The Scripture alone is absolute truth,
   essential truth, decisive truth, authoritative truth, undiluted truth,
   eternal, everlasting truth. Truth given us in the word of God is that
   which is to sanctify all believers to the end of time: God will use it
   to that end.

   Learn, then, my brothers, how earnestly you ought to search the
   Scriptures! See, my sisters, how studiously you should read this Book
   of God! If this is the truth, and the truth with which God sanctifies
   us, let us learn it, hold it, and stand fast in it. To him that gave us
   the Book let us pledge ourselves never to depart from his testimonies.
   To us, at any rate, God's word is truth. "But they argue differently in
   the schools!" Let them argue. "But oratory with its flowery speech
   speaketh otherwise!" Let it speak: words are but air and tongues but
   clay. O God, "thy word is truth." "But philosophers have contradicted
   it!" Let them contradict it. Who are they? God's word is truth: we will
   go no farther while the world stands. But then let us be equally firm
   in our conviction that we do not know the truth aright unless it makes
   us holy. We do not hold truth in a true way unless it leads us to a
   true life. If you use the back of a knife it will not cut: truth hath
   its handle and its blade; see that you use it properly. You can make
   pure water kill a man; you must use every good thing aright or it will
   not be good. The truth, when fully used, will daily destroy sin,
   nourish grace, suggest noble desires, and urge to holy acts. O sirs, I
   do pray that we may by our lives adorn the doctrine of God our Savior
   in all things. Some do not so. I say this to our shame and to my own
   hourly sorrow.

   The one point of failure to be most deeply regretted would be a failure
   in the holiness of our church members. If you yourselves act as others
   do, what witness do you bear? If your families are not graciously
   ordered; if your business is not conducted upon principles of the
   strictest integrity; if your speech is questionable as to purity or
   truthfulness; if your lives are open to serious rebuke--how can God
   accept you or send a blessing on the Church to which you belong? It is
   all falsehood and deceit to talk about your being the people of God
   when even men of the world shame you. Your faith in the Lord Jesus must
   operate upon your lives to make you faithful and true, it must check
   you here, and excite you there; it must keep you back from this, and
   drive you on to that; it must constantly operate upon thought and
   speech and act, or else you know nothing of its saving power. How can I
   speak more distinctly and emphatically? Do not come to me with your
   experiences, and your convictions, and your professions, unless you
   sanctify the name of God in your lives. O brethren, we had better quit
   our professions if we do not live up to them. In the name of him who
   breathed this prayer just before his face was encrimsoned with the
   bloody sweat, let us cry mightily unto the Father, "Sanctify us through
   thy truth, thy Word is truth." As a people, we have stuck unto the Word
   of the Lord, but are we practically obeying it? We have determined as a
   congregation to keep the old ways; and I, for one, as the minister, am
   solemnly bound to the old faith. Oh that we might commend it by our
   holiness! Nothing is truth to me but this one Book, this infallibly
   inspired writing of the Spirit of God. It is incumbent upon us to show
   the hallowed influence of this Book. The vows of God are on us, that by
   our godly lives we should show forth his praises who has brought us out
   of darkness into his marvellous light. This Bible is our treasure. We
   prize each leaf of it. Let us bind it in the best fashion, in the best
   morocco of a clear, intelligent faith; then let us put a golden clasp
   upon it, and gild its edges by a life of love, and truth, and purity,
   and zeal. Thus shall we commend the volume to those who have never
   looked within its pages. Brethren, the sacred roll, with its seven
   seals, must not be held in hands defiled and polluted; but with clean
   hands and pure heart we must hold it forth and publish it among men.
   God help us so to do for Jesus' sake! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--John 17.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--107 (Song I.), 649, 645.
     __________________________________________________________________

                           The Sermon of the Seasons

   A Sermon

   (No. 1891)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, March 14th, 1886, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [4]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat,
   and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."--Genesis
   8:22.

   OUR SAVIOR CONSTANTLY TAUGHT the people by parables, and I think he
   would have his ministers do the same. The condition of things just now,
   both as to weather and business, furnishes a very plain and instructive
   parable which it would not be wise to pass over. Every morning when we
   wake we hope for a change of wind, a glimpse of the sun, and the end of
   the frost; but still we moan with the poet--

   "Oh, the long and dreary Winter!

   Oh, the cold and cruel Winter!"

   We say to ourselves, Will spring-time never come? In addition to this,
   trade and commerce continue in a state of stagnation; crowds are out of
   employment, and where business is carried on, it yields little profit.
   Our watchmen are asked if they discern any signs of returning day, and
   they answer, "No." Thus we bow our heads in a common affliction, and
   ask each man comfort of his fellow; for as yet we see not our signs,
   neither does the eastern sky grow grey with the hopeful light of the
   long-expected morning. Having faith in God we faint not, but believe
   that a lesson of love for us is written by his hand in these black
   characters. Let us spell it out with childlike confidence.

   Our text takes us back to the time when the waters of the flood had
   just assuaged, and God opened the door of the ark and bade Noah and his
   family come forth into a new world. For a time there had been a
   confusion: the seasons were mixed up, the perpetual downpour of the
   rain had almost turned day into night, and whether it was summer or
   winter could scarcely be told. The frame of nature seemed to be out of
   joint, her order suspended. And now the Lord, in making a promise to
   Noah that he would never destroy the earth again with a flood, also
   declares that while the earth remaineth there shall be no more of the
   confusion of the seasons and mingling of day and night which had
   brought such destruction upon all living things. As there should be no
   more a general deluge, so should there be no more a serious
   disarrangement of the course of the seasons and the temperature
   appropriate thereto. Seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and
   summer and winter, and day and night, are to succeed each other in
   their perpetually unchanging change, so long as the present reign of
   forbearance shall last. Till comes the close of time, the rolling year,
   made up of alternate day and night, shall pass through cold and heat in
   due order. We are grateful to God for thus settling in his mind that so
   it shall be. We are at ease because we know that he will not lift his
   hand again to destroy every living thing with a flood of water. He will
   deal with men in longsuffering, and tender mercy, and forbearance. He
   will not use the stern weapons of destruction, but will try the tender
   ministrations of patience and grace, that men may be led to repentance.
   There will come an end to this dispensation; but while the reign of
   forbearance lasts, nature shall keep her appointed marches, and we need
   not fear a disorderly rush or a destructive chaos. "Four seasons fill
   the measure of the year." In their mysterious round they come and go,
   and all combined display a moving harmony of wise design most
   glorifying to our God. Fear not in the day of tempest, for the rain
   shall not deluge the earth. The Lord setteth his bow in the cloud as
   the ensign of his covenant with mankind. Fear not in the black
   midnight: God will rekindle the lamp of day, and chase away the
   darkness.

   It is very singular that when the Lord thus ushers in the reign of
   forbearance he gives as his reason the following statement:--"I will
   not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination
   of man's heart is evil from his youth." This is very singular, because
   this seems to have been the powerful reason why the Lord had already
   destroyed the guilty race from off the face of the earth. In the fifth
   and sixth verses of the sixth chapter we read: "God saw that the
   wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of
   the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented
   the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his
   heart." Here we have almost the same words. Can the reason for judgment
   become the argument for mercy? Assuredly it can. God who changeth not
   absolutely, yet changeth his hand in his dealing with men. He had left
   them to themselves and permitted them to live through centuries; but
   the longer they lived, the more wicked they grew, until sin reached to
   a horrible degree of infamy. Man becomes a bad enough sinner when he
   lives to be seventy; but what he became at seven hundred or more it is
   somewhat difficult to guess. We wonder not that there were giants in
   those days--giants in crime as well as in stature. The Lord saw that
   however long man lived he only grew a greater adept in sin, for the
   imagination of his heart remained evil, and even grew to an intolerable
   height of iniquity; and therefore he said that he would destroy the
   race and begin anew. But when the Lord looked down upon those whom he
   had spared, who were to be the parents of a new race, he saw that in
   them also there was the same fountain of evil, and that their hearts
   also yielded evil desires and devices continually. Then he resolved to
   shorten the life of man, so that no individuals might ever arrive at so
   horrible a ripeness and cleverness of iniquity; but at the same time he
   said: "I will bear with them. I have dealt sternly with them, but they
   do not change; the few whom I have snatched from a watery grave are
   still inclined to sin. This dreadful expedient has not washed away the
   rebellious tendencies of the human heart. Therefore I will deal
   leniently and gently with them, manifesting a long forbearance, that
   man may have space for repentance. I will no more destroy every living
   thing, because destruction itself does not avail to banish sin." Thus
   it seems by no means difficult to see how that which to divine holiness
   was a reason for judgment may be used by divine pity as a reason for
   mercy.

   But what, think you, could have made the reasoning assume this new
   form? I attribute it to one thing never to be forgotten. Read the verse
   which precedes our text: "And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and
   took of every clean beast and of every clean fowl and offered burnt
   offerings on the altar; and the Lord smelled a sweet savor." The
   sacrifice is the turning-point. Without a sacrifice sin clamours for
   vengeance, and God sends a destroying food; but the sacrifice presented
   by Noah was typical of the coming sacrifice of God's only begotten Son,
   and of the effectual atonement therein provided for human sin. The very
   shadow of the one great propitiation changed the state of the world.
   Now the Lord pleads with himself for grace as once he argued for doom.
   He speaketh of course after the manner of men; it is only to our
   apprehension that these things are so, for Jehovah changeth not, and he
   is always love and wisdom. For the sake of the sacrifice God resolves
   to bear with man, as with one who is incurably unwise, or desperately
   sick. He determines to look upon the evil tendency of man's imagination
   rather as an inveterate disease than as an unbearable provocation. He
   deals very patiently with the race, and no more sweeps it away in his
   wrath. See what the Lord will do when a sacrifice is provided! Methinks
   I hear him say of the earth, "Deliver it from flood, and bid the
   seasons keep their round of beneficence; for I have found a ransom."

   I. Thus I introduce to you the text, and I would have you notice, dear
   friends, that in that text there is first of all a hint, A SOLEMN HINT,
   OF WARNING. It begins thus: "While the earth remaineth." I hear a sound
   in the bowels of the text like subterranean thunder. The voice of the
   text is a voice of mercy, but there is an undertone of "terrible things
   in righteousness." "While the earth remaineth" implies that the earth
   will not always remain. There is an end appointed of the Most High, and
   it will surely come: then the seasons will melt into the endless age,
   and time shall be promoted into eternity. The earth hath remained now
   century after century; alas! it has but little changed towards God. The
   whole world still lieth in the wicked one; darkness covers the earth,
   and gross darkness the nations. Jehovah hath a people, "a remnant
   according to the election of grace," and for their sakes the earth
   remaineth yet a little while; but its end draweth nearer every hour.
   "God hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in
   righteousness by the man Christ Jesus." An hour is set when mercy shall
   no longer hold back the axe from the barren tree, and forbearance shall
   no more restrain the angel with the sharp sickle from reaping the
   vintage of the earth. Love now journeys to and fro among the sons of
   men, with the voice of trembling pathos, pleading with them to be
   reconciled to God; but her mission will come to an end, the day of
   grace will be over, and the reign of judgment will come. Let us not
   reckon too much upon this world's enduring even for a little while; let
   us not set our love upon anything that is upon it; for here we have no
   continuing, city. "The things which are seen are temporal;" the world
   therefore shall pass away, and all the works that are therein shall be
   burned up: even "The elements shall melt with fervent heat." There is a
   day coming when floods of fire shall be let loose: they shall fall from
   above, and burst upward from below, and all material things shall be
   melted in one common conflagration. Poor world! thou, too, art surely
   doomed! God is gracious to thee, but thou art as a wreck drifting upon
   the rocks, or as a tree waiting for the axe. Believers in the testimony
   of God can joyfully say, "We, according to his promise, look for new
   heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness:" therefore we
   are not dismayed.

   I would have you notice again, dear friends, that the time when the
   earth shall no longer remain is not mentioned. The warning is left
   indefinite as to time, though definite enough as to fact. The
   expression, "While the earth remains," is proof enough that it will
   remain only for a season; but it is dumb as the tongue of death as to
   the date when that season shall close. "The whole creation groaneth and
   travaileth in pain together until now;" but when the hour of her
   deliverance shall come the best instructed cannot tell. Do not attempt
   to prophesy, and especially do not venture upon dates. "It is not for
   you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his
   own power." "Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of
   heaven, but my Father only." The uncertainty of the end of all things
   is intended to keep us continually on the watch. We are to remain upon
   the tiptoe of expectation, and never to dream that we can reckon upon a
   certain length of time before the great and terrible day of the Lord.
   If you knew when Christ would come you might be tempted to spend the
   interval in neglect and wantonness; but as it is written, "In such an
   hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh," it is the Lord's intent
   that you should stand with your loins girt and your lamps trimmed,
   waiting for the midnight cry, "Behold he cometh."

   Let me further remark that the day when the remaining of the earth
   shall cease cannot be very far off; for according to the Hebrew, which
   you have in the margin of your Bibles, the text runs thus: "As yet all
   the days of the earth, seedtime and harvest shall not cease." The
   "while" of the earth's remaining is counted by days; not even months or
   years are mentioned, much less centuries. The earth seems grey with age
   to us, but in the language of inspiration the present stage of its
   history is reckoned by days. There will one day come a last day, and
   let us not reckon that the time is distant, for Peter saith, "The end
   of all things is at hand;" and he adds, "Be ye therefore sober, and
   watch unto prayer." "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as
   some men count slackness." One day is with the Lord as a thousand
   years, and a thousand years as one day. If geologists speak correctly
   concerning the history of the world, it has lasted many myriads of
   years already, and passed through many periods before it came to that
   which is described in the first chapter of Genesis. The era of man is
   that which God describes to us by the inspired penman; and we are led
   to believe that this era will be a very short one. From the day when
   God fitted up this earth for the abode of man to the time when he shall
   consume it with fervent heat, there will be comparatively a very short
   space of time. God lives by millions of years; therefore, a few
   thousand years to him are but as a watch in the night. Let it be thus
   far understood by us that this dispensation is not to be a protracted
   one, and that the duration of the world in its present state is to be
   exceedingly brief as compared with preceding and succeeding ages. The
   life of this present evil world is but a span; it also is of few days
   and full of trouble. But I must also add that the era of sin and grace
   is crowded with marvellous manifestations of the glory of God in
   infinite love and mercy.

   II. Thus, then, there is a hint of warning in our text; but secondly,
   there is A SENTENCE OF PROMISE, rich and full of meaning: "While the
   earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and
   summer, and day and night shall not cease." It is a promise concerning
   temporal things, but yet it breathes a spiritual air, and hath about it
   the smell of a field that the Lord hath blessed.

   This promise has been kept. It is long since it was written, it is
   longer still since it was resolved upon in the mind of God; but it has
   never failed. There have been times when cold has threatened to bind
   the whole year in the chains of frost; but genial warmth has pushed it
   aside. Seedtime and harvest have been threatened, but they have come;
   the harvest may not have been abundant, but yet there has been a
   harvest sufficient to sustain the race. Days have been dark, and hardly
   discernible from night, like the gloom of Egypt's plague; but still,
   taking things as a whole, day and night have divided time between them.
   The ordinances of heaven have continued with us as with our fathers. No
   student of nature can doubt that to this hour, despite occasional
   extremes of heat and cold, the seasons are unchanged; and
   notwithstanding occasional absence of sunshine, and diminution of
   light, day and night have followed the diurnal revolution of the earth.
   Since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were. One
   great interruption occurred at the deluge, but the Lord has kept his
   promise to prevent any other.

   So long-continued is the fulfillment of this promise, that even this
   race of unbelievers has come to believe in it. We look for the seasons
   as a matter of course. I do not suppose that any one in this audience
   doubts the coming of spring. The boughs are bare, the buds are not
   eager for their bursting, the crocus and the daffodil are afraid to
   show themselves; but yet the birds believe in the coming spring, for I
   hear them in sweet chorus every morning singing their songs of
   expectancy. Men and brethren, you are expectant also. Long observation
   has begotten in you an unwavering faith. When the sun goes down at
   night, not even a little child fears that God has blown out the sun,
   and that the great candle will never be lighted again. No, we look for
   the morning. When winter has chilled us a while, we look for the spring
   and the summer; and when summer has browned our faces, we expect the
   falling of the leaf and the descent of the snow. I want you to ask
   yourselves--Why do we not believe God's other promises? Why have we not
   as solid a conviction of the truth of other statements which our God
   has made as we have upon this point? Is it that we have experience in
   this case? O brethren, we have had experience concerning other matters
   also. If we were to deal with the weather with the same short-sighted
   doubt which governs us in our thoughts of divine providence, we might
   be doubtful about summer and winter. We might say, "It really does not
   look very likely that spring will come. Look at our meadows, and mark
   how the cold has literally burned the grass; see how our hardy
   evergreens are many of them dead, and others sadly cut to pieces; see
   what mischief the cold has wrought. Will there ever be leaf and flower
   again? Is it possible that I shall ever wipe the sweat from my smoking
   brow on some blazing noontide? Can these frozen brooks leap into
   liberty? To-day we crowd around the fire, hardly keeping ourselves
   alive from the bitter cold: shall we yet bask in the hay-field, or fan
   ourselves amid the golden sheaves?" Had we less experience, it would
   seem highly improbable. Yet we enjoy a full assurance as to the
   revolution of the seasons and the succession of day and night: do we
   not? Why this assurance of one promise, and why such frequent distrust
   of others equally true?

   When God's promises appear to be difficult of fulfillment, wherefore do
   we doubt them? They are fulfilled in due season: which of them has ever
   failed? They come to pass without difficulty: why should we suspect
   them? When deliverance looks as though it could not come, it is none
   the less sure; for the Lord has promised it. The absence of visible
   means need not enter into the account: he who is Almighty God has
   infinite resources.

   So, too, dear friends, we have to recollect, that if the Lord himself
   does not send spring and summer we cannot create either of them. Here
   we are out of the field. When the sun goes down, if the Lord did not
   cause it to rise again, we could not open the doors of the morning. I
   love to get into the field of nature on a large scale, for there one is
   quit of man, and the Lord alone is seen working all things according to
   his will. The heavens and their ordinances know no presence and power
   but God alone. As far as we are concerned, we cannot lift a finger to
   change the seasons. What could all our Parliament--King, Lords, and
   Commons--do with all their Acts towards bringing on spring-tide or
   hastening summer and harvest? Nothing at all. These matters are out of
   man's power; and yet they are none the less sure. So, my brethren, when
   you get into such a condition that you can by no means help yourself,
   you are not, therefore, to doubt that God can achieve his purpose and
   fulfill his promise without your help. When hath he asked your aid?
   Good men have gone very wrong when they have thought of aiding in the
   fulfillment of promises and prophecies. See how Rebecca erred in trying
   to get the promised blessing for Jacob. We had better leave the Lord's
   decrees in the Lord's hands. When any case comes to its worst, and you
   can do nothing whatever in it, you may safely stand still and see the
   salvation of God. At this hour you feel sure that springtime and summer
   will come, though you cannot move the sun an inch beyond his
   predestinated course; be as much at ease about the other promises of
   God as you are concerning the cycle of the year.

   Remember, also, that every coming of summer--yes, and every rising of
   the sun--is a great wonder. Only our familiarity leads us to think of
   these things without marvelling. A real miracle is every break of day
   and every set of sun. A world of wonders bursts forth in every
   spring-tide; each blade of grass and ear of corn is a display of divine
   omnipotence. We are surrounded with works of almighty power and
   goodness from morn till eve and through the watches of the night; from
   the first day of the year until its close the Lord is about us. Unseen
   by us, his hand propels the silent spheres which no force within human
   calculation could move in their orbits; that same power sustains and
   animates and perfects all things. God is in all, and in all wonderful.
   If God continues thus to work the pleasing changes of the year as he
   promised to do, why do you doubt him concerning other things, O ye of
   little faith? Will he not keep his word to his children if he keeps it
   to the earth? Will he not fulfill his every promise to his own elect if
   he is true to sun and stars? Seedtime and harvest, summer and winter,
   have come according to his word without our aid, and, wonderful as
   these changes are, they have never failed; and will the Lord forget in
   other things? Will he forswear his covenant and deny his promise to his
   Only Begotten? God forbid.

   Brethren, we have come not only to believe this promise as to the
   seasons and to make quite sure about it, but we practically act upon
   our faith. The farmers have sown their autumn wheat, and many of them
   are longing for an opportunity to sow their spring wheat; but what is
   sowing but a burial of good store? Why do husbandmen hide their grain
   in the earth? Because they feel sure that seedtime will in due time be
   followed by harvest. They put their grain into the ground hoping to
   receive it again multiplied a hundredfold. Why do we not act in an
   equally practical style in reference to the rest of God's promises?
   True faith makes the promises of God to be of full effect by viewing
   them as true and putting them to the test. When faith asks of God, it
   believes that it has the petition which it has asked of him. Many
   prepare their thinner garments in prospect of warm weather, or at the
   close of summer provide household flannels for the winter, because they
   reckon upon the season; why do we not also prepare ourselves to receive
   the Lord's blessing in the time appointed? Why do we not reckon upon
   every word of Scripture being fulfilled? We ought to take the promises
   into our matter-of-fact estimate, and act accordingly.

   Let me go further:--If a man did not act upon the declaration of God in
   our text he would be counted foolish. Suppose a man said, "I do not
   feel sure that there will come a harvest, and therefore I shall not
   sow;" his neighbors would look upon his uncultivated fields, and reckon
   him out of his mind. If another should say, "I shall lay by no stores
   for the winter, because I believe that we have arrived at perpetual
   summer, wherein there will always be corn in the sheaf and fruit on the
   trees," we should regard him as fit for a lunatic-asylum. Equally mad
   are they who treat other promises of God as if they were idle words, no
   more worthy of notice than the prophecies of a charlatan. The masses of
   our fellow-men never search the Word of God to find a promise suitable
   to their cases, and even if such a promise were laid before them, they
   would only regard it as a matter of imagination or meaningless jargon.
   What shall I say of those who thus trifle with eternal verities, but
   that madness has carried away the heart of man? What God has promised
   ought to be a clear indication to us of the future, and a hint as to
   how we should act. Let us act in faith upon the divine promise. If the
   Lord says, "Seek ye my face," take care that you do seek his face. If
   he says, "Ask, and it shall be given you," be sure to ask and expect to
   receive. If the Lord promises pardon to those who believe on his Son,
   let us believe on his Son, and receive mercy. He keeps his covenant
   with day and night; let us, therefore, believe that he will keep
   covenant with us, and do even as he hath said. Oh that this lesson,
   simple as it is, may be learnt by every believer, and by every
   unbeliever too!

   Let me close this point by noticing that, whether men believe this or
   not it will stand true. A man says there will be no winter, and
   provides no garments; he will shiver in the northern blast all the same
   when December covers the earth with snow. An unbeliever declares that
   there will be no summer, and therefore he will not sow nor prepare a
   barn. Will his foolish scepticism prevent the coming of harvest?
   Miserable farmer that he is! He will secure a harvest of thorns and
   thistles to reward his own practical unbelief, but a harvest will come
   to the rest of the land, to his confusion. The year will go on whoever
   plays the fool; so, too, will the sun arise, whoever prophesies an
   endless night. God's purpose and God's promise will stand fast though
   the hills be removed. If you believe in the Lord Jesus, you shall be
   saved, but if you believe not, you must perish: in either case, the law
   will not alter for you. God's great laws in the spiritual world hold
   good with a certainty as great as those which govern the natural world.
   We cannot suspend the force of gravitation; and if we could, we should
   not even then be able to change the veracity of the Most High, who must
   be true so long as he is God. Hath he said and shall he not do it? Ay,
   that he shall. Though we believe not, he abideth faithful; he cannot
   deny himself; therefore, ye sons of men, be wise, and take heed to the
   word of the Lord. As in the summer ye prepare yourselves for winter;
   and as at spring-tide ye sow your seed that ye may gather your harvest
   in the Summer, and thus ye obey the voice of God in nature, I pray you
   also have respect to that voice as it speaks in the pages of his Book,
   and shape your conduct by that which the Lord has revealed.

   III. There is also in the text, I think, A SUGGESTION OF ANALOGIES.
   Reading these words, not as a philosophical prediction, but as a part
   of the Word of God, I see in them a moral, spiritual, and mystical
   meaning. Holy Scripture is intended not to teach us natural but
   spiritual things: I conclude, therefore, that there is an analogy here
   well worthy of being worked out. May the good Spirit guide us therein!

   While the earth remaineth there will be changes in the spiritual world.
   Read the text laying a stress upon the words of change, and see how it
   rises and falls like the waves of the sea: "While the earth remaineth,
   seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day
   and night shall not cease." No one of these states continues; it comes
   and goes. The seasons are a perpetual procession, an endless chain, an
   ever-moving wheel. Cold flies before heat, and anon summer is chased
   away by winter. Nothing is stable. Such is this life: such are the
   feelings of spiritual life with most men: such is the history of the
   church of God. We sorrow and we rejoice: we struggle and we triumph: we
   labor and we rest. We are not long upon Tabor, neither are we always in
   the valley of Baca. Let us not be amazed, as though some strange thing
   happened to us, if our day darkens into night, or our summer chills
   into winter. From joy to sorrow, from sorrow to joy, from success to
   defeat, from defeat to success, we pass very rapidly. It is so: it will
   be so while the earth remaineth, and we remain partakers of the earth.

   Yet, there will be an order in it all. Cold and heat, and summer and
   winter, and day and night, do not come in a giddy dance or tumultuous
   hurry-burly; but they make up the fair and beautiful year. Chance has
   no part in these affairs. God compelleth winds and storms, and sun and
   sea, to keep the order of his house, and none rebelleth against his
   commandment. So in the spiritual kingdom, in the life of the believer,
   and in the history of the church of God, all things are made to work
   for good, and the spiritual is being educated into the heavenly. In our
   seasons there is an order visible to God, even when we walk in darkness
   and see no light. We have our winters, in which the sap is prepared in
   secret to produce the clusters of summer; we have our colds, in which
   we lose the superfluities bred of our heat. Expect the changes, and
   believe that they come by rule.

   Great rules will stand while the earth abideth, in the spiritual as
   well as in the natural world. For instance, there will be seedtime and
   harvest, effort and result, labor and success. There will be to you,
   dear brother, a time in which you will chiefly have to receive; it is
   your seedtime, and God is sowing you by instruction and sanctification,
   in order that in due time you may yield him a harvest to his glory.
   Sometimes we lie passive, like the ploughed fields, and then our divine
   Sower casts into us the living seed; but soon other days arrive, when
   we are active, and yield unto God the results of his grace experienced
   in former days. It ought to be so. To you, beloved workers in the
   Mission-hall, or the Sunday-school, there will be a time of sowing; not
   much may be accomplished, though a great deal of effort may be put
   forth. To me in preaching there are times for sowing, and nothing else
   but sowing; few seem to be the green blades which spring up around me.
   Perhaps a year may intervene before the worker shall see any reward for
   his toil: "The husbandman waiteth for the precious fruits of the
   earth." The missionary upon his district, the Bible-woman on her round,
   may see no manifest effect produced by daily teaching: but harvest and
   seedtime are tied together in a sure knot. "He that goeth forth and
   weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with
   rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." Brethren, believe that, and
   be of good cheer. "Your labor is not in vain in the Lord." While the
   earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest will take each one its turn.

   So, too, while the earth remaineth there will be the interchanges of
   cold and heat. Where there is life there must be change; only in death
   is there monotony. There will be times in your experience when you will
   feel the awful withering of that convincing Spirit who dries up the
   glory of the flesh. "Who can stand before his cold?" Anon there will be
   a melting season of contrition and repentance, and then the Holy Spirit
   will have warmed your heart into hope and faith and love and joy and
   delight in God. Cold and heat come to the church. I have noticed
   oftentimes her bitter cold, and I have cried to God about it. But the
   heat has come; we have felt the glow of revival; enthusiasm has been
   kindled, zeal has abounded. I wish we could always keep at one glorious
   summer heat, walking in the light as God is in the light. It ought to
   be so with us. Some of us labor to be always zealous and full of fire;
   but should times come when we or others are not in the fullness of the
   blessing, we will not despair; but we will the rather cry mightily unto
   the Lord to send his Word and cause the waters of his grace to flow,
   and make our winter to be over and gone, while flowers appear on the
   earth and the time of the singing of birds comes on.

   So, too, have I seen in our mortal life summer and winter, prosperity
   and adversity. Do not expect, dear brother, while you are in this
   world, always to dwell among the lilies and roses of prosperity. Summer
   will come, and you will be wise to make hay while the sun shines by
   using all opportunities for usefulness; but look for winter. I do not
   know into what trade you can enter to be secure against losses, nor
   what profession you could follow in which you would escape
   disappointments. I know no corner of the earth without its night, no
   land without its stones, no sea without its storms. As to spiritual and
   mental experience, it seemeth to me within myself that while the earth
   remaineth I shall have my ebbs and flows, my risings and my sinkings.
   Do not therefore begin to kick and quarrel with the dispensations of
   God's providence. When it is summer-time say, "The Lord gave, and
   blessed be his name." When it is winter say, "The Lord hath taken away,
   and blessed be his name." Keep to the same music, even though you
   sometimes have to pitch an octave lower. Still praise and magnify the
   Lord whether you be sowing or reaping. Let him do what seemeth him
   good, but to you let it always seem good to praise.

   Beloved, labor will be followed by rest; for while the earth remaineth
   there will be day and night. In the day man goeth forth to his labor;
   at night he lieth down. Let him bless God for both. There cometh a
   night wherein no man can work: to us this is not dreaded, but expected.
   I do not know for which I thank God most, for day or for night. Our
   young people praise God for day, with its activities; but we who are
   older are more inclined to bless the Lord for night, with its repose.
   The grey beard, the man of many years and sad experiences, looks
   forward to that night wherein the wicked cease from troubling and the
   weary are at rest. If we regard death as night, we look forward to an
   endless day, which will follow on, when the sun shall go no more down
   for ever. Jesus our Lord is the Sun of that glorious country to which
   we wend our way. While the earth remaineth, there will continually be a
   variety of benedictions, a change-ringing upon the silver bells of
   mercy. When thou art on high, my brother, remember thou must descend;
   and when thou art cast down, expect a cheerful lifting up. When it is
   broad day, let us travel swiftly, for night comes on; but when it is
   dark, let us watch hopefully, for the morning cometh. As sojourners in
   a changeful country, let us spend the days of our pilgrimage in a holy
   fear, which shall preserve us from love of the world. I need not
   further work out the analogies of the text; many more will rise before
   the meditative mind.

   IV. Last of all, I want you to regard my text as A TOKEN FOR THE
   ASSURANCE OF OUR FAITH. "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and
   harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night
   shall not cease." And they do not. In this fact we are bidden to see
   the seal and token of the covenant. Look at the passage we read this
   morning in the thirty-third chapter of Jeremiah. Here is the security
   of the King in whom we rejoice. "If ye can break my covenant of the
   day, and my covenant of the night, then shall David not have a son to
   reign upon his throne." God hath promised never to change the royal
   line; but while the earth remaineth, and day and night are seen, the
   Son of David shall reign King of kings and Lord of lords. Until all
   enemies are under his feet he must reign. So, then, as I wrap my
   garment about me, feeling the cold of winter, I will say to myself,
   "God hath, by sending cold, confirmed his covenant with Jesus our Lord
   and King." Every morning light saluteth my eyes, and declareth that
   "his name shall be continued as long as the sun;" and when the shades
   of evening fall, and the stars look forth from their houses, I hear a
   sound of "abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth." His
   dominion is an everlasting dominion, and of his kingdom there is no
   end. The Lord Jesus is King in Zion, and head over all things to his
   church while the earth remaineth.

   The abiding of the ordinances of heaven is equally a token of the
   continuance of the priesthood. Under the type of the tribe of Levi the
   priesthood is vested in the person of our Lord. He is our Melchizedek,
   who is priest as well as king, and of his priesthood there is no end.
   While winter chills and summer burns, while day calls to labor and
   night to rest, our great High-priest abides in his office, still able
   to cleanse us, to make intercession for us, and to present our
   offerings unto God. His one sacrifice is perpetually a sweet savor unto
   God, and shall be till moons shall wax and wane no more. As I tread the
   soil which seems frozen into iron, and as I shiver in the bitter
   north-east wind, I say to myself, "The priesthood of our Lord abides;
   for cold has not ceased to visit us, and heat will come in its
   appointed months." As I go to my bed, or as I rise from it, day and
   night are to me a pledge that the Lord Jesus is a priest for ever
   according to the law of an endless life.

   A third thing was also assured by the same token. The Lord said that as
   long as his covenant with day and night remained he would not put away
   the seed of Abraham. Since a son of David must rule them, they must
   exist to be ruled. There will for ever be a chosen people--a people for
   whom Jesus lives as king and priest. The Lord hath not cast away the
   people whom he did foreknow, nor will he do so, come what may. While
   seedtime and harvest, cold and heat abide, the Lord will maintain a
   church, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. What a mercy
   is this! Alas! men whom I hoped were faithful have turned aside from
   the truth; ministers who were regarded as pillars have fallen, and
   persons esteemed to be saints turned out to be hypocrites: yet "there
   is a remnant according to the election of grace." The Lord hath a
   reserve of men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Therefore, let us
   be of good courage, and never tremble for the ark of the Lord.

   To end all, let our prayer be that the Lord would abide with us, and
   then the heat shall not smite us, nor the cold molest us. The presence
   of God makes fair weather. Let us sing with quaint John Ryland--

   "Rise then, Sun of righteousness,

   Me with thy sweet beamings bless;

   Winter then may stay or flee,

   Lord, 'tis all alike to me."

   Oh, you that know not our God, I feel heartily sorry for you! To you
   all seasons must be blank, for God is not in them. Oh that you knew
   Jesus. The world is a bleak house, a chill and empty corridor without
   God; and men are orphans, and life is hopeless, and death is starless
   night, if Jesus is not known and loved. He who trusts his soul with
   Jesus has found the key of the great secret, the clue of the maze.
   Henceforth he shall see, in all that smiles or rages around him in our
   changeful weather, pledges of the love of the Father, tokens of the
   grace of the Son, and witnesses of the work of the Holy Ghost. To the
   one God be glory for ever! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Psalm 147; Genesis 8:20-22;
   Jeremiah 33:17-26.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--181, 211, 212.
     __________________________________________________________________

                               Why They Leave Us

   A Sermon

   (No. 1892)

   Suggested by the death of CHARLES STANFORD, D.D.,

   Minister of Denmark Place Chapel, Camberwell,

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, March 21st, 1886, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [5]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me
   where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me:
   for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world."--John 17:24.

   THE PRAYER OF THE SAVIOR rises as it proceeds. He asked for his people
   that they might be preserved from the world, then that they might be
   sanctified, and then that they might be made manifestly one; and now he
   reaches his crowning point--that they may be with him where he is, and
   behold his glory. It is well when in prayer the spirit takes to itself
   wings. The prayer that swings to and fro like a door upon its hinges
   may admit to fellowship; but that prayer is more after the divine
   pattern which, like a ladder, rises round by round, until it loses
   itself in heaven.

   This last step of our Lord's prayer is not only above all the rest, but
   it is a longer step than any of the others. He here ascends, not from
   one blessing which may be enjoyed on earth, to another of higher
   degree; but he mounts right away from all that is of this present state
   into that which is reserved for the eternal future. He quits the
   highest peaks of grace, and at a single stride his prayer sets its foot
   in glory: "that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I
   am."

   There is this to be noticed also concerning this divine prayer, that
   not only does it rise as to its subject, but it even ascends as to the
   place which the Intercessor appears to occupy. Has it not been so with
   yourselves in prayer at times, that you have hardly known where you
   were? You might have cried with Paul, "Whether in the body or out of
   the body, I cannot tell." Do not these words of our Lord Jesus remind
   you of this? Was he not carried away by the fervor of his devotion?
   Where was he when he uttered the words of our text? If I follow the
   language I might conclude that our Lord was already in heaven. He says,
   "rather, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me
   where I am; that they may behold my glory." Does he not mean that they
   should be in heaven with him? Of course he does; yet he was not in
   heaven; he was still in the midst of his apostles, in the body upon
   earth; and he had yet Gethsemane and Golgotha before him ere he could
   enter his glory. He had prayed himself into such an exaltation of
   feeling that his prayer was in heaven, and he himself was there in
   spirit. What a hint this gives to us! How readily may we quit the field
   of battle and the place of agony, and rise into such fellowship with
   God, that we may think and speak, and act, as if we were already in
   possession of our eternal joy! By the ardor of prayer and the
   confidence of faith we may be caught up into Paradise, and there utter
   words which are beyond the latitude of earth, and are dated "from the
   Delectable Mountains."

   Nor is this all; for still the prayer rises, not only as to its matter
   and place, but in a very singular way it also takes to itself a higher
   style. Before, our Lord had asked and pleaded; but now he uses a firmer
   word: he says, "Father, I will." I would not force that word so as to
   make it bear an imperious or commanding meaning, for the Savior
   speaketh not so to the Father: but still it has a more elevated tone
   about it than asking. Our Lord here useth the royal manner rather than
   the tone of his humiliation. He speaketh like unto the Son of God; he
   addresses the great Father as one who counteth it not robbery to be
   equal with him, but exercises the prerogative of his Eternal Sonship.
   He saith, "I will." This is a tone which belongs not to us except in a
   very modified degree, but it teaches us a lesson. It is well in prayer,
   when the Holy Spirit helpeth us, not only to groan out of the dust as
   suppliant sinners, but to seek unto our Father in the spirit of
   adoption with the confidence of children, and then with the promise of
   God in our hand we may with consecrated bravery lay hold upon the
   covenant angel, and cry, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless
   me." Importunity is a humble approach to this divine "I will." The will
   consecrated, educated, and sanctified, may and must reveal itself in
   our more spiritual petitions, just as, with equal correctness, it hides
   away when the pleading is for temporal things, and whispers, "Not as I
   will, but as thou wilt." The Lord pours upon his pleading servants at
   times a kind of inspiration by which they rise into power in prayer,
   and have their will of the Lord. Is it not written, "Delight thyself in
   the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart?" We come
   at last to feel that the desires of our heart are inspired of his
   Spirit, and then that we have the petitions which we have asked of him.

   There ought to be much for our edification in a text like this, which
   in subject, place, and style rises to such an elevation. It is the apex
   of this wonderful pyramid of prayer; the last round of the ladder of
   light. O Spirit of the Lord, instruct us while we behold it!

   I have taken this text because it has taken hold on me. Our beloved
   brother, Charles Stanford, has just been taken from us. I seem to be
   standing as one of a company of disciples, and my brethren are melting
   away. My brethren, my comrades, my delights, are leaving me for the
   better land. We have enjoyed holy and happy fellowship in days of
   peace, and we have stood shoulder to shoulder in the battle of the
   Lord; but we are melting away. One has gone; another has gone; before
   we look round another will have departed. We see them for a moment, and
   they vanish from our gaze. It is true they do not rise into the air
   like the Divine Master from Olivet; yet do they rise, I am persuaded of
   that: only the poor body descends, and that descent is for a very
   little while. They rise, to be for ever with the Lord. The grief is to
   us who are left behind. What a gap is left where stood Hugh Stowell
   Brown! Who is to fill it? What a gap is left where stood Charles
   Stanford! Who is to fill it? Who among us will go next? We stand like
   men amazed. Some of us stood next in the rank with those who have been
   taken. Why this constant thinning of our ranks while the warfare is so
   stern? Why this removal of the very best when we so much need the
   noblest examples? I am bowed down, and could best express myself in a
   flood of tears as I survey the line of graves so newly digged; but I
   restrain myself from so carnal a mode of regarding the matter, and look
   upon it in a clearer light. The Master is gathering the ripest of his
   fruit, and well doth he deserve them. His own dear hand is putting his
   apples of gold into his baskets of silver; and as we see that it is the
   Lord, we are bewildered no longer. His word, as it comes before us in
   the text, calms and quiets our spirits. It dries our tears, and calls
   us to rejoicing as we hear our heavenly Bridegroom praying, "Father, I
   will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am."
   We understand why the dearest and best are going. We see in whose hand
   is held the magnet which attracts them to the skies. One by one they
   must depart from this lowland country, to dwell above, in the palace of
   the King, for Jesus is drawing them to himself. Our dear babes go home
   because "he gathereth the lambs with his arm and carrieth them in his
   bosom;" and our ripe saints go home because the Beloved is come into
   his garden to gather lilies. These words of our Lord Jesus explain the
   continual home-going; they are the answer to the riddle which we call
   death. I am going to talk of how our honored brethren are not, because
   God taketh them; and I shall be happy if my words shall prepare us to
   exercise a holy readiness to see the grand request of our Redeemer
   fulfilled, even though it cost us many a sorrowful parting.

   I. Let us begin as our text begins, and thus the first thought about
   the continual gathering to the house above will be THE HOME-WORD--the
   rallying word: "Father." Observe, our Lord had said, "Holy Father," and
   toward the close of the prayer he said, "O righteous Father;" but in
   commencing this particular petition he uses the word "Father" by itself
   alone: this relationship is in itself so dear that it agrees best with
   the loftiest petition. I like to think of that name "Father," as used
   in this connection. Is it not the center of living unity? If there is
   to be a family gathering and reunion, where should it be but in the
   father's house? Who is at the head of the table but the father? All the
   interests of the children unite in the parent, and he feels for them
   all.

   From the great Father the Lord Jesus himself came forth. We do not
   understand the doctrine of the eternal filiation--we adore the mystery
   into which we may not pry. But we know that as our Lord Jesus is
   God-and-man Mediator, he came forth from the Father; and unto the
   Father's will he submitted himself in so doing. As for us, we come
   distinctly of that Father, it is he that made us, and not we ourselves;
   and, better and brighter fact still, of his own will begat he us by the
   word of truth. We were born a second time from heaven, and from our
   Heavenly Father our spiritual life is derived.

   The whole of this sermon through, I want to show you that it is right
   that we should part with our brethren and joyfully permit of their
   going home; and surely I may at once ask you--What can be more right
   than that children should go home to their father? From him they came,
   to him they owe their life; should they not always tend towards him,
   and should not this be the goal of their being, that they should at
   last dwell in his presence? To go away from the Father and to live
   apart from him is the sorrow of our fallen nature as it plays the
   prodigal; but the coming back to the Father is restoration to life, to
   peace, to happiness. Yes, all our hopeful steps are towards the Father.
   We are saved when by believing in the name of Jesus we receive power to
   become the sons of God. Our sanctification lies in the bosom of our
   adoption. Because Jesus comes from the Father and leads us back to the
   Father, therefore is there a heaven for us. Wherefore, whenever we
   think of heaven let us chiefly think of the Father; for it is in our
   Father's house that there are many mansions, and it is to the Father
   that our Lord has gone, that he may prepare a place for us.

   "FATHER!" why, it is a bell that rings us home. He who hath the spirit
   of adoption feels that the Father draws him home, and he would fain run
   after him. How intensely did Jesus turn to the Father! He cannot speak
   of the glory wherein he is to be without coupling his Father with it.
   Brethren, it is in the Father that we live and move and have our being.
   Is there any spiritual life in the world which does not continually
   proceed from the life of the great Father? Is it not by the continual
   outcoming of the Holy Ghost from the Father that we remain spiritual
   men? And as from him we live, so for him we live, if we live aright. We
   wish so to act as to glorify God in everything. Even our salvation
   should not be an ultimate end with any one of us; we should desire to
   glorify God by our salvation. We look upon the doctrines that we
   preach, and the precepts which we obey, as means to the glory of God,
   even the Father.

   This is the consummation which the First-born looks for, and to which
   all of us who are like him are aspiring also, namely, that God may be
   all in all: that the great Father may be had in honor, and may be
   worshipped in every place. Since, then, we are from him, and of him,
   and to him, and for him, this word "Father" calls us to gather at his
   feet. Shall any one of us lament the process? No; we dare not complain
   that our choicest brethren are taken up to gladden the great Father's
   house. Our brother is gone; but we ask, "Where is he gone?" and when
   the answer comes, "He is gone to the Father," all notion of complaint
   is over. To whom else should he go? When the great First-born went away
   from us, he told his sorrowing followers that he was going to their
   Father and his Father; and that answer was enough. So, when our friend,
   or our child, or our wife, or our brother is gone, it is enough that he
   is with the Father. To call them back does not occur to us; but rather
   we each one desire to follow after them.

   "Father, I long, I faint to see

   The place of thine abode;

   I'd leave thine earthly courts and flee

   Up to thy seat, my God."

   A child may be happy at school, but he longs for the holidays. Is it
   merely to escape his lessons? Ah, no! Ask him, and he will tell you, "I
   want to go home to see my father." The same is equally true, and
   possibly more so, if we include the feminine form of parentage. What a
   home-cry is that of "mother!" The sight of that dear face has been
   longed and hungered for by many a child when far away. Mother or
   father, which you will; they are blended in the great Fatherhood of
   God. Let it but be said that any one has gone to his father, and no
   further question is asked as to the right of his going thither. To the
   father belongs the first possession of the child; should he not have
   his own child at home? The Savior wipes our tears away with a
   handkerchief which is marked in the corner with this word--"Father."

   II. Secondly, I want your thoughts upon THE HOME IMPETUS. The force
   which draws us home lies in the word, "I will." Jesus Christ, our most
   true God, veiled in human form, bows his knee and prays, and throws his
   divine energy into the prayer for the bringing home of his redeemed.
   This one irresistible, everlastingly almighty prayer carries everything
   before it. "Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be
   with me where I am," is the centripetal energy which is drawing all the
   family of God towards its one home.

   How shall the chosen get home to the Father? Chariots are provided.
   Here are the chariots of fire and horses of fire in this prayer. "I
   will," saith Jesus, "that they be with me;" and with him they must be.
   There are difficulties in the way--long nights and darkness lie
   between, and hills of guilt, and forests of trouble, and bands of
   fierce temptations; yet the pilgrims shall surely reach their journey's
   end, for the Lord's "I will" shall be a wall of fire round about them.
   In this petition I see both sword and shield for the church militant.
   Here I see the eagles' wings on which they shall be upborne till they
   enter within the golden gates. Jesus saith, "I will;" and who is he
   that shall hinder the home-coming of the chosen? As well hope to arrest
   the marches of the stars of heaven.

   Examine the energy of this "I will" for a moment, and you will see,
   first, that it hath the force of an intercessory prayer. It is a gem
   from that wonderful breastplate of jewels which our great High-priest
   wore upon his breast when he offered his fullest intercession. I cannot
   imagine our Lord's interceding in vain. If he asks that we may be with
   him where he is, he must assuredly have his request. It is written,
   that "he was heard in that he feared." When with strong crying and
   tears he poured out his soul unto death, his Father granted the
   requests of his heart. I do not wonder it should be so; how could the
   best Beloved fail of that which he sought in intercession from his
   Father God! Mark, then, that the force of irresistible intercession is
   drawing every blood-bought soul into the place where Jesus is. You
   cannot hold your dying babe; for Jesus asks for it to be with him. Will
   you come into competition with your Lord? Surely you will not. You
   cannot hold your aged father, nor detain your beloved mother, beyond
   the time appointed; for the intercession of Christ has such a force
   about it that they must ascend even as sparks must seek the sun.

   More than intercession is found in the expression "I will." It suggests
   the idea of a testamentary bequest and appointment. The Lord Jesus is
   making his last will and testament, and he writes, "Father, I will that
   they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me." No man who makes his
   will likes to have it frustrated. Our Savior's testament will assuredly
   be carried out in every jot and tittle; and, if for no other reason,
   yet certainly for this cause, that though he died, and thus made his
   will valid, yet he lives again to be his own executor, and to carry out
   his will. When I read in our Lord's testament the words, "Father, I
   will that they be with me," I ask, "Who is to hold them back?" They
   must in due time be with him, for the will of the ever blessed Savior
   must be carried out: there can be no standing against a force of that
   kind.

   Nor is this all: the words read to me, not only like intercession and
   testamentary decree, but there is a strong expression of desire,
   resolve, and purpose. Jesus desires it, and saith, "I will." It is a
   deliberate desire--a forcible, distinct, resolute, determined purpose.
   The will of God is supreme law. It needeth not that he should speak; he
   doth but will or purpose, and the thing is done. Now read my text: "I
   will that they be with me;" the Son of God wills it. How are the saints
   to be hindered from what the Lord wills? They must rise from their beds
   of dust and silent clay;--they must rise to be with Jesus where he is,
   for Jesus wills it. By your anxious care you may seek to detain them;
   you may sit about their bed and nurse them both night and day, but they
   must quit these dark abodes when Jesus gives the signal. You may clutch
   them with affectionate eagerness, and even cry in despair, "They shall
   not go, we cannot bear to part with them;" but go they must when Jesus
   calls. Take back your naughty hands, which would detain them, for
   naughty they are if you would rob your Savior. Would you cross his
   will? Would you set at naught his testament? You could not if you
   would; you would not if you could. Rather be inclined to go with them
   than think to resist the heavenly attraction which upraises them. If
   Jesus saith, "I will," then it is yours to say, "Not as I will, but as
   thou wilt. They were never so much mine as they are thine. I never had
   so much right to them as thou hast who hast bought them. They never so
   truly could be at home with me as they will be at home with thee in
   thine own bosom; so my will dissolves itself into thy will, and I say
   with steadfast resignation, 'Let them go.'"

   Brothers and sisters, you perceive the forces which are bearing away
   our beloved ones. I see tender hands reaching after us this morning;
   they are invisible to sense, but palpable to faith. Cords of love are
   being cast about the chosen, and they are being drawn out secretly from
   their fellows. Would you break those bands asunder, and cast those
   cords from us? I beseech you, think not so; but let that pierced hand
   which bought the beloved ones seek out its own purchase and bring them
   home. Should not Jesus have his own? Do we not bow our knee and pray
   for Jesus, "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven?"

   III. But now I want to conduct you farther into the text. We have had
   the home-word and the home-bringing impetus, and now let us carefully
   note THE HOME CHARACTER. "Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast
   given me, be with me where I am." The description is--"They also, whom
   thou hast given me." The Greek is somewhat difficult to translate. The
   translators of the Revised Version were, no doubt, excellent Greek
   scholars, and if they had known a little more English, they might have
   come a little nearer to a perfect translation, but they do not always
   appear to think the common English reader to be worthy of their
   consideration. This is their translation in the present
   instance:--"Father, that which thou hast given me, I will that, where I
   am they also may be with me." This, to speak plainly, sounds very like
   nonsense. It is the translation which a boy would present to his tutor
   at school, but it is of small use to the general reader. It is literal,
   no doubt; but literalisms are often another proof that the letter
   killeth. Translators into the English tongue might have contrived to
   have given us words with a meaning in them. I merely quote the version
   to show you that there is here a something in the singular as well as
   persons in the plural. "Father, I will concerning that which thou hast
   given me, that they may be with me where I am." Our Lord looked upon
   those whom the Father gave him as one--one body, one church, one bride:
   he willed that as a whole the church should be with him where he is.
   Then he looked again and saw each of the many individuals of whom the
   one church is composed, and he prayed that each, that all of these,
   might be with him and behold his glory. Jesus never so prays for the
   whole church as to forget a single member; neither does he so pray for
   the members individually as to overlook the corporate capacity of the
   whole. Sweet thought! Jesus wills to have the whole of what he bought
   with his precious blood with him in heaven; he will not lose any part.
   He did not die for a part of a church, nor will he be satisfied unless
   the entire flock which he has purchased shall be gathered around him.

   But while the Lord looks at those whom his Father gave him as one body,
   he looks upon you and me, and each believer here, as a part of that
   great unity, and his prayer is that all of us may be with him. I
   believe that he prays as much for the least as for the greatest, as
   much for Benjamin as for Judah, as much for the despondent as for those
   who are fully assured. The prayer is one of great breadth and
   comprehensiveness, but yet it is not the prayer which those who believe
   in Universalism would put into his mouth. He does not pray that those
   who die unbelievers may be with him where he is, neither does he will
   that souls in hell should one day come out of it and be with him in
   glory. There is no trace of that doctrine in holy writ: those who teach
   such fables draw their inspiration from some other source. The new
   purgatory, in which so many have come to believe, is unknown to Holy
   Scripture. No, our Lord's prayer is distinctly for those whom the
   Father gave him--for every one of these, but for no others. His "I
   will" concerns them only.

   I feel right glad that there is no sort of personal character mentioned
   here, but only--"Those whom thou hast given me." It seems as if the
   Lord in his last moments was not so much looking at the fruit of grace
   as at grace itself; he did not so much note either the perfections or
   the imperfections of his people, but only the fact that they were his
   by the eternal gift of the Father. They belonged to the Father--"thine
   they were." The Father gave them to Jesus--"thou gavest them me." The
   Father gave them as a love token and a means of his Son's
   glorification--"Thine they were and thou gavest them me;" and now our
   Lord pleads that because they were the Father's gift to him he should
   have them with him. Does anybody raise a cavil as to Christ's right to
   have those with him who were his Father's, whom his Father gave him,
   and whom he himself actually took into his own possession? No, they
   ought to be with him, since they are his in so divine a manner. If I
   possess a love-token that some dear one has given me I may rightly
   desire to have it with me. Nobody can have such a right to your
   wedding-ring, good sister, as you have yourself, and are not Christ's
   saints, as it were, a signet upon his finger, a token which his Father
   gave him of his good pleasure in him? Should they not be with Jesus
   where he is, since they are his crown jewels and his glory? We in our
   creature love lift up our hands, and cry, "My Lord, my Master, let me
   have this dear one with me a little longer. I need the companionship of
   one so sweet, or life will be misery to me." But if Jesus looks us in
   the face, and says, "Is thy right better than mine?" we draw back at
   once. He has a greater part in his saints than we can have. O Jesus,
   thy Father gave them to thee of old; they are his reward for the
   travail of thy soul; and far be it from us to deny thee. Though blinded
   by our tears, we can yet see the rights of Jesus, and we loyally admit
   them. We cry concerning our best beloved, "The Lord hath taken away,
   and blessed be the name of the Lord." Does not the text sweetly comfort
   us in the talking away of one and another, since it shows how they
   belong to Christ?

   IV. And now, advancing another step, Christ reveals to us something
   concerning THE HOME COMPANIONSHIP in the glory land. Those who are
   taken away, where are they gone? The text saith, "I will that they also
   whom thou hast given me be with me where I am; that they may behold my
   glory."

   By this language we are impressed with the nearness of the saints to
   Christ in glory--"that they may be with me." Think for a moment: when
   our Lord used these words, and John took them down, the disciples were
   with him. They had left the supper-table where they had feasted
   together. The Master had said, "Arise, let us go hence;" and it was in
   the very midst of them that the Lord Jesus offered this choice prayer.
   Learn, then, that in heaven the saints will be nearer to Christ than
   the apostles were when they sat at the table with him, or heard him
   pray. That was a nearness which might consist only in place, and their
   minds might still be, as they often were, far away from him: but up in
   heaven we shall be one with him in sympathy, in spirit, in conscious
   fellowship. We shall be with Jesus in the closest, clearest, and most
   complete sense. No fellowship on earth can reach to the plenitude of
   the communion which we shall enjoy above. "With him"--"for ever with
   the Lord"--this is heaven. Who would wish to detain from such
   companionship those whom we love?

   Yet do not drop the thought of place, lest you refine away the essence
   of the prayer. Let us see the spiritual clearly, but let us not, on
   that account, make the sense less real, less matter of fact. To the
   prayer that his saints may be with him our Lord added the words, "May
   be with me where I am." Our bodies will rise from the dust, and they
   must occupy a place: that place will be where Jesus is. Even spirits
   must be somewhere, and that somewhere with us is to be where Jesus is.
   We are to be, not metaphorically and fancifully, but really, truly,
   literally with Jesus. We shall enjoy an intense nearness to him in that
   blessed place which the Father has prepared for him, and which he is
   preparing for us. There is a place where Jesus is revealed in all the
   splendor of his majesty, amid angels and glorified spirits; and those
   whom our Lord's will has taken away from us have not gone into
   banishment in a mysterious land, neither are they shut up in a house of
   detention till there is a general jail delivery, but they are with
   Christ in Paradise. They serve him, and they see his face. Who would be
   so cruel as to keep a saint from such a fair country? I would desire
   all good for my children, my relatives, my friends; and what good is
   better than to be where Jesus is? Are you not glad to hear of the
   promotion of those you love? Will you quarrel with God because some of
   your dearest ones are promoted to the skies? The thought of their
   amazing bliss greatly moderates our natural grief. We weep for
   ourselves, but as we remember their companionship with the Altogether
   Lovely One a smile blends with our tears.

   Notice the occupation of those who are with Jesus: "That they may
   behold my glory." I do not wonder that Jesus wants his dear ones to be
   with him for this purpose, since love always pines for a partner in its
   joys. When I have been abroad, and have been specially charmed with
   glorious scenery, I have a hundred times felt myself saying, almost
   involuntarily, "How I wish that my dear wife could be here! I should
   enjoy this a hundred times as much if she could but see it!" It is an
   instinct of affection to seek fellowship in joy. The Lord Jesus is
   truly human, and he feels this unselfish desire of every loving human
   heart, and therefore says, "Father, I will that they also, whom thou
   hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory."
   Our Lord graciously permits his disciples to have fellowship with him
   in his sufferings, and hence he is all the more desirous that they
   should participate in his glory. He knows that nothing will be a
   greater joy to them than to see him exalted; therefore he would give
   them this highest form of delight. Was not Joseph delighted when he
   said to his brethren, "Ye shall tell my father of all my glory in
   Egypt;" and still more so when he could actually show his father how
   great was his power, how exalted was his rank. It is joy to Jesus to
   let us behold his joy, and it will be glory to us to behold his glory.
   Should not the redeemed ascend to such blessed delights? Would you
   hinder them?

   How unselfish it is on our Lord's part to think himself not fully
   glorified till we behold his glory! How unselfish he will make us also,
   since it will be our glory to see his glory! He does not say that he is
   going to take us home, that we may be in glory, but that we may behold
   his glory. His glory is better to us than any personal glory: all
   things are more ours by being his. Glory apart from him were no glory.
   Beloved, even as our Lord seems to lose himself in his people, his
   people hide themselves away in him. It is his glory to glorify them; it
   is their glory to glorify him; and it will be the glory of glories for
   them to be glorified together. Who would not go to this heaven? Who
   would keep a brother out of it an hour?

   Observe the fellowship which exists in the glory land. Read the verse:
   "That they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me." What a
   blending of persons! Where did our Lord's glory come from? "Thou gavest
   it me," says Jesus. Hence it is the Father's glory passed over to the
   Son. Yet Jesus calls it "my glory," for it is truly his own. The saints
   are to behold this, and it will be their glory to see it. Here we have
   the Father, and the Elder Brother, and the many brethren, and a
   wonderful communism of interests and possessions. It is ever so in a
   loving family. There we draw no hard and fast lines of meum and tuum.
   "All thine are mine, and mine are thine." We ask not whose is this? or
   whose is that? when we are at home. If you were to go into a stranger's
   house, you would not think of taking this or that; but as your father's
   own son you make yourself at home, and no one enquires, "What doest
   thou?" Bridegroom and bride do not quarrel about property whether it be
   his or hers. Laws have been made lately to settle different estates for
   those who are one: this is well enough when love is gone, but true
   conjugal love laughs at all that can make separate that which God hath
   joined together. The wife says, "That is mine." "No" saith the
   caviller, "it is your husband's." Her answer is, "and therefore it is
   mine." In that blessed union into which divine love has admitted us
   Christ is ours, and we are Christ's; his Father is our Father, we are
   one with him, he is one with the Father: and hence all things are ours,
   and the Father himself loveth us. All this will not only be true in
   heaven, but it will there be realized and acted on. So when the Lord
   brings his people home, we shall be one with him, and he one with the
   Father, and we also in him one with the Father, so that we shall then
   find boundless glory in beholding the glory of our Lord and God. My
   text has baffled me. I am beaten back by its blaze of light. Forgive
   me. I had a thought, but I cannot express it. The fire of my text burns
   with such fervent heat that it threatens to consume me if I draw nearer
   to it. Easily could I step into heaven--so I feel at this moment.

   V. I must end by speaking of THE HOME ATMOSPHERE. None of us can wish
   our departed friends back from their thrones. Since they have gone to
   be where Jesus is, and to enter so fully into the most blissful
   fellowship with him and the Father, we would not have them return even
   for an instant to this poor country. We only wish that our turn for
   migration may come soon. We would not be too long divided from our
   fellows. If some of the birds have gone to the sunny land, let us plume
   our wings to follow them. There will be only a little interval between
   our parting and our everlasting meeting. Look at the many who died
   before we came into the world. Some of them have been in heaven
   together now for thousands of years. To them it must seem that they
   were only divided by a moment's interval; their continents of
   fellowship have made the channel of death seem but a streak of sea.
   Soon we shall take the same view of things.

   Breathe the home atmosphere. Jesus tells us that the atmosphere of his
   home is love: "Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world."
   Brethren, can you follow me in a great flight? Can you stretch broader
   wings than the condor ever knew, and fly back into the unbeginning
   eternity? There was a day before all days, when there was no day but
   the Ancient of Days. There was a time before all time, when God only
   was: the uncreated, the only-existent One. The Divine Three, Father,
   Son, and Spirit, lived in blessed consort with each other, delighting
   in each other. Oh the intensity of the divine love of the Father to the
   Son! There was no world, no sun, no moon, no stars, no universe, but
   God alone; and the whole of God's omnipotence flowed forth in a stream
   of love to the Son, while the Son's whole being remained eternally one
   with the Father by a mysterious essential union. How came all this
   which we now see and hear? Why this creation? this fall of Adam? this
   redemption? this church? this heaven? How came it all about? It needed
   not to have been, but the Father's love made him resolve to show forth
   the glory of his Son. The mysterious volume which has been gradually
   unfolded before us has only this one design--the Father would make
   known his love to the Son, and make the Son's glories to appear before
   the eyes of those whom the Father gave him. This Fall and this
   Redemption, and the story as a whole, so far as the divine purpose is
   concerned, are the fruit of the Father's love to the Son, and his
   delight in glorifying the Son. Those myriads, those white-robed
   myriads, harping to music infinitely deep, what mean they all? They are
   the Father's delight in the Son. That he might be glorified for ever,
   he permitted that he should bear a human body, and should suffer,
   bleed, and die, so that there might come out of him, as a harvest
   cometh from a dying and buried corn of wheat, all the countless hosts
   of elect souls, ordained for ever to a felicity exceeding bounds. These
   are the bride of the Lamb, the body of Christ, the fullness of him that
   filleth all in all. Their destiny is so high that no language can fully
   describe it. God only knows the love of God, and all that it has
   prepared for those who are the objects of it.

   Love wraps up the whole in its cloth of gold. Love is both the source
   and the channel, and the end of the divine acting. Because the Father
   loved the Son he gave us to him, and ordained that we should be with
   him. His love to us is love to the Son. "Not for your sakes do I this,
   O House of Israel; be ashamed and be confounded." Because of the
   boundless, ineffable, infinite love of the great Father toward his Son,
   therefore hath he ordained this whole system of salvation and
   redemption, that Jesus in the church of his redeemed might
   everlastingly be glorified. Let our saintly ones go home, beloved, if
   that is the design of their going. Since all comes of divine love, and
   all sets forth divine love, let them go to him who loves them--let
   divine love fulfill its purpose of bringing many sons unto glory. Since
   the Father once made our Lord perfect by his sufferings, let him now be
   made perfectly glorious by the coming up of his redeemed from the
   purifying bath of his atonement I see them rise like sheep from the
   washing, all of them gathering with delight at the feet of that great
   Shepherd of the sheep.

   Beloved, I am lost in the subject now. I breathe that heavenly air.
   Love surrounds all, and conquers grief. I will not cause the
   temperature to fall by uttering any other words but this--Hold your
   friends lovingly, but be ready to yield them to Jesus. Detain them not
   from him to whom they belong. When they are sick, fast and pray; but
   when they are departed, do much as David did, who washed his face, and
   ate, and drank. You cannot bring them back again; you will go to them,
   they cannot return to you. Comfort yourselves with the double thought
   of their joy in Christ and Christ's joy in them; add the triple thought
   of the Father's joy in Christ and in them. Let us watch the Master's
   call. Let us not dread the question--who next, and who next? Let none
   of us start back as though we hoped to linger longer than others. Let
   us even desire to see our names in the celestial conscription. Let us
   be willing to be dealt with just as our Lord pleases. Let no doubt
   intervene; let no gloom encompass us. Dying is but going home; indeed,
   there is no dying for the saints. Charles Stanford is gone! Thus was
   his death told to me--"He drew up his feet and smiled." Thus will you
   and I depart. He had borne his testimony in the light, even when blind.
   He had cheered us all, though he was the greatest sufferer of us all;
   and now the film has gone from the eyes, and the anguish is gone from
   the heart, and he is with Jesus. He smiled. What a sight was that which
   caused that smile! I have seen many faces of dear departed ones lit up
   with splendor. Of many I could feel sure that they had seen a vision of
   angels. Traces of a reflected glory hung about their countenances. O
   brethren, we shall soon know more of heaven than all the divines can
   tell us. Let us go home now to our own dwellings; but let us pledge
   ourselves that we will meet again. But where shall we appoint the
   trysting place? It would be idle to appoint any spot of earth, for this
   assembly will never come together again in this world. We will meet
   with Jesus, where he is, where we shall behold his glory. Some of you
   cannot do this. Turn from your evil ways. Turn to the right, where
   stands that cross, and keep straight on, and you will come to Jesus in
   glory. Blessed be the name of the Lord! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Revelation 21:22-27; 22.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--855, 865, 873.
     __________________________________________________________________

                          Jesus Angry with Hard Hearts

   A Sermon

   (No. 1893)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, March 28th, 1886, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [6]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved
   for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth
   thine hand."--Mark 3:5.

   MY TEXT WILL REALLY CONSIST of these words: "He looked round about on
   them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts." It is
   the divine Lord, the pitiful Jesus, the meek and lowly in heart, who is
   here described as being angry. Where else do we meet with such a
   statement while he was here among men? A poor man was present in the
   synagogue who had a withered hand: it was his right hand, and he who
   has to earn his daily bread can guess what it must be to have that
   useful member dried up or paralyzed. In the same synagogue was the
   Savior, ready to restore to that hand all its wonted force and cunning.
   Happy conjunction! The company that had gathered in the synagogue,
   professedly to worship God, would they not have special cause to do so
   when they saw a miracle of divine goodness? I can imagine them
   whispering one to another, "We shall see our poor neighbor restored
   to-day; for the Son of God has come among us with power to heal, and he
   will make this a very glorious Sabbath by his work of gracious power."

   But I must not let imagination mislead me: they did nothing of the
   kind. Instead of this, they sat watching the Lord Jesus, not to be
   delighted by an act of his power, but to find somewhat of which they
   might accuse him. When all came to all, the utmost that they would be
   able to allege would be that he had healed a withered hand on the
   Sabbath. Overlooking the commendation due for the miracle of healing,
   they laid the emphasis upon its being done on the Sabbath; and held up
   their hands with horror that such a secular action should be performed
   on such a sacred day. Now, the Savior puts very plainly before them the
   question, "Is it right to do good on the Sabbath-day?" He put it in a
   form which only allowed of one reply. The question could, no doubt,
   have been easily answered by these Scribes and Pharisees, but then it
   would have condemned themselves, and therefore they were all as mute as
   mice. Scribes most skilled in splitting hairs, and Pharisees who could
   measure the border of a garment to the eighth of an inch, declined to
   answer one of the simplest questions in morals. Mark describes the
   Savior as looking round upon them all with anger and grief, as well he
   might.

   You know how minute Mark is in his record: his observation is
   microscopic, and his description is graphic to the last degree. By the
   help of Mark's clear words you can easily picture the Savior looking
   round upon them. He stands up boldly, as one who had nothing to
   conceal; as one who was about to do that which would need no defense.
   He challenged observation, though he knew that his opposition to
   ecclesiastical authority would involve his own death, and hasten the
   hour of the cross. He did not defy them, but he did make them feel
   their insignificance as he stood looking round upon them all. Can you
   conceive the power of that look? The look of a man who is much given to
   anger has little force in it: it is the blaze of a wisp of straw,
   fierce and futile. In many cases we almost smile at the impotent age
   which looks out from angry eyes; but a gentle spirit, like the
   Savior's, commands reverence if once moved to indignation. His meek and
   lowly heart could only have been stirred with anger by some
   overwhelming cause. We are sure that he did well to be angry.

   Even when moved to an indignant look, his anger ended there; he only
   looked, but spake no word of upbraiding. And the look itself had in it
   more of pity than of contempt; or, as one puts it, "more of compassion
   than of passion." Our Lord's look upon that assembly of opponents
   deserves our earnest regard. He paused long enough in that survey to
   gaze upon each person, and to let him know what was intended by the
   glance. Nobody escaped the searching light which that expressive eye
   flashed upon each malicious watcher. They saw that to him their base
   conduct was loathsome; he understood them, and was deeply moved by
   their obstinacy.

   Note well that Jesus did not speak a word, and yet he said more without
   words than another man could have said with them. They were not worthy
   of a word; neither would more words have had the slightest effect upon
   them. He saved his words for the poor man with the withered hand; but
   for these people a look was the best reply: they looked on him, and now
   he looked on them. This helps me to understand that passage in the
   Revelation, where the ungodly are represented as crying to the rocks to
   cover them, and the hills to hide them from the face of him that sat
   upon the throne. The Judge has not spoken so much as a single word; not
   yet has he opened the books; not yet has he pronounced the sentence,
   "Depart, ye cursed;" but they are altogether terrified by the look of
   that august countenance. Concentrated love dwells in the face of Jesus,
   the Judge; but in that dread day, they will see it set on fire with
   wrath. The wrath of a lion is great, but it is nothing compared with
   that of the Lamb. I wish I had skill to describe our Lord's look; but I
   must ask the aid of your understandings and your imaginations to make
   it vivid to your minds.

   When Mark has told us of that look, he proceeds to mention the mingled
   feelings which were revealed by it. In that look there were two
   things--there were anger and grief--indignation and inward sorrow. "He
   looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness
   of their hearts." He was angry that they should willingly blind their
   eyes to a truth so plain, an argument so convincing. He had put to them
   a question to which there could only be one answer, and they would not
   give it; he had thrown light on their eyes, and they would not see it;
   he had utterly destroyed their chosen pretext for opposition, and yet
   they would persist in opposing him. Evidently it is possible to be
   angry and to be right. Hard to many is the precept "Be ye angry, and
   sin not;" and this fact renders the Savior's character all the more
   admirable, since he so easily accomplished what is so difficult to us.
   He could be angry with the sin, and yet never cease to compassionate
   the sinner. His was not anger which desired evil to its object; no
   touch of malevolence was in it; it was simply love on fire, love
   burning with indignation against that which is unlovely.

   Mingled with this anger there was grief. He was heart broken because
   their hearts were so hard. As Manton puts it, "He was softened because
   of their hardness." His was not the pitiless flame of wrath which burns
   in a dry eye; he had tears as well as anger. His thunder-storm brought
   a shower of pity with it. The Greek word is hard to translate. There is
   what an eminent critic calls a sort of togetheredness in the word; he
   grieved with them. He felt that the hardness of their hearts would one
   day bring upon them an awful misery; and foreseeing that coming grief,
   he grieved with them by anticipation. He was grieved at their hardness
   because it would injure themselves; their blind enmity vexed him
   because it was securing their own destruction. He was angry because
   they were wilfully rejecting the light which would have illuminated
   them with heavenly brightness, the life which could have quickened them
   into fullness of joy. They were thus determinedly and resolutely
   destroying their own souls out of hatred to him, and he was angry more
   for their sakes than his own.

   There is something very admirable in our Savior even when we see him in
   an unusual condition. Even when he grows angry with men, he is angry
   with them because they will not let him bless them, because they will
   persevere in opposing him for reasons which they cannot themselves
   support, and dare not even own. If I had been one of the disciples who
   were with him in the synagogue, I think I should have burned with
   indignation to see them all sitting there, refusing to forego their
   hate, and yet unable to say a word in defense of it. I doubt not, the
   loving spirit of John grew warm. What a horrible thing that any
   creature in the shape of a man should act so unworthily to the blessed
   Son of God, as to blame him for doing good! What a disgrace to our
   race, for men to be so inhuman as to wish to see their fellow-man
   remain withered, and to dare to blame the gentle Physician who was
   about to make him perfectly whole! Man is indeed at enmity with God
   when he finds an argument for hate in a deed of love.

   Our first question is, What was the cause of this anger and this grief?
   Then let us enquire, Does anything of this sort rest in us? Do we cause
   our Lord anger and grief? And, thirdly, let us ask, what should be our
   feeling, when we see that something about us may cause, or does cause
   him, anger and grief? Oh that the Holy Spirit may bless this sermon to
   all who hear me this day!

   I. WHAT CAUSED THIS ANGER AND GRIEF? It was their hardness of heart. To
   use other words, it was the callousness of their conscience their want
   of feeling. Their hearts had, as it were, grown horny, and had lost
   their proper softness. The hand may furnish us with an illustration.
   Some persons have very delicate hands: the blind who read raised type
   with their fingers develop special sensitiveness, and this
   sensitiveness is of great value. But when men are put to pick oakum, or
   break stones, or do other rough work, their hands become hard and
   callous: even so is it with the heart, which ought to be exceedingly
   tender; through continuance in sin it becomes callous and unfeeling.
   Use is second nature: the traveller's foot gets hardened to the way,
   his face becomes hardened to the cold, his whole constitution is
   hardened by his mode of life. Persons have taken deadly drugs by little
   and little till they have been hardened against their results: we read
   in history that Mithridates had used poison till at last he was unable
   to kill himself thereby, so hardened had he become. But hardening is of
   the worst kind when it takes place in the heart. The heart ought to be
   all tenderness; and when it is not, the life must be coarse and evil.
   Yet multitudes are morally smitten with ossification of the heart. Do
   we not know some men in whom the heart is simply a huge muscle? If they
   have any hearts they are made of leather, for they have no pity for
   anybody, no fellow-feeling even for their relatives. God save us from a
   hard heart: it leads to something worse than death! A heart of flesh
   may be gone out of a man, and instead thereof he may have a heart of
   stone: Scripture even calls it "an adamant stone"--unfeeling,
   unyielding, impenetrable, obstinate. Those enemies of our Lord who sat
   in the synagogue that Sabbath-day were incorrigible: they were
   desperately set on hating him, and they strengthened themselves in the
   resolve that they would not be convinced, and would not cease to oppose
   him, let him say or do whatever he might. Our Lord Jesus became angry,
   grieved, and sorrowful with them.

   What was their exact fault?

   First, they would not see, though the case was clear. He had set the
   truth so plainly before them that they were obliged to strain their
   understandings to avoid being convinced: they had to draw down the
   blinds of the soul, and put up the shutters of the mind, to be able not
   to see. There are none so blind as those that will not see, and these
   were of that blindest order; they were blind people that had eyes and
   boasted that they could see, and therefore their sin was utterly
   without excuse. Ah, me! I fear that we have many around us still, who
   know, but do not act on their knowledge; who do not wish to be
   convinced and converted, but harden themselves against known duty and
   plain right.

   What was more, what these people were forced to see they would not
   acknowledge. They sullenly held their tongues when they were bound to
   speak. Does it not happen to many persons that the gospel forces itself
   upon their belief? They feel that they could not conjure up an argument
   against the divine truth which is set before them: the word comes with
   such demonstration that it smites them with sledge-hammer force; but
   they do not intend to admit its power, and so they brace themselves up
   to bear the blow without yielding. They shut their months against the
   water of life which is held up to them in the golden cup of the gospel.
   No child could shut his teeth more desperately against medicine than
   they against the gospel. Any man may take a horse to the water, but ten
   thousand cannot make him drink, and this is proved in many a hearer of
   the word. There sat these Scribes and Pharisees: it is a wonder that
   the stones did not cry out against them, they were so doggedly
   determined not to admit that which they could not deny. Are there none
   of that breed among us still?

   More than that, while they would not see what was so plain, they were
   diligently seeking to spy out flaws and faults where there were none,
   namely, in the Lord Jesus. So there are many who profess that they
   cannot understand the gospel, but they have understanding enough to
   cavil at it, and cast slurs upon it. They have a cruelly keen eye for
   non-existent errors in Scripture: they find this mistake in
   Deuteronomy, and the other in Genesis. What great wisdom, to be
   diligent in making discoveries against one's own eternal interests! The
   gospel of the Lord Jesus is man's only hope of salvation: what a pity
   to count it the height of cleverness to destroy our only hope! Alas for
   captious sceptics! They are sharp-sighted as eagles against themselves,
   but they are blind as bats to those things which make for their peace.
   These Scribes and Pharisees tried to discover the undiscoverable,
   namely, some fault in Jesus, and yet they could not or would not see
   the wickedness of their own opposition to him.

   They dared to sit in judgment upon the Lord, who proved himself by his
   miracles to be divine, and yet all the while they professed great
   reverence for God and for his law. Though they were fighting against
   God, they made the pretense of being very zealous for him, and
   especially for his holy day. This is an old trick of the enemy, to
   fight true religion with false religion, to battle with godliness in
   the name of orthodoxy. This is a hollow sham, and we do not wonder that
   our ever sincere and truthful Lord felt indignant at it. You will know
   yourselves whether you ever do this. I fear that many do. By their zeal
   for the externals of religion they try to justify their opposition to
   the vital possession of it.

   Brethren, I pray that none of us may be hypocrites, for the Lord Jesus
   cannot endure such. He cares not for whitewashed sepulchres, but
   proclaims woe unto all false professors. Here let me give you a
   parable:--In our fine old churches and cathedrals you see monuments
   raised to the dead. These are rich in costly marble and fine statuary,
   with here and there a touch of gold, and a Latin inscription flattering
   the dead. What a goodly show! Yet what does it all mean? Why, that
   corpses are underneath. Take down those marble slabs, remove a little
   earth, and you come to corruption and moving loathsomeness. Graves are
   fitter for cemeteries than for the place which is consecrated to the
   living God. I do not mean by this any censure upon the tombs, which are
   well enough; I only use them as a parable. What shall I say of those
   men and women of whom they are the type and emblem? They are dead while
   they live, and have a form of godliness but deny the power of it; they
   present a fair outside, but secretly practice all manner of
   abominations. What have these to do in the church of God? What a horror
   to know that there are such in the assemblies of the saints! O my
   hearers, dread the hardness which would permit you to be hypocrites!
   Shun above all things that deadness of soul which makes a false
   profession possible, for this is very grievous to the Lord.

   A hard heart is insensible, impenetrable, inflexible. You can no more
   affect it than if you should strike your hand against a stone wall.
   Satan has fortified it, and made its possessor to be steadfast,
   unmovable always abounding in the works of sin. The enmity of such a
   heart leads it to resist all that is good; its hardness returns the
   efforts of love in the form of opposition. Our Savior saw before him
   persons who would oppose him whatever he did, and would not change
   their minds however they might be made to see their error. Let this
   suffice to explain the scene before us of our Lord grieved and angry.

   II. I must now come closer home, while I enquire, IS THERE ANYTHING OF
   THIS SORT AMONG US? Oh, for help in the work of self-examination!

   Remember, we may grieve the Savior because of the hardness of our
   hearts, and yet be very respectable people. We may go to the synagogue,
   as these did; we may be Bible-readers, as the Scribes were; we may
   practice all the outward forms of religion, as the Pharisees did; and
   yet the Lord Jesus may be grieved with us because of the hardness of
   our heart.

   We may anger the Lord, and yet be strictly non-committal. I dare say
   there are some here who are not Christians, and yet they never say a
   word against Christianity. They are strictly neutral. They judge that
   the less they think or say about this great matter the better. Jesus
   was angry that men should be silent when honesty and candour demanded
   speech of them. You must not think you are going to escape by saying,
   "I am not a professor." There can be no third party in this case. In
   the eternal world there is no provision made for neutrals. Those who
   are not with Jesus are against him, and they that gather not with him
   are scattering abroad. You are either wheat or tares, and there is
   nothing between the two. O sirs, you grieve him though you do not
   openly oppose him! Some of you are especially guilty, for you ought to
   be amongst the foremost of his friends. Shame on you to treat the Lord
   so ill!

   You may be very tender towards other people; in fact, you may have,
   like the old Jewish king, great tenderness towards everybody but the
   Lord. Did not Zedekiah say, "The king is not he that can do anything
   against you?" I know many who are so fond of pleasing others that they
   cannot be Christians. They have not the moral courage to oppose any one
   for the truth's sake. O sirs, this may well make Jesus look upon you
   with anger and grief; that you should be so self denying, so kind, and
   so considerate to others, and yet act so cruelly to him and to
   yourselves. To yourselves, it is a cruel kindness, to save yourselves
   from speaking out. Your fear is driving you to spiritual suicide. To
   save a little present trouble you are heaping up wrath and judgment.

   Alas, this hardness of heart may be in us, though we have occasional
   meltings! I think that man has a very hard heart who is at times deeply
   moved, but violently represses his emotions. He hurries home to his
   chamber greatly distressed, but in a short time he rallies, and shakes
   off his fears. He goes to a funeral, and trembles on the brink of the
   grave, but joins his merry companions, and is at his sins again. He
   likes to hear a stirring sermon, but he is careful not to go beyond his
   depth while hearing it. He is on the watch against his own welfare, and
   is careful to keep out of the way of a blessing. By a desperate resolve
   he holds out against the pressure of the grace of God, as it comes to
   him in exhortations and entreaties. He is often rebuked, but he hardens
   his neck; he is occasionally on the verge of yielding, but he recovers
   his evil firmness, and holds on his way with a perseverance worthy of a
   better cause. How often have we hoped better things for some of you!
   How often have you blighted those hopes! You must be very hard in heart
   to hold out so long. It shows a strong constitution when a man has
   frequently been near to death, and yet has recovered; and it shows an
   awful vitality of evil when you have been driven to the verge of
   repentance, and then have deliberately turned back to the way of evil,
   sinning against conscience and conviction.

   Yes, and we may have this hardness of heart, and yet keep quite clear
   of gross sins. I have wondered at some men, how they have guarded
   themselves in certain directions, and yet have been lax in other
   matters. While they have gone to excess in sins against God, they have
   been scrupulous in avoiding wrong towards man. Their sins have not been
   stones, but sand: I hope they do not forget that "sand is heavy," and
   that a vessel can as easily be wrecked upon a quicksand as upon a rock.
   Your outwardly moral man is often a hardened rebel against God. His
   pride of character helps to harden him against the gospel of grace. He
   condemns others who are really no worse than himself. There is an
   abominable kind of prudence which keeps some men out of certain sins:
   they are too mean to be prodigal, too fond of ease to plunge into risky
   sins. Many a man is carried off his feet by a sudden flood of
   temptation, and sins grievously, and yet at heart he may be by no means
   so hardened as the cool, calculating transgressor. Woe unto the man who
   has learned to sin deliberately, and to measure out iniquity as if it
   were a lawful merchandize, to be weighed by the ounce and the pound!
   Why, sir, on account of the evident strength of your mind better things
   are expected of you. You cannot plead violence of passion, or
   feebleness of judgment. For you there will be reserved the deeper hell,
   though you escape present condemnation.

   This hardness of heart may not overcome you to the full at present, and
   yet you may have grave cause to dread it. Hardness of heart creeps over
   men by insensible degrees. The hardest hearted man in the world was not
   so once; the flesh of his heart was petrified little by little. He that
   can now curse and blaspheme once wept for his boyish faults at his
   mother's knee, and would have shuddered at the bare idea of falling
   asleep without a prayer. There are those about us who would give worlds
   to be free from the bondage of habit, so as to feel as once they did.
   Their soul is as parched as the Sahara, it has forgotten the dew of
   tears; their heart is hot as an oven with evil passions, and no soft
   breath of holy penitence ever visits it. Oh that they could weep! Oh
   that they could feel! Repentance is hid from their eyes. There remains
   nothing sensitive about them, except it be the base imitation of it
   which comes over them when they are in a maudlin state through strong
   drink. What calamity can be greater? What can be said of sin that is
   more terrible than that it hardens and deadens? Well did the apostle
   say, "Exhort one another daily, while it is called To-day; lest any of
   you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin."

   I cannot forbear saying that among the hardened there are some who may
   be said especially to provoke the Lord. Among these we must mention
   those who, from their birth and education, received an unusually keen
   moral sense, but have blunted it by repeated crimes. Those sin doubly
   who have had double light, and special tenderness of nature. Judge, O
   ye sons of the godly, whether there are not many such among you! Esau
   was all the more a "profane person" because he was a son of Isaac, knew
   something about the covenant heritage, and had certain fine touches of
   nature which ought to have made him a better man.

   This is also true of those who have been indulged by Providence. God
   has dealt with them with wonderful favor; they have continued long in
   good health; they have been prosperous in business; their children have
   grown up around them; they have all that heart can wish; and yet God
   receives from them no gratitude; indeed, they hardly give a thought to
   him. Ingratitude is sure to bring a curse upon the man who is guilty of
   it. Alas, the ungrateful are numerous everywhere! Some who are well
   known to me should have remembered the Lord, for he has granted them a
   smooth path, a full wallet, and sunshine to travel in. If there were an
   honest heart in you, your hearts would cleave to the Lord in deep and
   hearty love. Silken cords of love are stronger with true men than
   fetters of iron are to thieves.

   Let me not forget the obligations of others who have been often
   chastened, for this side of the question has its force also. Certain
   persons have endured many trials, they have often suffered pain of
   body, and have been brought at times to the verge of the grave; they
   have lost the beloved of their eyes with a stroke; they have followed
   their children to the grave: sorrows have been multiplied to them. Yet,
   after all, they are hard of heart. The fire of affliction has not
   softened their iron nature. Why should they be stricken any more? They
   will revolt more and more. The Lord himself cries, "O Ephraim, what
   shall I do unto thee?" Long-suffering fails: mercy is weary. There are
   no more rods to use upon you, as the bullock kicks out against the
   goad, so do you resist the chastening of the Lord God. The Savior looks
   upon all such with that grieving anger of which the text speaks.

   Alas! I dare not omit those towards whom the Savior must feel this
   anger very especially, because they have been the subjects of tender,
   earnest, faithful ministry. I will not say much of my own personal
   ministry, which has been spent for years upon many of you; but
   assuredly if it has not affected you, it is not for want of strong
   desire and intense longing to be of service to your souls. God is my
   witness that I have kept back nothing of his truth. I have never
   flattered you, neither have I occupied this pulpit to make it a
   platform for self-display. I have not shunned to declare unto you the
   whole counsel of God. But, apart from this, certain of you have had the
   tender ministries of a holy mother who is now with God, of a wise
   father who lives still to pray for you, of affectionate teachers who
   instructed you aright, and loving friends who sought your good. Father,
   your child has wooed you. Young man, your newly-converted wife has
   agonized for you, and is agonizing even now. Very select have been the
   agencies used upon you. Choice and musical the voices which have
   endeavored to charm you. If these do not reach you, neither would you
   be converted though one rose from the dead. If Jesus himself were here
   again among men, how could even he reach you? If all the means he has
   already used have failed with you, I know not what is to be done with
   you. The Savior himself will, I fear, leave you; with a look of grief
   and anger he will turn from you because of the hardness of your heart.
   Stay, Lord Jesus, stay a little longer! Peradventure they will be won
   next time. Bid not thy Spirit take his everlasting flight. Do not swear
   in thy wrath that they shall not enter into thy rest, but be patient
   with them yet a little longer, for thy mercy's sake.

   III. We must now close. Oh that my poor pleadings may not have been
   lost upon you! In many things which I have spoken there has been a loud
   voice to many of you; now hear me while I raise the question, WHAT
   SHOULD BE OUR FEELING IN REFERENCE TO THIS SUBJECT?

   First, let us renounce for ever the habit of cavilling. These Scribes
   and Pharisees were great word-spinners, critics, fault-finders. They
   found fault with the Savior for healing on the Sabbath-day. He had not
   broken God's law of the Sabbath, he had only exposed their error upon
   that point. If the Sabbath had not furnished an opportunity for
   objection, they would soon have found another; for they meant to
   object: one way or another, they resolved to contradict. Multitudes of
   persons in this present day are most effectually hardening their hearts
   by the habit of cavilling. While others are struck by the beauty of the
   gospel which they hear, these people only remember a mispronunciation
   made by the preacher. Having commenced in this line they begin to sit
   in judgment on the gospel preached, and before long the Scriptures
   themselves are subjected to their alteration and correction. Reverence
   is gone, and self-sufficience reigns supreme. They criticize God's
   word. Any fool can do that, but only a fool will do it. They give
   themselves the airs of literary men; they are not like common-place
   hearers: they require something more intellectual. They look down with
   contempt upon people who enjoy the gospel, and are proving the power of
   it in their lives. They themselves are persons of remarkable mind; men
   of light and leading, and it gives them distinction to act the part of
   sceptics. They show their great learning by turning up their noses at
   the plain teachings of the Bible. It seems to be the great feature of a
   cultured man nowadays to wear a sneer upon his face when he meets with
   believers in inspiration. An idiot can attain in five minutes to a high
   degree of contempt of others; do not exhibit such folly. Pride of this
   sort ruins those who indulge it. To be unbelieving in order to show
   one's superiority is an unsatisfactory business. Let us never imitate
   that evil spirit, who in the garden of Eden proved himself to be the
   patron and exemplar of all sceptics. Remember how he raised the
   question, "Yea, hath God said?" Forget not how he went further, and,
   like a sage philosopher, hinted that there was a larger hope: "Ye shall
   not surely die," said he. Then he advanced to lay down a daring radical
   philosophy, and whispered, "God doth know that in the day ye eat
   thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods." This
   old serpent has left his trail on many minds at the present day, and
   you can see it in the slimy questions and poisonous suggestions of the
   age. Get away from cavilling: it is of all labors the least
   remunerative.

   Next, let us feel an intense desire to submit ourselves unto the Lord
   Jesus. If he be in the synagogue, let us ask him to heal us, and to do
   it in his own way. Let us become his disciples, and follow him
   whithersoever he goeth. Yield yourselves unto God. Be as melted wax to
   the seal. Be as the water of the lake, which is moved with every breath
   of the wind. All he wills is our salvation. Lord Jesus, let thy will be
   done!

   Let us be careful to keep away from all hardening influences, whether
   of books, or men, or habits, or pleasures. If there be any company
   which deadens us as to spiritual things, which hinders our prayers,
   shakes our faith, or damps our zeal, let us get out of it, and keep out
   of it. If any amusement lessens our hatred of sin, let us never go near
   it; if any book clouds our view of Jesus, let us never read it. We grow
   hard soon enough through the needful contact with the world which
   arises out of work-day life and business pursuits; let us not increase
   these evils. Shun the idler's talk, the scorner's seat, and the way of
   the ungodly. Shun false doctrine, worldliness, and strife. Keep clear
   of frivolity and trifling. Be in earnest, and be pure; live near to
   God, and remove far off from the throne of iniquity.

   Lastly, use all softening influences. Ask to have your heart daily
   rendered sensitive by the indwelling of the quickening Spirit. Go often
   to hear the word: it is like a fire, and like a hammer breaking the
   rock in pieces. Dwell at the foot of the cross it is there that
   tenderness is born into human hearts. Jesus makes all hearts soft, and
   then stamps his image on them. Entreat the Holy Ghost to give you a
   very vivid sense of sin, and a very intense dread of it. Pray often
   according to the tenor of Charles Wesley's hymn, in which he cries--

   "Quick as the apple of an eye,

   O God, my conscience make!

   Awake my soul when sin is nigh,

   And keep it still awake.

   "Oh, may the least omission pain

   My well-instructed soul

   And drive me to the blood again,

   Which makes the wounded whole!"

   If such be the condition of our heart our Lord will not be angry with
   us. He will look round upon us with joy, and take a delight in us.

   So far I have kept to the text, bearing all the while the burden of the
   Lord. If it be not heavy hearing to you, it is certainly painful
   preaching to me. That same love which made the loving Jesus grieved has
   driven me to speak after this fashion. Not that I love men as much as
   he did; but a spark from his fire has kindled in my soul, and is
   burning there according to the measure of grace given. But now, my dear
   hearers, let me indulge myself with a word of gospel. Surely there are
   some among you who desire to lose your hardness. You are crying to
   yourselves--

   "Heart of stone, relent! relent!

   Melt by Jesus' love subdued!"

   To you there is abundant cause of hope. He who made the heart can melt
   it. Job said, "God maketh my heart soft." It is the peculiar office of
   the Holy Spirit to renew our nature; indeed, he makes us to be born
   again, working on the behalf of our Lord Jesus, whose royal word is,
   "Behold I make all things new." The Holy Ghost can work in us
   conviction of sin, the new birth, faith in the Lord Jesus, deep
   contrition, and holy tenderness. Do you desire that it should be so?
   Will you join me in a silent prayer that his melting operations may at
   this moment be felt in your soul?

   To you is the word of this salvation sent. The Lord God has undertaken
   to glorify himself in redeeming his people from all iniquity. He has
   entered into covenant with his chosen, and all who believe in his Son
   Jesus are comprehended in that number. The covenant speaketh on this
   wise: "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put
   within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and
   I will give you an heart of flesh." (Ezekiel 36:26.) See how this
   promise exactly meets your case! That kind of heart which you so
   greatly need shall be given you, though indeed it is a miracle of
   miracles to do it. A new arm or leg would be a wonder; but what shall
   be said of a new heart? The spirit which you also so greatly require is
   to be bestowed, your whole tone, temper, and tendency shall be altered
   in an extraordinary manner. The Lord can drive out the evil spirit, and
   then he can renew your spirit, and fill your being with his own Holy
   Spirit. As for that nature which refuses to feel or yield, or break or
   bend, the Lord is able to take this altogether away. What an operation
   to perform, and yet leave the patient alive! "I will take away the
   stony heart out of your flesh." None but he that made the heart could
   execute such delicate surgery as this. Do you think that it can never
   be done in your case? Remember that the Lord never speaks beyond his
   line; there is no boasting with him. His arm has not waxed short; he is
   still able to save unto the uttermost. When the old stony heart is
   gone, the Lord can fill up the empty space with the most gentle and
   sensitive affections, even as he says, "I will give you an heart of
   flesh." By this means we shall be made to stand in awe of God's word;
   we shall tremble before him; we shall also feel a childlike gratitude,
   a filial love, and a holy obedience. Instead of needing to be smitten
   with a hammer we shall feel the slightest touch of the divine finger,
   and shall answer to the faintest call of the divine voice. What a
   change!

   Now this is matter of promise. See how the verse glitters with "I
   will," and "I will." The Lord, who is able to perform his word, has
   spoken in this fashion, and he will not run back from his promise. But
   please read the thirty-seventh verse of this thirty-sixth chapter of
   Ezekiel, and mark it well. "Thus saith the Lord God; I will yet for
   this be enquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them." Will
   you not enquire? Will you not ask the Lord to do this for you? If so,
   your prayer has begun to be answered. Your desire is a token that the
   stone is softening, and flesh is taking its place. O Lord, grant that
   it may be so! Believe in the Lord Jesus that he is able to do this unto
   you, and it shall be according to your faith.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Mark 2:23-28; Hebrews 3:7-19.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--257, 579, 598.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Two Appearings and the Discipline of Grace

   (No. 1894)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 4, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For the Grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men,
   teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live
   soberly, righteously and godly in this present world; looking for that
   blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our
   Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us
   from alliniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of
   good works." Titus 2:11-14.

   UPON reading this text, one sees at a glance that Paul believed in a
   Divine Savior. He did not preach a Savior who was a mere man. He
   believed the Lord Jesus Christ to be truly Man, but he also believed
   Him to be God over all and he, therefore, uses the striking words, "the
   glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." There
   is no appearing of God the Father--there is no such expression in
   Scripture! The appearing is the appearing of that second Person of the
   blessed Trinity in unity who has already once appeared and who will
   appear a second time without a sin offering unto salvation in the
   latter days. Paul believed in Jesus as "the great God and our Savior."
   It was his high delight to extol the Lord who once was crucified in
   weakness. He calls Him, here, "the great God," thus specially dwelling
   upon His power, dominion and Glory. And this is the more remarkable
   because he immediately goes on to say, "who gave Himself for us, that
   He might redeem us from all iniquity." He that gave Himself. He that
   surrendered life, itself, upon the accursed tree. He that was stripped
   of all honor and Glory and entered into the utmost depths of
   humiliation was, assuredly, the great God notwithstanding all! O
   Brothers, if you take away the Deity of Christ, what in the Gospel is
   left that is worth preaching? None but the great God is equal to the
   work of being our Savior!

   We learn, also, at first sight, that Paul believed in a great
   redemption. "Who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all
   iniquity." That word, "redemption," sounds in my ears like a silver
   bell! We are ransomed, purchased back from slavery and this at an
   immeasurable price--not merely by the obedience of Christ, nor the
   suffering of Christ, nor even the death of Christ, but by Christ's
   giving Himself for us. All that there is in the great God and Savior
   was paid down that He might "redeem us from all iniquity." The splendor
   of the Gospel lies in the redeeming Sacrifice of the Son of God and we
   shall never fail to put this to the front in our preaching! It is the
   gem of all the Gospel gems! As the moon is among the stars, so is this
   great doctrine among all the lesser lights which God has kindled to
   make glad the night of fallen man! Paul never hesitates--he has a
   Divine Savior and a Divine redemption--and he preaches these with
   unwavering confidence. Oh that all preachers were like Paul!

   It is also clear that Paul looked upon the appearing of the Savior as a
   Redeemer from all iniquity as a display of the Grace of God. He says,
   "The Grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men." In
   the Person of Christ, the Grace of God is revealed, as when the sun
   rises and makes glad all lands. It is not a private vision of God to a
   favored Prophet on the lone mountain's brow, but it is an open
   declaration of the Grace of God to every creature under Heaven--a
   display of the Grace of God to all eyes that are open to behold it!
   When the Lord Jesus Christ came to Bethlehem and when He closed a
   perfect life by death upon Calvary, He manifested the Grace of God more
   gloriously than has been done by creation or Providence. This is the
   clearest Revelation of the everlasting mercy of the living God! In the
   Redeemer we behold the unveiling of the Father's face. What if I say
   the laying bare of the Divine heart? To repeat the figure of the text,
   this is the dayspring from on high which has visited us. This is the
   Sun which has risen with healing in His wings. The Grace of God has
   conspicuously shone forth and made itself visible to men of every rank
   in the Person and work of the Lord Jesus. This was not given us because
   of anything deserved on our part--it is a manifestation of free,

   rich, undeserved Grace and of that Grace in its fullness! The Grace of
   God has been made manifest to the entire universe in the appearing of
   Jesus Christ our Lord!

   The grand objective of the manifestation of Divine Grace in Christ
   Jesus is to deliver men from the dominion of evil. The world in Paul's
   day was sunk in immorality, debauchery, ungodliness, bloodshed and
   cruelty of every kind. I have not time, this morning, to give you,
   even, an outline of the Roman world when Paul wrote this letter to
   Titus. We are bad enough, now, but the outward manners and customs of
   that period were simply horrible! The spread of the Gospel has worked a
   change for the better. In the Apostle's days the favorite spectacles
   for holiday entertainment were the slaughter of men--and such was the
   general depravity, that vices which we hardly dare to mention were
   defended and gloried in. In the midnight of the world's history, our
   Lord appeared to put away sin. The Lord Jesus Christ, who is the
   manifestation of the Divine Grace to men, came into the world to put an
   end to the unutterable tyranny of evil. His work and teaching are meant
   to lift up mankind at large, but also to redeem His people from all
   iniquity and to sanctify them to Himself as His peculiar heritage.

   Paul looks upon recovery from sin as being a wonderful proof of Divine
   Grace. He does not talk about a kind of Grace that would leave men in
   sin and yet save them from its punishment. No, his salvation is
   salvation from sin. He does not talk about a Free Grace which winks at
   iniquity and makes nothing of transgression, but of a greater Grace by
   far-- a Grace which denounces the iniquity and condemns the
   transgression--and then delivers the victim of it from the habit which
   has brought him into bondage. He declares that the Grace of God has
   shone upon the world, in the work of Jesus, in order that the darkness
   of its sin and ignorance may disappear and the brightness of holiness,
   righteousness and peace may rule the day. God send us to see these
   blessed results in every part of the world! God make us to see them in
   ourselves! May we feel that the Grace of God has appeared to us
   individually! Our Apostle would have Titus know that this Grace was
   intended for all ranks of men--for the Cretans who were "always liars,
   evil beasts, lazy gluttons"--and even for the most despised bond slaves
   who, under the Roman empire were treated worse than dogs. To each one
   of us, whether rich or poor, prominent or obscure, the Gospel has come
   and its design is that we may be delivered, by it, from all ungodliness
   and worldly lusts.

   This being the run of the text, I ask you to come closer to it, while I
   try to show how the Apostle stimulates us to holiness and urges us to
   overcome all evil. Firstly he describes our position. Secondly, he
   describes our instruction. And, thirdly, he mentions our
   encouragements. May the good Spirit bless our meditations at this hour!

   I. First of all, the Apostle in this text describes OUR POSITION. The
   people of God stand between two appearances. In the 11th verse he tells
   us, "The Grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men."
   And then he says, in the 13th verse, "Looking for that blessed hope,
   and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus
   Christ." We live in an age which is an interval between two appearings
   of the Lord from Heaven. Believers in Jesus are shut off from the old
   economy by the first coming of our Lord. The times of man's ignorance
   God, winked at, but now He commands all men, everywhere, to repent. We
   are divided from the past by a wall of light upon whose forefront we
   read the words, Bethlehem, Gethsemane and Calvary. We date from the
   birth of the Virgin's Son--we begin with Anno Domini. All the rest of
   time is before Christ and is marked off from the Christian era.
   Bethlehem's manger is our beginning. The chief landmark in all time to
   us is the wondrous life of Him who is the Light of the world! We look
   to the appearing of the Grace of God in the form of the lowly One of
   Nazareth, for our trust is there. We confide in Him who was made flesh
   and dwelt among us, so that men beheld His Glory, the Glory as of the
   Only Begotten of the Father, full of Grace and Truth. The dense
   darkness of the heathen ages begins to be broken when we reach the
   first appearing--and the dawn of a glorious day begins!

   Brothers and Sisters, we look forward to a second appearing! Our
   outlook for the close of this present era is another appearing--an
   appearing of Glory rather than of Grace. After our Master rose from the
   brow of Olivet, His disciples remained for a while in mute
   astonishment. But soon an angelic messenger reminded them of prophecy
   and promise by saying, "You men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up
   into Heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into Heaven,
   shall so come in like manner as you have seen Him go into Heaven." We
   believe that our Lord, in the fullness of time, will descend from
   Heaven with a shout, with the trumpet of the archangel and the voice of
   God--

   "The Lord shall come! The earth shall quake! The mountains to their
   center shake

   And, withering from the vault of night,

   The stars shall pale their feeble light." This is the terminus of the
   present age. We look from Anno Domini, in which He came the first time,
   to that greater Anno Domini, or year of our Lord, in which He shall
   come a second time, in all the splendor of His power, to reign in
   righteousness and break the evil powers as with a rod of iron!

   See, then, where we are--we are compassed about, behind and
   before--with the appearings of our Lord. Behind us is our trust. Before
   us is our hope. Behind us is the Son of God in humiliation. Before us
   is the great God, our Savior, in His Glory. To use an ecclesiastical
   term, we stand between two Epiphanies--the first is the manifestation
   of the Son of God in human flesh in dishonor and weakness. The second
   is the manifestation of the same Son of God in all His power and Glory!
   In what a position, then, do the saints stand! They have an era all to
   themselves which begins and ends with the Lord's appearing!

   Our position is further described in the text, if you look at it, as
   being in this present world, or age. We are living in the age which
   lies between the two blazing beacons of the Divine appearings and we
   are called to hasten from one to the other. The sacramental host of
   God's elect is marching on from the one appearing to the other with
   hasty feet. We have everything to hope for in the last appearing, as we
   have everything to trust to in the first appearing--and we have now to
   wait with patient hope throughout that weary interval which intervenes!
   Paul calls it, "this present world." This marks its fleeting nature. It
   is present, but it is scarcely future, for the Lord may come so soon
   and thus end it all. It is present, now, but it will not be present
   long. It is but a little time and He who will come shall come and will
   not tarry. Now it is this "present world." Oh, how present it is! How
   sadly it surrounds us!

   Yet, by faith, we count these present things to be unsubstantial as a
   dream and we look to the things which are not seen and not present, as
   being real and eternal! We pass through this world as men on
   pilgrimage. We traverse an enemy's country. Going from one
   manifestation to another, we are as birds migrating on the wing from
   one region to another-- there is no rest for us by the way. We are to
   keep ourselves as loose as we can from this country through which we
   make our pilgrimage, for we are strangers and foreigners and here we
   have no continuing city. We hurry through this Vanity Fair--before us
   lies the Celestial City and the coming of the Lord who is the King
   thereof! As voyagers cross the Atlantic and so pass from shore to
   shore, so do we speed over the waves of this ever-changing world to the
   Glory Land of the bright appearing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

   Already I have given to you, in this description of our position, the
   very best argument for a holy life. If it is so, my Brothers and
   Sisters, that you are not of the world, even as Jesus is not of the
   world. If this is so, that before you blazes the supernatural splendor
   of the Second Advent and behind you burns the everlasting light of the
   Redeemer's first appearing, what manner of people ought you to be? If,
   indeed, you are but journeying through this present world, suffer not
   your hearts to be defiled with its sins! Learn not the manner of speech
   of these aliens through whose country you are passing! Is it not
   written, "The people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among
   the nations"? "Come you out from among them and be you separate, touch
   not the unclean thing," for the Lord has said, "I will be a Father unto
   you and you shall be My sons and daughters."

   They that lived before the coming of Christ had responsibilities, but
   not such as those which rest upon you who have seen the face of God in
   Jesus Christ and who expect to see that face again! You live in light
   which renders their brightest knowledge a comparative darkness! Walk as
   children of Light. You stand between two mornings between which there
   is no evening. The Glory of the Lord has risen upon you, once, in the
   Incarnation and Atonement of your Lord--that Light is shining more and
   more--and soon there will come the perfect day which shall be ushered
   in by the Second Advent. The sun shall no more go down, but it shall
   unveil itself and shed an indescribable splendor upon all hearts that
   look for it!

   "Put on, therefore, the armor of light." What a grand expression!
   Helmet of light, breastplate of light, shoes of light--everything of
   light! What a knight must he be who is clad, not in steel, but in
   light! Light which shall flash confusion on his foes! There ought to be
   a holy light about you, O Believer in Jesus, for there is the appearing
   of Grace behind you and the appearing of Glory before you! Two
   manifestations of God shine upon you. Like a wall of fire, the Lord's
   appearings are round about you--there ought to be a special Glory of
   holiness in the midst. "Let your light so

   shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your
   Father which is in Heaven." That is the position of the righteous
   according to my text--and it furnishes a loud call to holiness.

   II. Secondly, I have to call your attention to THE INSTRUCTION which is
   given to us by the Grace of God which has appeared unto all men. Our
   translation runs thus--"The Grace of God has appeared to all men,
   teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live
   soberly, righteously and godly in this present world." A better
   translation would be, "The Grace of God that brings salvation has
   appeared to all men, disciplining us in order that we may deny
   ungodliness and worldly lusts." Those of you who know a little Greek
   will note that the word which, in our version, is rendered, "teaching,"
   is a scholastic term and has to do with the education of children--not
   merely the teaching, but the training and bringing of them up. The
   Grace of God has come to be a schoolmaster to us, to teach us, to train
   us, to prepare us for a more developed state. Christ has manifested in
   His own Person that wonderful Grace of God which is to deal with us as
   with sons, to educate us unto holiness and so to the full possession of
   our heavenly heritage. We are the many sons who are to be brought to
   Glory by the discipline of Grace.

   So then, first of all, Grace has a discipline. We generally think of
   law when we talk about schoolmasters and discipline, but Grace, itself,
   has a discipline and a wonderful training power, too. The manifestation
   of Grace is preparing us for the manifestation of Glory. What the Law
   could not do, Grace is doing. The free favor of God instills new
   principles, suggests new thoughts and, by inspiring us with gratitude,
   creates in us love to God and hatred of that which is opposed to God.
   Happy are they who go to the school of the Grace of God! This Grace of
   God entering into us shows us what was evil even more clearly than the
   Commandments do. We receive a vital, testing principle within whereby
   we discern between good and evil. The Grace of God provides us with
   instruction, but also with chastisement, as it is written, "As many as
   I love I rebuke and chasten." As soon as we come under the conscious
   enjoyment of the Free Grace of God, we find it to be a holy rule, a
   fatherly government, a heavenly training. We find not self-indulgence,
   much less licentiousness, but, on the contrary, the Grace of God both
   restrains and constrains us--it makes us free to holiness and delivers
   us from the law of sin and death by "the law of the spirit of life in
   Christ Jesus."

   Grace has its discipline and Grace has its chosen disciples, for you
   cannot help noticing that while the 11th verse says that, "the Grace of
   God that brings salvation has appeared to all men," yet it is clear
   that this Grace of God has not exercised its holy discipline upon all
   men and, therefore, the text changes its, "all men," into, "us."
   Usually in Scripture, when you get a generality, you soon find a
   particularity near it. The text has it, "teaching us that denying
   ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and
   godly, in this present world." Thus you see that Grace has its own
   disciples. Are you a disciple of the Grace of God? Did you ever come
   and submit yourself to it? Have you learned to spell that word,
   "faith"? Have you childlike trust in Jesus? Have you learned to wash in
   the laver of Atonement? Have you learned those holy exercises which are
   taught by the Grace of God? Can you say that your salvation is of
   Grace? Do you know the meaning of that text, "By Grace are you saved
   through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God"? If
   so, then you are His disciples and the Grace of God which has appeared
   so conspicuously has come to discipline you!

   As the disciples of Grace, endeavor to adorn its doctrine. According to
   the previous verses, even a slave might do this. He might be an
   ornament to the Grace of God. Let Grace have such an effect upon your
   life and character that all may exclaim, "Look what Grace can do! Look
   how the Grace of God produces holiness in Believers!" All along I wish
   to be driving at the point which the Apostle is aiming at--that we are
   to be holy--holy because Grace exercises a purifying discipline and
   because we are the disciples of that Grace.

   The discipline of Grace, according to the Apostle, has three
   results--denying, living, looking. You see the three words before you.
   The first is, "denying." When a young man comes to our College, he
   usually has much to unlearn. If his education has been neglected, a
   sort of instinctive ignorance covers his mind with briars and brambles.
   If he has gone to some faulty school where the teaching is flimsy, his
   tutor has, first of all, to fetch out of him what he has been badly
   taught. The most difficult part of the training of young men is not to
   put the right thing into them, but to get the wrong thing out of them!
   A man proposes to teach a language in six months and in the end, a
   great thing is done if one of his pupils is able to forget all his
   nonsense in six years! When the Holy Spirit comes into the heart, He
   finds that we know so much, already, of what it were well to leave
   unknown--we are self-conceited, we are puffed up. We have learned
   lessons of

   worldly wisdom and carnal policy--and these we need to unlearn and
   deny. The Holy Spirit works this denying in us by the discipline of
   Grace.

   What have we to deny? First, we have to deny ungodliness. That is a
   lesson which many of you have great need to learn. Listen to working
   men. "Oh," they say, "we have to work hard. We cannot think about God
   or religion." This is ungodliness! The Grace of God teaches us to deny
   this--we come to loathe such atheism. Others are prospering in the
   world and they cry, "If you had as much business to look after as I
   have, you would have no time to think about your soul or another world.
   Trying to battle with the competition of the times leaves me no
   opportunity for prayer or Bible reading! I have enough to do with my
   day-book and ledger." This also is ungodliness! The Grace of God leads
   us to deny this--we abhor such forgetfulness of God! A great work of
   the Holy Spirit is to make a man godly, to make him think of God, to
   make him feel that this present life is not all, but that there is a
   judgment to come wherein he must give an account before God. God cannot
   be forgotten with impunity. If we treat Him as if He were nothing and
   leave Him out of our calculations for life, we shall make a fatal
   mistake. O my Hearer, there is a God and, as surely as you live, you
   are accountable to Him! When the Spirit of God comes with the Grace of
   the Gospel, He removes our inveterate ungodliness and causes us to deny
   it with joyful earnestness.

   We next deny "worldly lusts," that is, the lusts of the present world
   or age which I described to you, just now, as coming in between the two
   appearings. This present age is as full of evil lusts as that in which
   Paul wrote concerning the Cretins. The lust of the eyes, the lust of
   the flesh and the pride of life are yet with us. Wherever the Grace of
   God comes effectually, it makes the loose liver deny the desires of the
   flesh. It causes the man who lusted after gold to conquer his
   greediness. It brings the proud man away from his ambitions. It trains
   the idler to diligence and it sobers the wanton mind which cared only
   for the frivolities of life. Not only do we leave these lusts, but we
   deny them. We have an abhorrence of those things wherein we formerly
   placed our delight. Our cry is, "What have I to do any more with
   idols?" To the worldling, we say, "These things may belong to you, but
   as for us, we cannot own them. Sin shall no more have dominion over us.
   We are not of the world and, therefore, its ways and fashions are none
   of ours." The period in which we live shall have no paramount influence
   over us, for our truest life is with Christ in eternity and our
   conversation is in Heaven. The Grace of God has made us deny the
   prevailing philosophies, glories, maxims and fashions of this present
   world. In the best sense we are nonconformists. We desire to be
   crucified to the world and the world to us. This was a great thing for
   Grace to do among the degraded sensualists of Paul's day--and it is not
   a less glorious achievement in these times.

   But then, Brothers and Sisters, you cannot be complete with a merely
   negative religion--you must have something positive. And so the next
   word is living--that "we should live soberly, righteously and godly, in
   this present world." Observe, Brethren, that the Holy Spirit expects us
   to live in this present world and, therefore, we are not to exclude
   ourselves from it. This age is the battlefield in which the soldier of
   Christ is to fight. Society is the place in which Christianity is to
   exhibit the Graces of Christ. If it were possible for these good
   Sisters to retire into a large house and live secluded from the world,
   they would be shirking their duty rather than fulfilling it! If all the
   good men and true were to form a select colony and do nothing else but
   pray and hear sermons, they would simply be refusing to serve God in
   His own appointed way. No, you have to live soberly, godly, righteously
   in this world, such as it is, at present! It is of no use for you to
   scheme to escape from it! You are bound to breast this torrent and
   buffet all its waves. If the Grace of God is in you, that Grace is
   meant to be displayed--not in a select and secluded retreat--but in
   this present world. You are to shine in the darkness like a light.

   This life is described in a three-fold way. You are, first, to live
   "soberly"--that is, for yourself. "Soberly" in all your eating and your
   drinking and in the indulgence of all bodily appetites--that goes
   without saying. Drunks and gluttons, fornicators and adulterers cannot
   inherit the Kingdom of God! You are to live soberly in all your
   thinking, all your speaking, all your acting. There is to be sobriety
   in all your worldly pursuits. You are to have yourself well in hand.
   You are to be self-restrained. I know some Brothers who are not often
   sober. I do not accuse them of being drunk with wine, but they are
   mentally intoxicated--they have no reason, no moderation, no judgment.
   They are all spur and no rein. Right or wrong, they must have that
   which they have set their hearts upon. They never look round to take
   the full bearing of a matter. They never estimate calmly--but with
   closed eyes they rush on like bulls. Alas for these unsober people!
   They are not to be depended on--they are everything by turns and
   nothing long. The man who is disciplined by the

   Grace of God becomes thoughtful, considerate, self-contained and he is
   no longer tossed about by passion, or swayed by prejudice. There is
   only one insobriety into which I pray we may fall and, truth to say,
   that is the truest sobriety. Of this the Scripture says, "Be not drunk
   with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit." When the
   Spirit of God takes full possession of us, then we are borne along by
   His sacred energy and are filled with a Divine enthusiasm which needs
   no restraint. Under all other influences we must guard ourselves
   against yielding too completely, that thus we may live "soberly."

   As to his fellow men, the Believer lives "righteously." I cannot
   understand that Christian who can do a dirty thing in business. Craft,
   cunning, over-reaching, misrepresentation and deceit are no instruments
   for the hand of godly men! I am told that my principles are too angelic
   for business life--that a man cannot be a match for his fellow men in
   trade if he is too Puritan. Others are up to tricks and he will be
   ruined if he cannot trick them in return! O my dear Hearers, do not
   talk in this way! If you mean to go the way of the devil, say so--and
   accept the consequences. But if you profess to be servants of God, deny
   all partnership with unrighteousness! Dishonesty and falsehood are the
   opposites of godliness! A Christian man may be poor, but he must live
   righteously--he may lack sharpness, but he must not lack integrity! A
   Christian profession without uprightness is a lie! Grace must
   discipline us to righteous living.

   Towards God we are told in the text that we are to be godly. Every man
   who has the Grace of God in him, indeed, and of a truth, will think
   much of God and will seek first the Kingdom of God and His
   righteousness. God will enter into all his calculations. God's Presence
   will be his joy; God's strength will be his confidence; God's
   Providence will be his inheritance; God's Glory will be the chief end
   of his being; God's Law the guide of his conversation! Now, if the
   Grace of God, which has appeared so plainly to all men, has really come
   with its sacred discipline upon us, it is teaching us to live in this
   three-fold manner.

   Once more, there is looking, as well as living. One work of the Grace
   of God is to cause us to be "looking for that blessed hope of the
   glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." What
   is that "blessed hope"? Why, first, that when He comes we shall rise
   from the dead, if we have fallen asleep, and that if we are alive and
   remain, we shall be changed at His appearing! Our hope is that we shall
   be approved of Him and shall hear Him say, "Well done, good and
   faithful servant." This hope is not of debt, but of Grace! Though our
   Lord will give us a reward, it will not be according to the Law of
   Works. We expect to be like Jesus when we shall see Him as He is. When
   Jesus shines forth as the sun, "then shall the righteous shine forth as
   the sun in the Kingdom of our Father." Our gain by godliness cannot be
   counted down into the palm of our hand. It lies in the glorious future
   and yet, to faith, it is so near that at this moment I almost hear the
   chariot of the Coming One! The Lord comes and in the coming of the Lord
   lies the great hope of the Believer--his great stimulus to overcome
   evil--his incentive to perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord! Oh to
   be found blameless in the day of the manifestation of our Lord! God
   grant us this! Do you not see, Brothers and Sisters, how the discipline
   of the Doctrine of Grace runs towards the separating of us from sin and
   the making us to live unto God?

   III. Lastly, and briefly, the text sets forth certain of OUR
   ENCOURAGEMENTS. I will only briefly hint at them.

   In this great battle for right, truth and holiness, what could we do,
   my Brothers and Sisters, if we were left alone? But our first
   encouragement is that Grace has come to our rescue, for in the day when
   the Lord Jesus Christ appeared among men, He brought for us the Grace
   of God to help us to overcome all iniquity. He that struggles, now,
   against inbred sin has the Holy Spirit within him to help him. He that
   goes forth to fight against evil in other men by preaching the Gospel
   has that same Holy Spirit going with the Truth of God to make it like a
   fire and like a hammer. I would ground my weapons and retreat from a
   fight so hopeless were it not that the Lord of Hosts is with us, the
   God of Jacob is our refuge! The Grace of God that brings salvation from
   sin has flashed forth conspicuously like the lightning which is seen
   from one part of the Heaven to the other--and our victory over darkness
   is insured. However hard the conflict with evil, it is not desperate.
   We may hope on and hope always!

   A certain warrior was found in prayer and when his king sneered, he
   answered that he was pleading with his majesty's august ally. I
   question whether God is the ally of anybody when he goes forth with gun
   and sword, but in using those weapons which are "not carnal, but mighty
   through God to the pulling down of strongholds," we may truly reckon
   upon our august Ally! Speak the Truth of God, man, for God speaks with
   you! Work for God, woman, for God works in you to will and to do of His
   own good pleasure! The appearance of the Grace of God in the Person of
   Christ is

   encouragement enough to those who are under the most difficult
   circumstances and have to contend for righteousness against the
   deadliest odds. Grace has appeared--therefore let us be of good
   courage!

   A second encouragement is that another appearing is coming. He who
   bowed His head in weakness and died in the moment of victory, is coming
   in all the Glory of His endless life! Do not question it, the world is
   not going to darken into an eternal night--the morning comes as well as
   the night and though sin and corruption abound, and the love of many
   waxes cold--these are but the tokens of His near advent who said that
   it would be so before His appearing! The right with the might and the
   might with the right shall be! As surely as God lives, it shall be so.
   We are not fighting a losing battle. The Lord must triumph. Oh, if His
   suffering life and cruel death had been the only appearing, we might
   have feared. But it is not--it is but the first--and the prefatory part
   of His manifestation. He comes! He comes! None can hinder His coming!
   Every moment brings Him nearer! Nothing can delay His Glory! When the
   hour shall strike, He shall appear in the majesty of God to put an end
   to the dominion of sin and bring in endless peace! Satan shall shortly
   be bruised under our feet--therefore comfort one another with these
   words and then prepare for further battle! Sharpen your swords and be
   ready for close fighting! Trust in God and keep your powder dry! This
   must always be our war cry, "He must reign." We are looking for the
   appearing of the great God and Savior Jesus Christ!

   Another encouragement is that we are serving a glorious Master. The
   Christ whom we follow is not a dead Prophet like Mohamed. Truly, we
   preach Christ Crucified, but we also believe in Christ risen from the
   dead, in Christ gone up on high, in Christ soon to come a second time!
   He lives and He lives as the great God and our Savior. If, indeed, you
   are soldiers of such a Captain, throw fear to the winds! Can you be
   cowards when the Lord of Hosts leads you? Dare you tremble when at your
   head is The Wonderful, The Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting
   Father, The Prince of Peace? The trumpet is already at the lip of the
   archangel--who will not play the man? The great drum which makes the
   universe to throb, summons you to action--

   "Stand up, stand up for Jesus,

   You soldiers of the Cross!

   Lift high His royal banner,

   It must not suffer loss."

   His Cross is the old Cross, still, and none can overthrow it.
   Hallelujah, hallelujah to the name of Jesus!

   Then come the tender thoughts with which I finish, the memories of what
   the Lord has done for us to make us holy-- "Who gave Himself for us."
   Special redemption, redemption with a wondrous price--"who gave Himself
   for us." Put away that trumpet and that drum! Take down the harp and
   gently touch its sweetest strings! Tell how the Lord Jesus loved us and
   gave Himself for us. O Sirs, if nothing else can touch our hearts, this
   must--"You are not your own, you are bought with a price."

   And He gave Himself for us with these two objectives--first,
   redemption, that He might redeem us from all iniquity. That He might
   break the bonds of sin asunder and cast the cords of depravity far from
   us. He died--forget not that-- died that your sins might die! He died
   that every lust might be dragged into captivity at His chariot wheels.
   He gave Himself for you that you might give yourselves for Him!

   Again, He died that He might purify us--purify us unto Himself. How
   clean we must be if we are to be clean unto Him. The Holy Jesus will
   only commune with those whom He has purified after the manner of His
   own Nature--purified unto Himself. He has purified us to be wholly His.
   No human hand may use the golden cup, no human incense may burn in the
   consecrated censer. We are purified unto Himself, as the Hebrew would
   put it, to be His segullah--His peculiar possession. The translation,
   "peculiar people," is unfortunate, because, "peculiar," has come to
   mean odd, strange, singular. The passage really means that Believers
   are Christ's own people, His choice and select portion. Saints are
   Christ's crown jewels, His box of diamonds--His very, very, very own!
   He carries His people as lambs in His bosom. He engraves their names on
   His heart.

   They are the inheritance to which He is the heir and He values them
   more than all the universe! He would lose everything sooner than lose
   one of them! He desires that you who are being disciplined by His Grace
   should know that you are altogether His. You are Christ's men. You are
   each one to feel, "I do not belong to the world. I do not belong to
   myself. I belong only to Christ. I am set aside by Him, for Himself,
   only, and His I will be." The silver and the gold are His and the
   cattle upon a thousand hills are His--but He makes small account of
   them--"the Lord's portion is His people."

   The Apostle finishes up by saying that we are to be a people "zealous
   of good works." Would to God that all Christian men and women were
   disciplined by Divine Grace till they became zealous for good works! In
   holiness, zeal is sobriety. We are not only to approve of good works
   and speak for good works, but we are to be red-hot for them! We are to
   be on fire for everything that is right and true. We may not be content
   to be quiet and inoffensive, but we are to be zealous of good works. Oh
   that my Lord's Grace would set us on fire in this way! There is plenty
   offuel in the Church--what is needed is fire! A great many very
   respectable people are, in their sleepy way, doing as little as they
   can for any good cause. This will never do. We must wake up! Oh the
   quantity of ambulance work that Christ's soldiers have to do! One half
   of Christ's army has to carry the other half. Oh that our Brothers and
   Sisters could get off the sick-list!

   Oh that all of us were ardent, fervent, vigorous, zealous! Come, Holy
   Spirit, and quicken us! We may not go about to get this by our own
   efforts and energies, but God will work it by His Grace. Grace given us
   in Christ is the fountainhead of all holy impulse. O heavenly Grace,
   come like a flood at this time and bear us right away! Oh that those of
   you who have never felt the Grace of God may be enabled to believe in
   the Lord Jesus Christ as to His first appearing! Then, trusting in His
   death upon the Cross, you will learn to look for His second coming upon
   the Throne of God and you will rejoice in it! Unto His great name be
   Glory forever and ever! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Love Abounding, Love Complaining, Love Abiding

   (No. 1895)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 11, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "But now thus says the Lord that created you, O Jacob, and He that
   formed you O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed you, I ha ve called
   you by your name, you are Mine. 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. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of
   Israel, your Savior: I ga ve Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba
   for you. Since you were precious in My sight, you have been honorable,
   and I have loved you: therefore will I give men for you, and people for
   your life." Isaiah 43:1-4

   "Butyou have not called upon Me, O Jacob, butyou have been weary of Me,
   O Israel. You have not brought Me the small cattle of your burnt
   offerings; neither have you honored Me with your sacrifices. I have not
   caused you to serve with an offering, nor wearied you with incense. You
   have bought Me no sweet cane with money, neither have you filled Me
   with the fat of your sacrifices: butyou have made Me to serve with your
   sins, you have wearied Me with your iniquities."

   Verses22-24.

   "Remember these, O Jacob and Israel, for you are My servant: I have
   formed you, you are My servant: O Israel, you shall not be forgotten of
   Me. I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions, and, as
   a cloud, your sins: return unto Me, for Ihave redeemed you. Sing, O you
   heavens; for the Lord has done it: shout, you lower parts of the earth:
   break forth into singing, you mountains, O forest, and every tree in
   it: for the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and glorified Himself in Israel."
   Isaiah 44:21-23.

   WHEN two Christians met together who were sitting under a very lean and
   starving ministry, one of them comforted his fellow concerning the
   miserable discourse by saying, "Never mind, my Friend, there is not
   much in the sermon, but the text is a feast by itself." So, this
   morning, if my words should seem to be very poor and powerless, what
   fullness there is in these three texts! Here you have a dainty meal of
   three courses. You ought to be well nourished this morning, for I have
   set before you, in these passages of Scripture, quite as much as the
   largest capacity will be able to mark, learn and inwardly digest. Here
   is good pasture for the flock, wherein they may not only feed, but lie
   down! Did you say, "Too much text?" Possibly you might, on other
   occasions, reproach me with having too little of God's Word and too
   much of my own, but there can be no fault the other way--the more of
   the Word of the Lord the better! What is man's word compared with God's
   Word? It is as chaff to the wheat, at worst, and as mere gold-leaf to
   solid bullion at best! Indeed, my word is of no value at all, except as
   it is made up of the essence of the Divine Word. Far better than our
   best exposition is the Word itself--this is the pure light of the
   sun--ours is but a poor candle! Of the Scripture itself we cannot have
   too much. If you derive no other profit from this assembling of
   yourselves together but to have your earnest attention directed to this
   precious part of Holy Writ, if the Spirit of God is with you, your
   meditations will make this a profitable hour!

   Notice concerning these three texts that they are very much alike in
   this respect--they are each addressed to God's people under the names
   of Jacob and Israel. The first text begins, "The Lord that created you,
   O Jacob, and He that formed you, O Israel." And the second is like it,
   "You have not called upon Me, O Jacob; but you have been weary of Me, O
   Israel." And so is the third, "Remember these, O Jacob and Israel; for
   you are My servant." The Lord mentions both

   the natural and the spiritual names of His servants--and this He does
   out of love to them. As tender parents will lovingly repeat all their
   children's names, sometimes calling them by one and sometimes by
   another. As different memories arise in their minds, so the Lord
   remembers Jacob, the name of His chosen given him at birth, by which he
   was known as "the supplanter." And then He repeats that higher name of
   Israel, the prevailing prince, which he won in a great spiritual
   struggle when he wrestled with the Angel of the Lord and would not let
   Him go. To make sure that the people should know to whom He spoke, the
   Lord calls them both Jacob and Israel. We are so apt to set the promise
   aside for someone else, that it is well to have the full address placed
   at the head of these heavenly telegrams.

   These texts are also like each other, again, from their being, each
   one, overflowing with love. Their manner and their matter differ, but
   their spirit is one. I do not know where the Lord's love is best
   seen--when He declares it and tells of what He has done and is doing
   for His people--or when He laments over their lack of love in return,
   or when He promises to blot out their past sin and invites them to
   return to Him and enjoy His restoring Grace. I trust that I may be
   helped so to handle these words that a sweet fragrance of love shall
   fill this house, as when choice ointment is poured forth. May you
   believe and feel the love of God to you. And then may there arise out
   of your own hearts the perfume of another love, born of the first, and
   like unto it--the love of your renewed hearts towards your God. This
   love is a spark of the eternal flame of God's love for you--may it
   never be quenched!

   I have to set before you Divine Love in three postures. The first text
   represents love abounding; the second text, love lamenting; and the
   third text represents love abiding--remaining constant to its
   objective, notwithstanding all the provocations which have grieved it.

   I. First, we have in our first text, from the first to the fourth
   verses, LOVE ABOUNDING. Come, you that love the Lord, and dwell upon
   His love! Concentrate your thoughts upon this wonderful theme, to which
   I trust you are no strangers, for you live in that love and it is the
   joy of your hearts. Oh for the melting power of the Holy Spirit to make
   us feel it now!

   Love abounding, I said, and I said well, for you will notice, first,
   the time when that love is declared. The first verse begins, "But now,
   thus says the Lord." And when was that? It was the very time when He
   was angry with the nation by reason of their great sins! "Therefore He
   has poured upon him the fury of His anger, and the strength of battle;
   and it has set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it burned
   him, yet he laid it not to heart." It was a time, then, of special sin
   and of amazing hardness of heart. "It burned him, yet he laid it not to
   heart." When a man begins to burn, he generally feels and cries out. He
   must be far gone in deadly apathy when he is touched with fire and yet
   lays it not to heart. Yet so the text describes the nation.

   Notwithstanding this, however, though His people had so provoked Him,
   and though they were so unfeeling under His chastisement, yet the Lord
   interposes in tones of Grace with a word of infinite compassion. "But
   now, thus says the Lord." It was a time of love with God, though a time
   of carelessness with His people. You expect God's mercy words and love
   words to come to you after your repentance and obedience and so,
   indeed, they do, for the Lord has choice rewards of Grace for those who
   walk with Him in holy fellowship. Yet He restrains not His mercy to our
   good times, but He gives us glimpses of its sunlight in the midst of
   the storm. He sends clear shining after rain. Though He may smite us
   again and again to drive us from our iniquities, yet even then His
   gracious heart overflows with love and He lets fall a word of pity for
   His mourners.

   Notice, next, that the Lord shows His abounding love in these verses by
   the sweetness of His consolations. "But now thus says the Lord that
   created you, O Jacob, and He that formed you, O Israel, Fear not."
   "Fear not" is a little word measured by space and letters, but it is an
   abyss of consolation if we remember who it is that says it and what a
   wide sweep the comfort takes! Fear has torment and the Lord would cast
   it out. Fear keeps us away from Him and so He would chase it quite
   away. "Fear not," He says. As much as to say--I smite you, but fear not
   that I will destroy you. I chasten you for your sin, but fear not that
   I will disown you, for you are Mine. My countenance is dark with anger
   against your iniquities, but still fear not, for my wrath against your
   sin is but a form of My love to you--

   "In love I correct you, your gold to refine, To make you at length in
   My likeness to shine." You that are the people of God may at this hour
   be smarting, crying and sighing. But, oh the love of God to you! He
   hears your cries and His compassions are moved towards you. Nothing
   touches Him like the groans of His children! Per-

   haps you have brought this evil upon yourself by your own fault and you
   know it--but the Lord is ready to put away your sin and make the bones
   which He has broken to rejoice!

   The consolations of God are small with you because there is some secret
   wickedness with you, but, having revealed to you this wrong and having
   subdued your heart by His Spirit, He now speaks to you as to one whom
   his mother comforts, and He says, "Fear not." Be not broken down with
   slavish fear. Do not imagine that the Lord has changed towards you. Do
   not dream that His promises will fail, or that His mercy is clean gone
   forever, so that He will be favorable no more. He knows your sin and He
   has visited you for it, but still, "Fear not, for even this is a token
   that He has not given you up to perish in your sins." He has redeemed
   you and, therefore, He will purify you to Himself. He will never cast
   you away. Is it not considerate love on the Lord's part that He would
   not even have His children endure a fear? He not only removes our
   dangers, but He soothes our fears! He bends over us and cries, "Let not
   your hearts be troubled." He sends the Holy Spirit to be the Comforter
   and chase all our fears away. There is a wonderful intensity of
   affection in this passage spoken, as it is, by the great God to His
   people while they are under the rod which they so richly deserve.

   Again, notice that the fullness of God's love is to be seen in the way
   in which He dwells with evident satisfaction upon His past dealings
   with His people. When we love some favored one, we like to think of all
   our love passages in years gone by--and the Lord so loves His people,
   that even when they are under His chastening hand--He still delights to
   remember His former loving kindnesses. We may forget the wonders of His
   Grace, but He does not! He says, "I remember you, the love of your
   espousals, when you went after Me in the wilderness." If He remembers
   our poor love, you may be sure that He does not forget His own! In His
   heart He stores up the memory of all His works of Grace towards His
   chosen. See how He puts it--"Thus says the Lord that created you, O
   Jacob, and He that formed you, O Israel." He regards His people as the
   work of His own hands. He puts it twice over--He claims not only to
   have created the materials of the nation, but to have formed them into
   a people. The great Potter created our clay and then fashioned it with
   infinite skill! Both as to body and soul, we are fearfully and
   wonderfully made by the Lord our God.

   The Lord thinks upon you as His dear people and remembers how He
   created you--and how He new-created you-- how, by His infinite Grace,
   He made you new creatures in Christ Jesus and how He has gone on, by
   His Spirit, to fashion you and mold you to His will, so that you are
   becoming more and more like His dear Son. The Lord mentions this to
   show His exceeding love. He has respect unto the work of His own hands.
   He that has made you with so much care will not break you! He will not
   abhor that which His infinite compassion has fashioned. In His great
   love, He dwells upon His relationship to us as our Maker and says, "I
   created you, I formed you." This is as true of our second creation as
   of the first. The Lord flashed into our soul the first ray of
   repentance! He created in us the first look of faith! He worked in us
   the first dew of love and because of this Grace-work He turns in love
   to us and remembers us still!

   Then the Lord passes on to speak of His redemption of His people,
   saying, "I have redeemed you." Oh, the fullness of Divine Love which
   led the Lord to redeem His people and then to speak of that deed with
   pleasure! He brought them out of Egypt, redeemed by the blood of the
   Paschal Lamb and, in our case, He has brought us out of sin and death
   by the blood of the Only Begotten. The Lord does not regret that He
   paid such a price for such poor worthless things, but He glories in it.
   "I have redeemed you." Our Lord Jesus remembers the agony we cost Him.
   He cannot leave those to perish in their sins, whom He has ransomed
   with His own life! O poor backslider! The broad arrow of the King is on
   you--He cannot let His enemy rob Him of His purchase! Shall the prey be
   taken from the mighty? Shall Jesus fail to see of the travail of His
   soul? Picture in your mind, this morning, the Christ of God looking at
   the print of the nails in His hands and feet, viewing those marks with
   satisfaction and then, with equal satisfaction, looking upon us who are
   His ransomed ones, a heritage purchased unto Himself. He cannot be
   weary of us, for He dwells upon what He has done for our redemption! He
   chose us for His love and then loved us for His choice! He redeemed us
   because He loved us and now He loves us because He redeemed us!

   Moreover, he adds, "I have called you by your name." He did so to that
   nation, but we will dwell, rather, at this time, upon His having
   personally called us to Himself. Oh the love which shines in our
   effectual calling! It must burn on forever! There was a day and we can
   never forget it, when the Gospel of God came to us with a pointed and
   personal power such as we never felt before. Like as Mary Magdalene did
   not know the Savior until He said unto her, "Mary," so we did not know
   the Lord until He called us by our name! Surely, no love-call with
   which our mother awakened us in the morning from the happy sleep of
   childhood was ever more distinct than the call of God's Grace to us
   when He spoke to us

   and said, "Seek you My face." Blessed was the day when our heart
   replied, "Your face, Lord, will I seek." The Lord appeared of old unto
   us. He knew our name, for He called us by it, and He knew how to reach
   our hearts by convicting us of secret sin--He sent His servants to
   describe our character and to say to us, as Nathan to David, "You are
   the man." We could not mistake the personal appeal which fastened cords
   of love about us and drew us till we ran to Him who called us! As the
   Lord of old said to little Samuel, "Samuel, Samuel," and he answered,
   "Here am I," so has God said to some of us, as clearly as if we had
   heard it with our ears, "Come to Me," and we have come to Him! He is
   pleased to remember that He has called us by our name and this shows
   that He does not repent of having called us.

   Observe, also, how He dwells upon His possession of His people. "You
   are Mine," He says. The Lord God was not ashamed to acknowledge His
   Israel and, now, Jesus is not ashamed to call us Brethren! The Father
   is not ashamed to call us children and the Spirit of God is not ashamed
   to call our bodies His temples! "I have called you by your name; you
   are Mine." Have you forgotten that you are the Lord's? Yet does He not
   forget that you are His! You may be false to your covenant and steal
   away from God, but He has set His mark upon you and you can never
   obliterate it! He claims you, still, notwithstanding all your wandering
   and your forgetfulness--and He joyfully asserts His property in you. "I
   have called you by your name; you are Mine." He defies all comers to
   take from Him those whom He did foreknow by name and whom He,
   therefore, called! Behold the fixity of Divine Love and the warmth of
   heart which causes the Lord to dwell upon His past loving kindnesses!
   Does not this bring tears to your eyes?

   If you desire to see the overflowing of God's love in another form,
   notice in the next verse how He declares what He means to do. He says,
   "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." His
   love casts its eye upon your future! The Lord does not promise you that
   you shall never go through the waters, nor pass through the fires. He
   loves you too well to make your way to Heaven free from adversity and
   tribulation, for these things work your lasting good. You will have to
   go through fire and through water on your way to Glory. But He does
   promise you this--that the deepest waters shall not overflow you and
   the fiercest torrents shall not drown you, for this one all-sufficient
   reason--that He will be with you. When you come to the fires, however
   terrible their flames, they shall not consume you. No, they shall not
   even kindle upon you. Like the three holy children in the furnace, not
   even the smell of fire shall pass upon you because His Presence shall
   preserve you to the end.

   Oh the love of God, that in the foresight of every grief and every
   sorrow that can ever befall His children, He pledges Himself never to
   forsake them! He pledges His word that He will be at their side in
   every trying hour and this word He pledges to them even though He has
   felt bound to chasten them. He says, "Fear not, I am with you; be not
   dismayed, I am your God." He has said, "I will never leave you nor
   forsake you," come life, come death, come temptation, come poverty,
   come sickness, come assault of Satan, come whatever may from Heaven, or
   earth, or Hell, the Lord has promised that He will bear you through and
   preserve you to His Kingdom and Glory. Oh the Perseverance, the
   Omnipresence, the Omnipotence of Divine Love! Who is he that shall
   measure the length and breadth and depth and height of the love of God?
   Nothing can separate us from it and nothing can harm us while we abide
   under its shadow! O cold hearts, do you not feel the warmth of this
   marvelous love?

   Still this is not all. The overflowing of Divine Love is seen in the
   Lord's avowing Himself, still, to be His people's God--"I am Jehovah
   your God," He says, "the Holy One of Israel, your Savior." God gives
   Himself to you, Beloved. What a gift! He endows us not merely with
   Heaven and earth, things present, and things to come--nor even with the
   half of His Kingdom--but He gives us Himself! He says, "I will be their
   God." He bids us call Him, "Our Father." All that God is, He gives to
   His chosen and lays Himself out for their salvation. "I am Jehovah your
   God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior." Oh, how He must love us and
   with what boundless affection must He regard us, when He counts Himself
   to be none too great a portion to bestow on us!

   Though one would think He might have come to a close here, the Lord
   adds His valuation of His people. This was so high that He says, "I
   gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for you." To save Israel,
   He plagued Egypt! Fast and heavy were His blows, until He smote all the
   first-born of Egypt, the chief of all her strength! Pharaoh and his
   firstborn were nobodies as compared with Jacob's seed! Further on in
   history, after Isaiah's day, the Lord moved Cyrus to set Israel free
   from Babylon, and then gave to the son of Cyrus a rich return for
   liberating the Jews, for He made him conqueror of Egypt and of Ethiopia
   and of Seba. God will give more than the whole world to save His
   Church, seeing He

   gave His only begotten Son! He seems to say to each one of you, "I give
   everything for you: I value you so much, that all things else shall be
   as nothing to Me so long as I can bless and save you." It has certainly
   been so with some of us--all Providence has lent itself to promote our
   welfare--the angels of God have been our servants and the Spirit of God
   has been our Guide and Teacher. We cannot avoid seeing how great events
   have been made subordinate to the good of persons so insignificant--how
   the Lord has even bowed the heavens that He might come down to our
   rescue!

   Then the Lord adds another note of great love. He says that He has
   thought so much of His people that He regarded them as
   honorable--"Since you were precious in My sight, you have been
   honorable, and I have loved you." He publishes His love, not only by
   His deeds, but by express words. I cannot pronounce these words as
   God's Prophet must have spoken them, much less as God, Himself, would
   speak them. What a wealth of Grace is here! They were poor Israelites
   and they had been very guilty--and so they had dishonored
   themselves--but the Lord says, "Since you were precious in My sight,
   you have been honorable." What an honor the Lord puts upon those who
   believe in Jesus! "Unto you that believe, He is honor." I have known
   those that have fallen into great sin and have been made dishonorable,
   thereby, but when Grace has renewed them, they have been pure and holy
   and honorable, made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the
   saints in light! Blood-washed sinners are Heaven's right-honorables!
   Men and women renewed by God's Grace are the courtiers of Heaven, the
   peers of the Divine Kingdom! What love is that which has made us heirs
   of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ!

   Such is the Lord's love, that even in the time when they were not
   acting as they should, but grieving Him, He stands to His love of them
   and sets the same value on them as before--"Since you were precious in
   My sight, you have been honorable, and I have loved you: therefore will
   I give men for you, and people for your life." As if He said, "What I
   have done I will do again. My love is unalterable. I will give the same
   price for you as of old, if it is necessary." Remember how it is said
   of the Lord Jesus, "having loved His own which were in the world, He
   loved them to the end"? Notwithstanding all their ill-manners He was
   still their Savior! And it is so with Jehovah, the Covenant God of
   Israel--having loved us until now with love so wonderful, He holds to
   it despite everything which might have turned away His heart. He
   declares, "You have been honorable, and I have loved you; therefore
   will I give men for you, and people for your life."

   Thus, in a very sorry way, I have skimmed the surface of this great sea
   of love. I beg you, now, to follow me while we listen to Divine Love as
   it speaks in quite another tone.

   II. Our second text is in the minor key, it is LOVE LAMENTING--"But you
   have not called upon Me, O Israel" (v. 22). Observe the contrast, for
   it runs all through and may be seen in every sentence--I have called
   you by your name; but you have not called upon Me, O Israel. I have
   called you Mine; but you have been weary of Me. I have redeemed you
   with a matchless price; but you have bought Me no sweet cane with
   money. You can work out the contrast yourself and you will find it most
   remarkable. I cannot tarry to go into detail.

   Israel rendered little worship to God. She gave the Lord little prayer
   and little praise. Come, Brothers and Sisters, I will bring no
   accusations against you, but I will make confession of sin for myself.
   When we think of God's delight in us and His love to us, is it not
   shameful that we should have been so seldom engaged in devotion towards
   Him? Oh, how slack we have often been in private prayer! How hurried,
   how superficial! How little of praise have we brought. Now and then a
   hymn, but this only when we were in the public congregation! How little
   of secret praise and reverent adoration have we rendered! The Lord has
   done great things for us and heaped honor upon us, but how seldom has
   His name been joyously upon our tongue! How little have we spoken of
   Him or to Him! It takes a world of trouble to drive some of God's
   children to their Father--they live without Him and are tolerably
   comfortable! And even when darkness lowers, they are slow to run to
   Him. Alas, they hasten to some human friend instead of returning at
   once to Him who has dealt so bountifully with them! I am not going to
   dwell upon this because tender hearts will only need a hint. It we
   grieve those whom we greatly love, they have only to drop half a word
   and we see their drift at once and endeavor to amend. If we have no
   love in our hearts, what is the use of a lengthened accusation? It will
   only embitter and harden. Brothers and Sisters, may not the Lord of
   Infinite Mercy justly say to some of us, "But you have not called upon
   Me, O Jacob"?

   Notice, next, that there has been little fellowship, for the Lord goes
   on to say, "You have been weary of Me, O Israel." The Lord has
   delighted in us, for He joyously recounts His dealings towards us,
   saying, "I have created you and formed you. I have redeemed you and
   called you, and made you Mine." If He had been weary of us, we need not
   have wondered--but we ought to blush and be silent for shame because we
   have wearied of Him! Brothers and Sisters, are we

   tired of our God? If not, how is it that we do not walk with Him from
   day to day? Really spiritual worship is not much cared for in these
   days, even by professing Christians! Many will go to a place of worship
   if they can be entertained with fine music, or grand oratory. But if
   communion with God is the only attraction, they are not drawn thereby.
   They can spend many an evening where all sorts of levity and nonsense
   waste the hour, but when do they spend an evening with their God? If
   some of you had ever done such a thing, it would be marked down in your
   diaries as a wonder! Can any of you say, "I did once spend a night with
   God?" Is it not, then, true, "You have been weary of Me"? Alas, some of
   my hearers have never spoken with God in all their lives! They are not
   on speaking terms with Him--they do not know Him! Small wonder is it
   that you do not believe in Him--he only truly believes in God who has
   come to know Him. He that lives with God and walks with God, has no
   questions or doubts about His existence--he has risen long ago above
   that wretched state of mind. God grant that any of you who are weary at
   the very mention of eternal things may be delivered from your
   earth-bondage and made to rejoice in the Lord!

   We are moved by this passage to confess how little of spirituality has
   been found in the worship which we have rendered. "You have not honored
   Me with the sacrifices." When we have come to worship in public and in
   private, we have not honored the Lord by being intense in it. The heart
   has been cold, the mind has been wandering. Often we have the posture
   of devotion without devotion; the words of praise without the praise;
   the language of prayer without supplication; attendance at the Lord's
   Supper without communion. Ah me! How hosannas languish on our tongues!
   How nearly our devotion dies! Let us repent and pray for better things.

   Again, the Lord mentions that His people have brought Him little
   sacrifice. "You have not brought Me the small cattle of your burnt
   offerings; you have bought Me no sweet cane with money: neither have
   you filled Me with the fat of your sacrifices." Everything we have, God
   has given us--and He has given to us far beyond our deserts or even our
   expectations! What small returns we have made! In the religion of
   Christ there is no taxation. Everything is of love. It spoils our gifts
   if we give because we must--it is the voluntariness of what we do for
   Christ that is the excellence of it. Under the old Law there was a
   certain tithe to pay, but the devout who loved their God were not
   content with this-- they, of their own accord, bought sweet cane with
   honey and gave it for the making of incense to be used upon the altar
   of the Lord. Saints of those times denied themselves luxuries that they
   might have the high joy of contributing to the worship of the Lord whom
   they loved. Some saints do this, now, and find great delight in it,
   even as Mary delighted to pour the very precious ointment from her
   alabaster box upon the head of the Well-Beloved. Alas, how little have
   some done in this direction! I will not dwell upon it, for, as I have
   already said, a hint is all that is needed by a loving heart. Yet is it
   not sadly true that many offer to the Lord only that which costs them
   nothing? If it comes to making sacrifices for the Truth's sake, they
   will have nothing to do with it.

   Once more, it is said that we have been very slack in our consideration
   of our God. The Lord says, "I have not caused you to serve with an
   offering, nor wearied you with incense; but you have made Me to serve
   with your sins; you have wearied Me with your iniquities." The Lord is
   thoughtful of us, but we are not thoughtful towards Him. He considers
   our feelings, but we treat Him with heartless brutishness. God has made
   us honorable, but we have not made Him honorable. He has treated us as
   dear friends, but we have made a servant of Him--made Him to serve with
   our sins. Many treat the Lord as if it was most fit that He should be
   forgotten. They profess to believe in Him and yet live atheistical
   lives, unmindful of His Presence, not regarding His Law. Doubtless many
   come into His courts unwashed and defiled, having forgotten to seek
   cleansing through the Atonement of His dear Son. They dare to stand
   before a holy God in their willful unholiness! Beloved, is it not so?
   Have not even those who are His people too often spoiled their praises,
   their prayers and their secret devotions by a lack of preparedness of
   heart and cleansing of spirit? Let this question go round and he that
   has the most renewed mind will be the most likely to accuse himself.

   I must not fail to remind you that I commenced by declaring that in
   each of the three voices of the Lord the tone was always that of love.
   If the Lord did not love us very much, He would not care so much about
   our love towards Him. Only true love knows how to burn with jealousy.
   How greatly God must love me, since I see that He desires to have my
   whole heart! What condescending tenderness that the Lord of Glory
   should complain, "You have bought Me no sweet cane with money!" It is
   the plaint of love! Remember, the Lord does not need our sweet canes
   nor our money. "The silver and the gold are His, and the cattle upon a
   thousand hills." He says to His enemy, "If I were hungry I would not
   tell you." He needs nothing at our hands. But when He chides us for
   withholding our love-tokens, it is because He values our love and

   is grieved when it grows cold. Yonder father does not need anything of
   his child and yet, when his birthday comes round, and there are
   whispers all over the house and little contributions that something may
   be given to dear Father, he is greatly pleased! He is more charmed with
   the little ones' trifling gifts than with the gold he wins on the
   Exchange! It is sweet to live in the thoughts of those we love. You
   that are blessed with happy domestic life, you know that in these
   matters you do not look for bare duty, but the free suggestions of love
   bear the palm. It is because the Lord loves us so much that He bemoans
   our lack of grateful affection and sadly mourns--"You have not called
   upon Me, O Jacob; you have been weary of Me, O Israel."

   What has the Lord done that we should treat Him so? O Brothers and
   Sisters, let us mend our ways! Surely we have treated everybody better
   than our God. In Him we live and move and have our being and yet, by
   the way we act, one would think we had never heard of Him! He has loved
   us with an everlasting love and dealt with us in amazing mercy-- and
   yet we are ungrateful and cold. Well may we smite upon the breasts
   which harbor such stony hearts and pray that the Holy Spirit may
   inspire us with ardor of love to Him who loved us and gave Himself for
   us! God bless these words to you, dear Brethren, by His Grace!

   III. I have now to finish with my third text, which I felt bound to
   take, lest I should conclude with mourning and lamentation. Our third
   text exhibits LOVE ABIDING.

   Notice, in the 21st verse of the 44th chapter, how the Lord still calls
   His people by the same name. "Remember these, O Jacob and Israel."
   Still are the names of His elect like music in the ears of God. One
   would have feared that He would have dropped the, "Israel," that
   honorable name which came of prevailing prayer, since they had not
   called upon Him. Why call him a prevailing prince, who had grown weary
   of his God? We would not have marveled if the Lord had only called them
   by their natural and carnal name of Jacob. But no, He harps upon the
   double title--He loves to think of His Beloved as what they were and
   what His Grace made them. O heir of Heaven, God still loves you! God
   still earnestly remembers you! Jehovah Jesus wears upon His
   breast-plate the names of His people and He has not torn one of the
   gems from its setting, neither has He erased a single name of Reuben,
   Simeon, Gad, or Levi from its jewel! Your name is still upon the palms
   of His hands! If nothing has touched you before, this ought to awaken
   your conscience and melt your heart! O, child of God, your God
   remembers you! He still calls you by name and acknowledges you as His!

   Notice in the text how the Lord claims His servants. "You are My
   servant: I have formed you; you are My servant." He has not discharged
   us, though He has had cause enough for doing so. How often have I
   prayed, "Dismiss me not from Your service, Lord," when I have seen the
   faultiness of my obedience! I dwell with supreme pleasure upon that
   sweet assurance, "You are My servant; you are My servant." He has not
   turned us out of doors, nor given us our wages and said, "Be packing, I
   shall never make My money's worth of you." I am sure He will never part
   with us, now, for if He meant to do so, He would have done it long ago!
   When we grow old and gray-headed, He will not send us off, as so many
   firms have lately done with old servants who had given them their youth
   and their manhood. No, the Lord will not cast off His people! Even to
   gray hairs He is the same. This should bind us to Him. This should
   quicken our pace in His service. This should make us eager and earnest
   to show forth His praise.

   Then notice how the Lord assures us in the next line, "O Israel, you
   shall not be forgotten of Me." God cannot forget His chosen! You that
   have Bibles with margins will find that it is also written there, "O
   Israel, forget not Me." The Lord longs to be remembered by us. Did not
   our loving Lord institute the sacred Supper to prevent our forgetting
   Him! Oh hear Him at that table of fellowship tenderly saying, "Do not
   forget Me!" Let us each one cry, "We will remember You!" Can you, O
   heir of immortality, forget Him who died for you? Can you forget Him
   that gives you eternal life? You who come forth from God's own love,
   begotten unto a lively hope by the Father's Grace, you can not forget
   Him by whom you live. Let us think of our Lord's memory of us and of
   His desire that we should remember Him--and then let our love flame
   forth.

   Notice with delight the triumph of love, how He still pardons. "I have
   blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions, and, as a cloud,
   your sins." I have seen the clouds come hurrying up, driven by the
   wind. They were black as night in the distance and, for a while, they
   spread darkness around us. Soon, however, drops of rain have fallen,
   for an April shower has come and the clouds, where were they? Not a
   vestige remained! The clouds were blotted out, the sky was blue and all
   things glittered in the sunlight as if hung with pearls! Thus our God
   beholds our sins gathering like clouds. He cannot endure them--He
   sweeps them away--no trace is left! "As far as the east is from the
   west, so far has He removed

   our transgressions from us." Child of God, your Lord forgives you! If
   you are ashamed and confounded for all your shortcomings, He has put
   them all away. Therefore return unto your God! Return to your first
   love! Return to all your former joy and rise to a still higher joy!

   See how our text closes with the Lord's own precept to be glad. "Sing,
   O you heavens; for the Lord has done it: shout, you lower parts of the
   earth: break forth into singing, you mountains, O forest, and every
   tree in it: for the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and glorified Himself in
   Israel." Out of all dejection, arise! Out of all sorrow, soar aloft!
   There is more cause for gladness than for sorrow! What you have done
   should cause distress of heart, but what the Lord has done is cause for
   rapture! Heaven and earth help you to praise! The mountains join in
   your music! The trees of the forest sing out in harmony with your
   delight! Infinite love has drowned your sins! Almighty Grace restores
   your wanderings! Eternal mercy establishes your goings! Oh for a
   well-tuned harp! Oh to be taught some flaming sonnet of pure spirits
   who are before the Throne of God!

   Wait a while and be not weary. Love the Lord, here, and so prepare for
   beholding Him above. Live after the manner which the whole theme
   suggests. What manner of persons ought we to be who are so supremely
   loved! To the glorious name of Jehovah, the God of Love, be Glory
   forever and ever! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Three Hours of Darkness

   (No. 1896)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 18, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the
   ninth hour." Matthew 27:45.

   FROM nine till noon the usual degree of light was present, so that
   there was time enough for our Lord's adversaries to behold and insult
   His sufferings. There could be no mistake about the fact that He was
   really nailed to the Cross, for He was crucified in broad daylight. We
   are fully assured that it was Jesus of Nazareth, for both friends and
   foes were eyewitnesses of His agonies--for three long hours the Jews
   sat down and watched Him on the Cross, making jests of His miseries. I
   feel thankful for those three hours of light, for otherwise the enemies
   of our faith would have questioned whether, in very deed, the blessed
   body of our Master was nailed to the tree and would have started false
   rumors as many as the bats and owls which haunt the darkness! Where
   would have been the witnesses of this solemn scene if the sun had been
   hidden from morn till night? As three hours of light gave opportunity
   for inspection and witness-bearing, we see the wisdom which did not
   allow it to close too soon.

   Never forget that this miracle of the closing of the eye of day at high
   noon was performed by our Lord in His weakness. He had walked the sea,
   raised the dead and healed the sick in the days of His strength, but
   now He has come to His lowest--the fever is on Him--He is faint and
   thirsty. He hangs on the borders of dissolution. Yet He has power to
   darken the sun at noon! He is still very God of very God--

   "Behold, a purple torrent runs

   Down from His hands and head!

   The crimson tide puts out the sun!

   His groans awake the dead!"

   If He can do this in His weakness, what is He not able to do in His
   strength? Fail not to remember that this power was displayed in a
   sphere in which He did not usually put forth His might. The sphere of
   Christ is that of goodness and benevolence and, consequently, of light.
   When He enters the sphere of making darkness and of working judgement,
   He engages in what He calls His strange work. Wonders of terror are His
   left-handed deeds. It is but now and then that He causes the sun to go
   down at noon and darkens the earth in the clear day (Amos 8:9). If our
   Lord can make darkness at will as He dies, what Glory may we not expect
   now that He lives to be the Light of the city of God forever? The Lamb
   is the Light and what a Light! The heavens bear the impress of His
   dying power and lose their brightness! Shall not the new heavens and
   the new earth attest the power of the risen Lord? The thick darkness
   around the dying Christ is the robe of the Omnipotent--He lives again!
   All power is in His hands and all that power He will put forth to bless
   His chosen!

   What a call must that mid-day midnight have been to the careless sons
   of men! They knew not that the Son of God was among them nor that He
   was working out human redemption. The grandest hour in all history
   seemed likely to pass by unheeded, when, suddenly, night hastened from
   her chambers and usurped the day! Everyone asked his companion, "What
   does this darkness mean?" Business stood still. The plow stayed in
   mid-furrow and the axe paused uplifted. It was the middle of the day,
   when men are busiest, but they made a general pause. Not only on
   Calvary, but on every hill and in every valley, the gloom settled down.
   There was a halt in the caravan of life! None could move unless they
   groped their way like the blind. The master of the house called for a
   light at noon and his servant tremblingly obeyed the unusual summons.
   Other lights were twinkling and Jerusalem was as a city by night, only
   men were not in their beds! How startled were mankind!

   Around the great deathbed an appropriate quiet was secured. I doubt not
   that a shuddering awe came over the masses of the people and the
   thoughtful foresaw terrible things. Those who had stood about the Cross
   and had dared to insult the majesty of Jesus, were paralyzed with fear.
   They ceased their ribaldry and, with it, their cruel exultation. They
   were cowed though not convinced, even the basest of them. While the
   better sort "smote their breasts and returned," as many as could do so,
   no doubt, stumbled to their chambers and endeavored to hide themselves
   for fear of awful judgments which they feared were near. I do not
   wonder that there should be traditions of strange things that were said
   during the hush of that darkness. Those whispers of the past may or may
   not be true--they have been the subject of learned controversy, but the
   labor of the dispute was energy ill spent. Yet we could not have
   wondered if one did say, as he is reported to have done, "God is
   suffering, or the world is perishing." Nor should I drive from my
   beliefs the poetic legend that an Egyptian pilot passing down the river
   heard among the reed banks a voice out of the rustling rushes,
   whispering, "The great Pan is dead." Truly, the God of Nature was
   expiring and things less tender than the reeds by the river might well
   tremble at the sound!

   We are told that this darkness was over all the land. And Luke puts it,
   "over all the earth." That portion of our globe which was then veiled
   in natural night was not affected--but to all men awake and at their
   employment, it was the advertisement of a great and solemn event. It
   was strange beyond all experience and all men marveled--for when the
   light should have been brightest--all things were obscured for the
   space of three hours!

   There must be great teaching in this darkness, for when we come so near
   the Cross, which is the center of history, every event is full of
   meaning. Light will come out of this darkness! I love to feel the
   solemnity of the three hours of death-shade and to sit down in it and
   meditate with no companion but the august Sufferer, around whom that
   darkness lowered. I am going to speak of it in four ways, as the Holy
   Spirit may help me. First, let us bow our spirits in the presence of a
   miracle which amazes us. Secondly, let us regard this darkness as a
   veil which conceals. Thirdly, as a symbol which instructs. And,
   fourthly, as a display of sympathy which forewarns us by the prophecies
   which it implies.

   I. First, let us view this darkness as A MIRACLE WHICH AMAZES US.

   It may seem a trite observation that this darkness was altogether out
   of the natural course of things. Since the world began, was it ever
   heard that at high noon there should be darkness over all the land? It
   was altogether out of the order of Nature. Some deny miracles and, if
   they also deny God, I will not, at this time, deal with them. But it is
   very strange that anyone who believes in God should doubt the
   possibility of miracles. It seems to me that, granted the Being of a
   God, miracles are to be expected as an occasional declaration of His
   independent and active will. He may make certain rules for His actions
   and it may be His wisdom to keep them, but surely He must reserve to
   Himself the liberty to depart from His own laws, or else He has, in a
   measure, laid aside His personal Godhead, deified law and set it up
   above Himself! It would not increase our idea of the Glory of His
   Godhead if we could be assured that He had made Himself subject to rule
   and tied His own hands from ever acting except in a certain manner!
   From the self-existence and freedom of will which enters into our very
   conception of God, we are led to expect that sometimes He should not
   keep to the methods which He follows as His general rule. This has led
   to the universal conviction that miracles are a proof of Godhead.

   The general works of Creation and Providence are, to my mind, the best
   proofs, but the common heart of our race, for some reason or other,
   looks to miracles as surer evidence--thus proving that miracles are
   expected of God. Although the Lord makes it His order that there shall
   be day and night, He, in this case, with abundant reason, interposes
   three hours of night in the center of a day! Behold the reason. The
   unusual in lower Nature is made to consort with the unusual in the
   dealings of Nature's Lord. Certainly this miracle was most congruous
   with that greater miracle which was happening in the death of Christ.
   Was not the Lord, Himself, departing from all common ways? Was He not
   doing that which had never been done from the beginning and would never
   be done again? That man should die is so common a thing as to be deemed
   inevitable? We are not startled at the sound of a funeral knell--we
   have become familiar with the grave. As the companions of our youth die
   at our side, we are not seized with amazement, for death is everywhere
   about us and within us. But that the Son of God should die, this is
   beyond all expectation and not only above Nature, but contrary to it!
   He who is equal with God deigns to hang upon the Cross and die! I know
   of nothing that seems more out of rule and beyond expectation than
   this. The sun darkening at noon is a fit accompaniment of the death of
   Jesus. Is it not so?

   Further, this miracle was not only out of the order of Nature, but it
   was one which would have been pronounced impossible. It is not possible
   that there should be an eclipse of the sun at the time of the full
   moon. The moon, at the time

   when she is in her full, is not in a position in which she could
   possibly cast her shadow upon the earth. The Passover was at the time
   of the full moon and, therefore, it was not possible that the sun
   should then undergo an eclipse. This darkening of the sun was not
   strictly an astronomical eclipse--the darkness was doubtless produced
   in some other way--yet to those who were present, it did seem to be a
   total eclipse of the sun--a thing impossible. Ah, Brothers and Sisters,
   when we come to deal with man and the Fall, and sin, and God, and
   Christ, and the Atonement, we are at home with impossibilities! We have
   now reached a region where prodigies, marvels and surprises are the
   order of the day--sublimities become commonplace when we come within
   the circle of Eternal Love! Yes, more--we have now left the solid land
   of the possible and have put out to sea--where we see the works of the
   Lord and His wonders in the deep. When we think of impossibilities in
   other spheres, we start back. But the way of the Cross is ablaze with
   the Divine and we soon perceive that "with God, all things are
   possible."

   See, then, in the death of Jesus, the possibility of the impossible!
   Behold, here, how the Son of God can die! We sometimes pause when we
   meet with an expression in a hymn which implies that God can suffer or
   die. We think that the poet has used too great a license, yet it
   behooves us to refrain from hypercriticism since, in Holy Writ, there
   are words like it. We even read (Acts 20:28) of "the Church of God
   which He has purchased with His own blood"--the blood of God! Ah well!
   I am not careful to defend the language of the Holy Spirit, but in its
   presence I take liberty to justify the words which we sang just now--

   "Well might the sun in darkness hide, And shut his glories in, When
   God, the mighty Maker, died For man, the creature's sin."

   I will not venture to explain the death of the Incarnate God. I am
   content to believe it and to rest my hope upon it.

   How should the Holy One have sin laid upon Him? That, also, I do not
   know. A wise man has told us, as if it were an axiom, that the
   imputation or the non-imputation of sin is an impossibility. Be it
   so--we have become familiar with such things since we have beheld the
   Cross. Things which men call absurdities have become foundational
   Truths of God to us! The Doctrine of the Cross is, to them that perish,
   foolishness. We know that in our Lord was no sin and yet He bore our
   sins in His own body on the Cross. We do not know how the innocent Son
   of God could be permitted to suffer for sins that were not His own. It
   amazes us that Justice should permit one so perfectly Holy to be
   forsaken of His God and to cry out, "Eloi, Eloi, lama Sabachthani?" But
   it was so and it was so by the decree of the highest Justice--and we
   rejoice in it! As it was so, that the sun was eclipsed when it was
   impossible that it should be eclipsed, so has Jesus performed, on our
   behalf, in the agonies of His death, things which, in the ordinary
   judgment of men, must be set down as utterly impossible! Our faith is
   at home in wonderland where the Lord's thoughts are seen to be as high
   above our thoughts as the heavens are above the earth!

   Concerning this miracle, I have also further to remark that this
   darkening of the sun surpassed all ordinary and natural eclipses. It
   lasted longer than an ordinary eclipse and it came in a different
   manner. According to Luke, the darkness all over the land came first
   and the sun was darkened afterwards--the darkness did not begin with
   the sun, but mastered the sun! It was unique and supernatural. Now,
   among all grief, no grief is comparable to the grief of Jesus--of all
   woes, none can parallel the woes of our great Substitute! As strongest
   light casts deepest shade, so has the surprising love of Jesus cost Him
   a death such as falls not to the common lot of men. Others die, but
   this Man is "obedient unto death." Others drink the fatal draught, yet
   reckon not of its wormwood and gall--but my Master "tasted death." "He
   poured out His soul unto death." Every part of His Being was darkened
   with that extraordinary death-shade--and the natural darkness outside
   of Him did but shroud a special death which was entirely by itself.

   And now, when I come to think of it, this darkness appears to have been
   most natural and fitting. If we had to write out the story of our
   Lord's death, we could not omit the darkness without neglecting a most
   important item. The darkness seems a part of the natural furniture of
   that great transaction. Read the story through and you are not at all
   startled with the darkness. After once familiarizing your mind with the
   thought that this is the Son of God and that He stretches His hands to
   the cruel death of the Cross, you do not wonder at the rending of the
   veil of the Temple! You are not astonished at the earthquake or at the
   rising of certain of the dead. These are proper attendants of our
   Lord's passion--and so is the darkness. It drops into its place, it
   seems as if it could not have been otherwise--

   "That Sacrifice!--the death of Him--

   The high and ever Holy One!

   Well may the conscious Hea ven grow dim,

   And blacken the beholding sun."

   For a moment think again. Has it not appeared as if the death which
   that darkness shrouded was also a natural part of the great whole? We
   have grown, at last, to feel as if the death of the Christ of God were
   an integral part of human history. You cannot take it out of man's
   chronicles, can you? Introduce the Fall and see Paradise Lost--and you
   cannot make the poem complete till you have introduced that greater Man
   who did redeem us--and by His death gave us our Paradise Regained. It
   is a singular characteristic of all true miracles, that though your
   wonder never ceases, they never appear to he unnatural--they are
   marvelous, but never monstrous! The miracles of Christ dovetail into
   the general run of human history. We cannot see how the Lord could be
   on earth and Lazarus not be raised from the dead when the grief of
   Martha and Mary had told its tale. We cannot see how the disciples
   could have been tempest-tossed on the Lake of Galilee and the Christ
   not walk on the water to deliver them! Wonders of power are expected
   parts of the narrative where Jesus is! Everything fits into its place
   with surrounding facts.

   A Romish miracle is always monstrous and devoid of harmony with all
   beside it. What if St. Winifred's head did come up from the well and
   speak from the coping to the astonished peasant who was about to draw
   water? I do not care whether it did or did not--it does not alter
   history a bit, nor even color it--it is tagged on to the record and is
   no part of it! But the miracles of Jesus, this of the darkness among
   them, are essential to human history and especially is this so in the
   case of His death and this great darkness which shrouded it! All things
   in human story converge to the Cross which seems not to be an
   afterthought nor an expedient, but the fit and foreordained channel
   through which Love should run to guilty men!

   I cannot say more from lack of voice, though I had many more things to
   say. Sit down and let the thick darkness cover you till you cannot even
   see the Cross and only know that out of reach of mortal eyes your Lord
   worked out the redemption of His people. He worked in silence, a
   miracle of patience and of love by which the Light of God has come to
   those who sit in darkness and in the valley of the shadow of death.

   II. Secondly, I desire you to regard this darkness as A VEIL WHICH
   CONCEALS. The Christ is hanging on yonder tree. I see the dreadful
   Cross. I can see the thieves on either side. I look around and I
   sorrowfully mark that motley group of citizens from Jerusalem--along
   with scribes, priests and strangers from different countries--mingled
   with Roman soldiers. They turn their eyes on Him and, for the most
   part, gaze with cruel scorn upon the Holy One who is in the center. In
   truth it is an awful sight. Mark those dogs of the common sort and
   those bulls of Bashan of more notable rank who all unite to dishonor
   the Meek and Lowly One. I must confess I never read the story of the
   Master's death, knowing what I do of the pain of crucifixion, without
   deep anguish--crucifixion was a death worthy to have been invented by
   devils! The pain which it involved was immeasurable! I will not torture
   you by describing it. I know dear hearts that cannot read of it without
   tears and without lying awake for nights afterwards.

   But there was more than anguish upon Calvary--ridicule and contempt
   embittered all. Those jests, those cruel gibes, those mockeries, those
   thrusting out of the tongues--what shall we say of these? At times I
   have felt some little sympathy with the French Prince who cried, "If I
   had been there with my guards, I would soon have swept those wretches
   away!" It was too terrible a sight--the pain of the Victim was grievous
   enough--but the abominable wickedness of the mockers, who could bear
   it? Let us thank God that in the middle of the crime there came down a
   darkness which rendered it impossible for them to go further with it!
   Jesus must die. For His pains there must be no alleviation and from
   death there must be for Him no deliverance--but the scoffers must be
   silenced. Most effectually their mouths were closed by the dense
   darkness which shut them in.

   What I see in that veil is, first of all, that it was a concealment for
   those guilty enemies. Did you ever think of that? It is as if God,
   Himself, said, "I cannot bear it. I will not see this infamy! Descend,
   O veil!" Down fell the heavy shades--

   "I asked the heavens, 'What foe to God has done This unexampled deed?'
   The heavens exclaim, 'Twas man! And we, in horror, snatched the sun
   From such a spectacle of guilt and shame.'"

   Thank God, the Cross is a hiding place. It furnishes for guilty men a
   shelter from the all-seeing eyes, so that justice need not see and
   strike. When God lifts up His Son and makes Him visible, He hides the
   sin of men. He says that "the times of their ignorance He winks at."
   Even the greatness of their sin He casts behind His back, so that He
   need not see it, but may indulge His long-suffering and permit His pity
   to endure their provocations. It must have grieved the heart of the
   Eternal God to see such wanton cruelty of men towards Him who went
   about doing good and healing all manner of diseases. It was horrible to
   see the teachers of the people rejecting Him with scorn--the seed of
   Israel, who ought to have accepted Him as their Messiah--casting Him
   out as a thing despised and abhorred! I therefore feel gratitude to God
   for bidding that darkness cover all the land and end that shameful
   scene! I would say to any guilty ones here--Thank God that the Lord
   Jesus has made it possible for your sins to be hidden more completely
   than by thick darkness! Thank God that in Christ He does not see you
   with that stern eye of Justice which would involve your destruction!
   Had not Jesus interposed, whose death you have despised, you had worked
   out in your own death the result of your own sin long ago! But for your
   Lord's sake you are allowed to live as if God did not see you. This
   long-suffering is meant to bring you to repentance. Will you not come?

   But, further, that darkness was a sacred concealment for the blessed
   Person of our Divine Lord. So to speak, the angels found for their King
   a pavilion of thick clouds in which His Majesty might be sheltered in
   its hour of misery. It was too much for wicked eyes to gaze so rudely
   on that Immaculate Person! Had not His enemies stripped Him naked and
   cast lots for His garments? Therefore it was meet that the holy Manhood
   should, at length, find suitable concealment. It was not fit that
   brutal eyes should see the lines made upon that blessed form by the
   engraving tool of sorrow. It was not meet that revelers should see the
   contortions of that sacred frame, indwelt with Deity, while He was
   being broken beneath the iron rod of Divine Wrath on our behalf! It was
   meet that God should cover Him so that none should see all He did and
   all He bore when He was made sin for us. I devoutly bless God for thus
   hiding my Lord away--thus was He screened from eyes which were not fit
   to see the sun much less to look upon the Sun of Righteousness! This
   darkness also warns us, even we who are most reverent.

   This darkness tells us all that the Passion is a great mystery into
   which we cannot pry. I try to explain it as substitution and I feel
   that where the language of Scripture is explicit, I may and must be
   explicit, too. But yet I feel that the idea of substitution does not
   cover the whole of the matter and that no human conception can
   completely grasp the whole of the dread mystery. It was worked in
   darkness because the full, far-reaching meaning and result cannot be
   beheld of finite mind. Tell me the death of the Lord Jesus was a grand
   example of self-sacrifice--I can see that and much more. Tell me it was
   a wondrous obedience to the will of God--I can see that and much more.
   Tell me it was the bearing of what ought to have been borne by myriads
   of sinners of the human race, as the chastisement of their sin--I can
   see that and found my best hope upon it. But do not tell me that this
   is all that is in the Cross! No, great as this would be, there is much
   more in our Redeemer's death. God only knows the love of God--Christ
   only knows all that He accomplished when He bowed His head and gave up
   the ghost. There are common mysteries of Nature into which it were
   irreverence to pry, but this is a Divine mystery before which we take
   our shoes off, for the place called Calvary is holy ground! God veiled
   the Cross in darkness--and in darkness much of its deeper meaning
   lies--not because God would not reveal it, but because we have not
   capacity enough to discern it all! God was manifest in the flesh and in
   that human flesh He put away sin by His own Sacrifice--this we all
   know. But "without controversy great is the mystery of godliness."

   Once again, this veil of darkness also pictures to me the way in which
   the powers of darkness will always endeavor to conceal the Cross of
   Christ. We fight with darkness when we try to preach the Cross. "This
   is your hour and the power of darkness," said Christ, and I doubt not
   that the infernal hosts made, in that hour, a fierce assault upon the
   spirit of our Lord. Thus much we also know, that if the Prince of
   Darkness is anywhere in force, it is sure to be where Christ is lifted
   up! To becloud the Cross is the grand objective of the enemy of souls!
   Did you ever notice it? These fellows who hate the Gospel will let
   every other doctrine pass muster--but if the Atonement is preached and
   the Truths of God which grow out of it, straightaway they are awakened!
   Nothing provokes the devil like the Cross. Modern theology has for its
   main goal the obscuration of the Doctrine of the Atonement. These
   modern cuttlefish make the water of life black with their ink! They
   make out sin to be a trifle and the punishment of it to be a temporary
   business--and thus they degrade the remedy by underrating the disease.
   We are not ignorant of their devices. Expect, my Brothers, that the
   clouds of darkness will gather as to a center around the Cross, that
   they may hide it from the sinner's view. But expect this, also, that
   there

   darkness shall meet its end. Light springs out of that darkness--the
   eternal Light of the undying Son of God, who, having risen from the
   dead, lives forever to scatter the darkness of evil!

   III. Now we pass on to speak of this darkness as A SYMBOL WHICH
   INSTRUCTS. The veil falls down and conceals, but at the same time, as
   an emblem, it reveals. It seems to say, "Attempt not to search within,
   but learn from the veil, itself--it has cherub work upon it." This
   darkness teaches us what Jesus suffered. It aids us to guess at the
   griefs which we may not actually see.

   The darkness is the symbol of the wrath of God which fell on those who
   slew His only begotten Son. God was angry and His frown removed the
   light of day. Well might He be angry, when sin was murdering His only
   Son--when the Jewish farmers were saying, "This is the heir; come, let
   us kill Him, and let us seize o His inheritance." This is God's wrath
   towards all mankind, for practically all men concurred in the death of
   Jesus. That wrath has brought men into darkness-- they are ignorant,
   blinded, bewildered. They have come to love darkness better than light
   because their deeds are evil. In that darkness they do not repent, but
   go on to reject the Christ of God. Into this darkness God cannot look
   upon them in complacency, but He views them as children of darkness and
   heirs of wrath, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever!

   The symbol also tells us what our Lord Jesus Christ endured. The
   darkness outside of Him was the figure of the darkness that was within
   Him. In Gethsemane a thick darkness fell upon our Lord's spirit. He was
   "exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death." His joy was communion with
   God--that joy was gone and He was in the dark. His day was the light of
   His Father's face--that face was hidden and a terrible night gathered
   around Him. Brothers, I should sin against that veil if I were to
   pretend that I could tell you what the sorrow was which oppressed the
   Savior's soul--only so far can I speak as it has been given me to have
   fellowship with Him in His sufferings. Have you ever felt a deep and
   overwhelming horror of sin--your own sin and the sins of others? Have
   you ever seen sin in the light of God's love? Has it ever darkly
   hovered over your sensitive conscience? Has an unknown sense of wrath
   crept over you like midnight gloom and has it been about you, around
   you, above you, and within you? Have you felt shut up in your
   feebleness and yet shut out from God? Have you looked around and found
   no help, no comfort, even, in God--no hope, no peace? In all this you
   have sipped a little of that salt sea into which our Lord was cast. If,
   like Abraham, you have felt a horror of great darkness creep over you,
   then you have had a taste of what your Divine Lord suffered when it
   pleased the Father to bruise Him and to put Him to grief.

   This it was that made Him sweat great drops of blood falling to the
   ground--and this it was which, on the Cross, made Him utter that
   appalling cry, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" It was not
   the crown of thorns, or the scourge, or the Cross which made Him
   cry--it was the darkness, the awful darkness of desertion which
   oppressed His mind and made Him feel like one distraught. All that
   could comfort Him was withdrawn and all that could distress Him was
   piled upon Him. "The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a
   wounded spirit who can bear?" Our Savior's spirit was wounded and He
   cried, "My heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of My heart."
   He was bereft of all natural and spiritual comfort and His distress was
   utter and entire. The darkness of Calvary did not, like an ordinary
   night, reveal the stars, but it darkened every lamp of Heaven. His
   strong crying and tears denoted the deep sorrow of His soul. He bore
   all it was possible for His capacious mind to bear, though enlarged and
   invigorated by union with the Godhead! He bore the equivalent of
   Hell--no, not that, only--but He bore that which stood instead of
   10,000 Hells, so far as the vindication of the Law is concerned! Our
   Lord rendered, in His death agony, a homage to Justice far greater than
   if a world had been doomed to destruction! When I have said that, what
   more can I say? Well may I tell you that this unutterable darkness,
   this hiding of the Divine Face, expresses more of the woes of Jesus
   than words can ever tell.

   Again, I think I see in that darkness, also, what it was that Jesus was
   battling, for we must never forget that the Cross was a battlefield to
   Him, wherein He triumphed gloriously. He was fighting, then, with
   darkness--with the powers of darkness of which Satan is the head--with
   the darkness of human ignorance, depravity and falsehood. The battle
   thus apparent at Golgotha has been raging ever since. Then was the
   conflict at its height, for the chiefs of the two great armies met in
   personal conflict. The present battle in which you and I take our
   little share is as nothing compared with that wherein all the powers of
   darkness in their dense battalions hurled themselves against the
   Almighty Son of God! He bore their onset, endured the tremendous shock
   of their assault and, in the end, with shout of victory, He led
   captivity captive! He, by His power and Godhead, turned midnight into
   day, again, and brought back to this world a reign of light which,

   blessed be God, shall never come to a close! Come to battle again, you
   hosts of darkness, if you dare! The Cross has defeated you--the Cross
   shall defeat you! Hallelujah! The Cross is the ensign of victory--its
   light is the death of darkness! The Cross is the lighthouse which
   guides poor weather-beaten humanity into the harbor of peace--this is
   the lamp which shines over the door of the great Father's house to lead
   His prodigals home.

   Let us not be afraid of all the darkness which besets us on our way
   Home, since Jesus is the light which conquers it

   all!

   The darkness never came to an end till the Lord Jesus broke the
   silence. All had been still and the darkness had grown terrible. At
   last He spoke and His voice uttered a Psalm. It was the 22nd Psalm. "My
   God," He said, "My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Each repeated,
   "Eloi," flashed morning upon the scene! By the time He had uttered the
   cry, "Why have you forsaken Me?" men had begun to see, again, and some
   even ventured to misinterpret His words--more in terror than in
   ignorance. They said, "He calls Elijah!" They may have meant to mock,
   but I think not. At any rate, there was no heart in what they said, nor
   in the reply of their companions. Yet the light had come by which they
   could see to dip the sponge in vinegar. Brothers and Sisters, no light
   will ever come to dark hearts unless Jesus shall speak and the light
   will not be clear until we hear the voice of His sorrows on our behalf
   as He cries, "Why have you forsaken Me?" His voice of grief must be the
   end of our grief! His cry out of the darkness must cheer away our gloom
   and bring the heavenly morning to our minds!

   You see how much there is in my text. It is a joy to speak on such a
   theme when one is in good health and full of vigor--then are we as
   Naphtali, a hind let loose--then we give goodly words! But this day I
   am in pain as to my body and my mind seems frozen. Nevertheless, the
   Lord can bless my feeble words and make you see that in this darkness
   there is a deep and wide meaning which none of us should neglect. If
   God shall help your meditations, this darkness will be light about you.

   IV. I come to my fourth point and my closing words will deal with THE
   SYMPATHY WHICH PROPHESIES. Do

   you see the sympathy of Nature with her Lord--the sympathy of the sun
   in the heavens with the Sun of Righteousness? It was not possible for
   Him by whom all things were made to be in darkness and for Nature to
   remain in the light.

   The first sympathetic fact I see is this--all lights are dim when
   Christ shines not. All is dark when He does not shine. In the Church,
   if Jesus is not there, what is there? The sun, itself, could not yield
   us light if Jesus were withdrawn. The seven golden lamps are ready to
   go out unless He walks among them and trims them with the holy oil.
   Brothers, you soon grow heavy, your spirits faint and your hands are
   weary if the Christ is not with you! If Jesus Christ is not fully
   preached. If He is not with us by His Spirit, then everything is in
   darkness. Obscure the Cross and you have obscured all spiritual
   teachings! You cannot say, "We will be clear in every other point and
   clear upon every other doctrine, but we will shun the Atonement since
   so many quibble with it. No, Sirs! If that candle is put under a
   bushel, the whole house is dark! All theology sympathizes with the
   Cross and is colored and tinctured by it! Your pious service, your
   books, your public worship must all be in sympathy with the Cross, one
   way or another. If the Cross is in the dark, so will all your work be--

   "What do you think of Christ?is the test To try both your work and your
   scheme; You cannot be right in the rest Unless you think rightly of
   Him."

   Conjure up your doubts; fabricate your philosophies and compose your
   theories--there will be no Light of God in them if the Cross is left
   out. Vain are the sparks of your own making--you shall lie down in
   sorrow! All our work and travail shall end in vanity unless the work
   and travail of Christ is our first and only hope! If you are dark upon
   that point, which alone is Light, how great is your darkness!

   Next, see the dependence of all creation upon Christ, as evidenced by
   its darkness when He withdraws. It was not meet that He who made all
   worlds should die and yet all worlds should go on just as they had
   done. If He suffers eclipse, they must suffer eclipse, too. If the Sun
   of Righteousness is made to set in blood, the natural sun must keep
   touch with Him. I believe, my Friends, that there is a much more
   wonderful sympathy between Christ and the world of Nature than any of
   us have ever dreamed. The whole creation groans and travails in pain
   together until now because Christ, in the Church, is in His travail
   pangs. Christ in His mystical body is in travail and so the whole
   creation must wait for the manifestation of the Son of God.

   We are waiting for the coming of the Lord from Heaven and there is no
   hill or dale--there is no mountain or sea but what is in perfect
   harmony with the waiting Church! Wonder not that there should be
   earthquakes in many places, blazing volcanoes, terrible tempests, and
   sore spreading of deadly disease! Marvel not when you hear of dire
   portents and things that make one's heart to quail, for such things
   must be till the end shall come! Until the Great Shepherd shall make
   His crook into a scepter and shall begin His unsuffering reign, this
   poor earth must bleed at every vein! There must be darkness till these
   days of delay are ended. You that expect placid history till Christ
   shall come expect you know not what! You that think that generous
   politics shall create order and contentment and that the extension of
   free-trade shall breathe universal peace over the nations, look for the
   living among the dead! Till the Lord shall come, the word has gone out,
   "Overturn, overturn, overturn," and overturned all things must be--not
   only in other kingdoms, but in this also, till Jesus comes! All that
   can be shaken shall be shaken and only His immovable Throne and Truth
   shall abide. Now is the time of the Lord's battle with darkness and we
   may not hope, as yet, for unbroken light.

   Dear Friends, the sin which darkened Christ and made Him die in the
   dark, darkens the whole world. The sin that darkened Christ and made
   Him hang upon the Cross in the dark is darkening you who do not believe
   in Him--and you will live in the dark and die in the dark unless you
   get to Him, only, who is the Light of the World and can give light to
   you. There is no light for any man except in Christ! And until you
   believe in Him, thick darkness shall blind you and you shall stumble in
   it and perish! That is the lesson I would have you learn.

   Another practical lesson is this--if we are in the dark at this time;
   if our spirits are sunk in gloom, let us not despair, for the Lord
   Christ, Himself, was there. If I have fallen into misery on account of
   sin, let me not give up all hope, for the Father's Well-Beloved passed
   through denser darkness than mine. O believing Soul, if you are in the
   dark, you are near the King's cellars and there are wines on the lees
   well refined lying there! You have gotten into the pavilion of the Lord
   and now may you speak with Him! You will not find Christ in the gaudy
   tents of pride, nor in the foul haunts of wickedness! You will not find
   Him where the viol and the dance and the flowing bowl inflame the lusts
   of men! But in the house of mourning you will meet the Man of Sorrows!
   He is not where Herodias dances, nor where Bernice displays her charms.
   He is where the woman of a sorrowful spirit moves her lips in prayer.
   He is never absent where penitence sits in darkness and bewails her
   faults--

   "Yes, Lord, in hours of gloom, When shadows fill my room When pain
   breathes forth its groans, And grief its sighs and moans, Then You are
   near."

   If you are under a cloud, feel for your Lord, if haply you may find
   Him. Stand still in your black sorrow and say, "O Lord, the preacher
   tells me that Your Cross once stood in such darkness as this--O Jesus
   hear me!" He will respond to you--the Lord will look out of the pillar
   of cloud and shed a light upon you. "I know their sorrows," He says. He
   is no stranger to heart-break. Christ also once suffered for sin. Trust
   Him and He will cause His light to shine upon you! Lean upon Him and He
   will bring you up out of the gloomy wilderness into the land of rest.
   God help you to do so!

   Last Monday I was cheered beyond all I can tell you by a letter from a
   Brother who had been restored to life, light, and liberty by the
   discourse of last Sabbath morning [Sermon No. 1895, Volume 32--Love
   Abounding, Love Complaining, Love Abiding]. I know no greater joy than
   to be useful to your souls. For this reason I have tried to preach,
   this morning, though I am physically quite unfit for it. Oh, I do pray
   I may hear more news from saved ones! Oh that some spirit that has
   wandered out into the dark moorland may spy the candle in my window and
   find its way home! If you have found my Lord, I charge you, never let
   Him go, but cleave to Him till the day breaks and the shadows flee
   away! God help you so to do for Jesus' sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Holding Fast Our Profession

   (No. 1897)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Let us holdfast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for He
   is faithful who promised)." Hebrews 10:23.

   THE Apostle is drawing certain inferences from the Covenant of Grace
   upon which he has been enlarging. He shows that God has made a Covenant
   with His people by which they are effectually preserved. "This is the
   covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord, I
   will put My Laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts; and
   their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." He shows that
   by this Covenant the fear of returning to our old sin is removed and
   the guilt of our sin is forever put away. He bids us, therefore, be
   bold in our approaches to God. As pardoned men, upon whom there is no
   sin, he bids us exercise the freedom of near access to God, who has
   accepted us in Christ. Then he tells us that since we are put in such a
   blessed position--a position which is altogether unique--it becomes us
   to hold fast to what we have received. Since the glorious Gospel has
   done so much for us, let us never quit it. Since it has brought us into
   a condition which angels might envy, let us never think of leaving it.
   Let us not dream of giving up that Divine principle which has worked us
   such blessedness, but, "Let us hold fast the profession of our faith
   without wavering."

   I pray God the Holy Spirit to bless these words as we shall think them
   over. May He make this evening's meditation a means of establishment to
   us that, while we hold fast the profession of our faith, the blessed
   Truths of that faith may also hold us fast as an anchor holds a ship!
   Never was there a time in which this was more necessary. That
   exhortation, "Let us hold fast," might well be written on the cover of
   every Christian's Bible. We live in such a changing age that we need
   all to be exhorted to be rooted and grounded, confirmed and established
   in the Truth of God. I shall call your attention, first, to this
   point--what we have. We have faith and, according to the second
   rendering, which is adopted by the revisers, we have hope. Then,
   secondly, what we have done. We have made a profession of that faith--a
   confession of that hope. Then, thirdly, what we are now to do--to hold
   fast that profession of faith and hope. And if you ask me, in the
   fourth place, why we are to do if!

   I shall, in closing, give you this reason--because "He is faithful who
   promised." If God is faithful, let us be faithful, too. Since until now
   He has proven Himself most true, let us pray that we may also be true.

   I. First, then, dear Brothers and Sisters, let us think of WHAT WE
   ALREADY HAVE by the Grace of God.

   If we read the text according to our present authorized translation, we
   have faith. We have made a public avowal of our faith. We can lay our
   hands upon our hearts and say, "Lord, You know all things. You know
   that we have faith in Jesus Christ Your Son." Yes, we have obtained
   what the Apostle calls "like precious faith"--it is a rare jewel and he
   is rich that possesses it.

   If we have not this faith in possession, let us pause, here, and ask
   for it and let us confess to God the great sin of unbelief in not
   believing in such a one as the Son of God who cannot lie--whose life is
   so transparently true that to doubt Him is a superfluity of
   naughtiness--an awful insult to the majesty of His faithfulness. Yet it
   would not be true for us to say--some of us--that we do not believe in
   the Lord Jesus Christ, for we do. We have no other confidence. Where
   could we find any other! He is the rock of our salvation! We could not
   invent another trust, however hard we were put to it, or however much
   we wished to do so. If Jesus were to say, "Will you, also, go away?" we
   would be compelled to answer, "Lord, to whom should we go? You have the
   words of eternal life." If the question is whether we have perfect
   holiness, we must answer it in the negative, to our great sorrow. If
   the question is whether we are highly advanced in Divine Grace, we
   would not dare say that we are. It would be immodest if we put forth
   such a pretension! But if the enquiry is, "Do you believe in the Lord
   Jesus Christ?" then without hesitation we reply, "Lord, we trust You
   with undivided faith."

   Trembling though it is, our faith is true. And though it does not
   always work in us all the fruit we would desire, yet it does operate in
   a very blessed way upon our walk and conversation. We believe that
   Jesus is the Christ and our trust for eternal life is in Him alone!

   It is not a matter of question with you, dear Friend, is it, as to
   whether you know Jesus to be the Son of God, very God of very God? It
   is past all question with you that Jesus bore your sins in His own body
   on the tree. You have no doubt about His wondrous death and His
   marvelous Resurrection from among the dead. You believe that He has
   offered a Sacrifice, once, which once offered has ended the sin of His
   people and that He has gone into His Glory and is now sitting at the
   right hand of God, expecting till His foes are made His footstool. You
   have no more doubt about that than you have about your own existence!
   You also believe that He will shortly come to be our Judge--that He
   will gather the nations before Him and that He will reign King of Kings
   and Lord of Lords. Your faith, then, in the Lord Jesus Christ is not a
   matter of "if," and, "but"--you stake your salvation on it! I can truly
   say that if what I preach is not true, I am a lost man. I have invested
   all that I have in Christ. If this boat sinks, I drown, for I cannot
   swim and I know no other lifeboat. Christ is All in All to me--without
   Him I can do nothing, I have nothing, I am nothing! Jesus, in the
   matter of salvation, is everything from beginning to end for me! And
   you can say the same, I know.

   You have faith, nor does your faith confine itself to the belief in the
   Person and work of Christ and to a simple trusting of yourself to Him,
   but you believe all that is revealed in relation to Jesus. All the
   stars which make up the southern cross shine with clear brilliance for
   you. Every Truth of God which is revealed in Holy Scripture is embraced
   by your faith and held tenaciously. To you I know, Beloved, it is only
   sufficient to prove that it is so written in the Bible and you believe
   it. A Truth may sometimes amaze you because of its greatness, but that
   does not stagger your faith, for your faith deals with mysteries and is
   familiar with sublimities which it never dreams of comprehending! Yes,
   we openly acknowledge that we believe in God the Father, Son and Holy
   Spirit, the Triune God! And we believe in the election of Grace. We
   believe in the eternal purposes of God and in the working out of all
   those purposes to the praise of the Glory of His Grace. If God tells us
   anything, we accept it as sure, unquestionable, infallible Truth. If He
   veils anything, we desire to leave it veiled, for the limit of
   Revelation is the limit of our faith.

   We may imagine this or imagine that, but we think nothing of our
   imaginations! Our faith deals with what God says, not with what learned
   men think. What the Spirit of God has written in this inspired Book is
   the Truth of God to us and we allow no human teaching to rank side by
   side with it. Well, then, we have faith--faith that believes, faith
   that learns, faith that reclines, faith that trusts herself entirely in
   the love of God--faith that can say, "Father into Your hands I commit
   my spirit." We have it, and we know that we have it! If any of you here
   do not know it, do not rest until you do know it. Unbelief calls God a
   liar--do not live a moment in such a horrible God-provoking sin! Not to
   trust Christ is to abide under the wrath of God. "He that believes not
   the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him." May we
   never remain in such a state as that, but come to a knowledge of the
   Truth and to a sound faith in that Truth--for this is the faith of
   God's elect.

   But another reading--and a very good reading, too--runs thus, "The
   confession of our hope." Oh yes, Beloved, if we have faith we have
   hope. We will take both renderings, for they are both correct in fact,
   if not in the letter. We have a blessed hope, a hope most "sure and
   steadfast, which enters into that which is within the veil." If I begin
   to describe our hope, I must begin with what, I think, is always the
   topmost stone of it--the hope of the Second Advent of our Lord and
   Savior Jesus Christ--for we believe that when He shall appear, we shall
   also appear with Him in Glory. We know that He has gone up into Heaven.
   His Apostles saw Him as He ascended from Olivet--and we believe the
   words which the angels declared soon after His departure to remind us
   of His coming again--"This same Jesus shall so come in like manner as
   you have seen Him go into Heaven." We expect Him to descend in Person
   and we hope, ourselves, to behold Him in that day. We expect Him to
   stand in the latter day upon the earth and, in our own flesh risen from
   the dead, we expect to behold our Savior and our God! This is the
   glorious hope of the Church! This is how she expects to be victorious
   over the world--the Lord shall come and end her conflict in complete
   triumph! As His First Coming has laid the foundations of His empire, so
   His Second Coming shall bring forth the cornerstone thereof with shouts
   of, "Grace, Grace, unto it."

   Wrapped up in that hope, we have personal hopes of our own, which hopes
   are, first, that our spirits, when we depart the body, shall be with
   Christ. We have been with Him, here, and we believe we shall be with
   Him there. Though in some sense while we are present in the body, we
   are absent from the Lord, yet in another sense He is with us even now.
   We

   expect, before long, to be absent from the body and, in a fuller sense,
   present with the Lord. Such is our joyful hope and expectation--Glory,
   millennium, Heaven, eternity--all lie within the circle of our hope.
   Ours is not the larger, but the largest hope.

   We expect that after a while the trumpet shall sound and our bodies
   shall be raised from beds of dust and silent clay--and that thus we
   shall be perfected in our manhood as spirit, soul and body. The day of
   our Lord's appearing will be the day of the redemption of the body from
   the dust with which it mingles. We expect, then, as perfect in Christ
   Jesus, made in the image of Him who is the Firstborn among many
   brethren, to live forever and ever in eternal blessedness, enjoying the
   life of God at His right hand where there are pleasures forevermore. We
   have a joyful, glorious, blessed hope which purifies, comforts,
   strengthens and sustains us--and this hope is in us now!

   As the pastor of this Church, I can joyfully say of the most of those
   who are here present, that you have a good hope through Grace. That
   hope gilds the darkness of the present--it is your candle through the
   long and weary night. You are not always to be sickly, poor and
   suffering. This hope sheds its light upon the future and reveals
   glories brighter than imagination could invent! At times when you
   realize that hope, you almost feel the crown of life settling down upon
   your brow and removing your throbbing pain once and for all. In the
   power of that hope you put on the sandals of the Light of God and the
   garments of immortality--and take your place among the celestial
   throng! Many a time, by faith, you walk along those streets which are
   paved with pure gold, like transparent glass, and as you tread the
   shining way you converse with the shining ones who dwell in the New
   Jerusalem! Hope already hears with her quick ears the songs of the
   redeemed and her eye beholds the Lord whom you love enthroned in the
   highest! Oh, how near does hope bring our Well-Beloved, whom, having
   not seen, we love! In whom, though now we see Him not, yet believing we
   rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of Glory!

   We have faith and we have hope--and we know that we have them. Are we
   not enriched with the Grace of God? Where faith and hope are found,
   love cannot be far off, for the three Divine sisters are seldom
   separated. Let us love the Lord who has given us the first two.

   II. Secondly, we have gone a step further than the silent possession of
   faith and hope. We have made A PROFESSION OF OUR FAITH AND A CONFESSION
   OF OUR HOPE. I am not going to say much about this, but to remind

   you of certain joyously solemn facts.

   You remember the time, dear Brothers and Sisters, when you first made a
   profession of your faith. It may do many of us good to go back to those
   early days. We are getting on in years, some of us, but we do not wish
   to feel old--at least we want to keep as much of the freshness and joy
   of youth as we well can! Cheerfulness is most becoming in
   Christians--we have a life within us of later birth than that which our
   mothers gave us--we will, therefore, measure our age from our second
   rather than our first birth. I like to see the old man grow young when
   he talks of Christ! Let him on that point become enthusiastic, even as
   in his boyhood. When he speaks of the loving kindness of the Lord to
   him, he should show the mellowness of years and the energy of youth in
   happy combination. Perhaps some of you remember the place, the spot of
   ground, where Jesus met with you. If you do not, at least you remember
   when you first whispered to your own heart with trembling hope, "I
   think I know the Lord." You were almost startled at the echo of your
   own words! You were afraid that you had been presumptuous! There was
   great tenderness of conscience upon you, then, and you would not have
   professed what was not true for all the world. You said within
   yourself, "I half said that I was a Believer, but I do not think I dare
   say it again."

   Yet, within a short time, it oozed out again, when you were in company
   and felt forced to defend your Savior. It was true of you in a blessed
   sense, "Your speech betrays you. You, also, were with Jesus of
   Nazareth." At last it grew so warm round about you that you thought you
   might as well come out for Jesus and derive help from the confession.
   The adversaries were ferreting you out and you thought you had better
   come out and say, boldly, once and for all, "It is even so!" The true
   Pilgrim never wishes to enter the House Beautiful if he has not a right
   to be there. He is afraid that he may be guilty of intrusion and he,
   therefore, hopes the porter at the gate will only admit him when he
   feels quite sure that he is a Pilgrim such as the Lord of the Way would
   permit to enter His House.

   It was a day of great trembling, but of great joy, when first we avowed
   our faith in Jesus! What we said we meant. We salted our words with our
   tears, but oh, we felt it such an honor to be numbered with the people
   of God! If we had

   been promised a seat on the floor, or had been allowed only to hear the
   Gospel in the coldest corner of the building, we should then have been
   fully content! We sang and meant it--

   "Might I enjoy the meanest place

   Within Your House, O God of Grace,

   Not tents of ease, nor thrones of power,

   Should tempt my feet to lea ve Your door." We need soft cushions now.
   We cannot stand to hear a sermon now, nor yet travel very far,
   especially in damp weather. It is very strange that we should have
   become so delicate, but it is so. How many miles we could walk when
   first we knew the Lord! The miles have grown much longer lately, or
   else our love has grown much shorter! Those were blessed days--
   changeful, showery, with little more that the dusk of dawn about
   them--but still there was a morning freshness about them upon which we
   look back with supreme delight and somewhat of regret. Then was it a
   time of love, a season of buds and flowers and songbirds and
   overflowing life and hope!

   Thus early in my discourse I would most earnestly say to you--Hold fast
   the profession of your faith. By the memories of the day when you made
   that profession, be firm in it to the end. If you were not false, then;
   if you were not deceivers then; hold fast the confession of your hope
   without wavering, for, "He is faithful who promised." To me it is a
   solemn memory that I professed my faith openly in Baptism. Vividly do I
   recall the scene. It was the third of May and the weather was cold
   because of a keen wind. I see the broad river, the crowds which lined
   the banks and the company upon the ferryboat. The Word of the Lord was
   preached by a man of God who is now gone Home. And when he had so done,
   he went down into the water and we followed him and he baptized us. I
   remember how, after being the slave of timidity, I rose from the liquid
   grave quickened into holy courage by that one act of decision,
   consecrated therefore forth to bear a lifelong testimony!

   It was by burial with Christ in Baptism that I confessed my faith in
   His death, burial and Resurrection. By an avowed death to the world, I
   professed my desire from that day on to live with Jesus, for Jesus and
   like Jesus. Oh that I had been more faithful to that profession! But
   there it was and I am not ashamed of it, nor wishful to run back from
   it. Ah no, I bear in my body that watermark, that fulfillment of the
   Holy Scriptures, which says, "Having your hearts sprinkled from an evil
   conscience, and your bodies washed with pure water."--

   "High Heaven that heard the solemn vow, That vow renewed shall daily
   hear, Till in life's latest time I bow, And bless, in death, a bond so
   dear."

   Let us remember, also, the many times in which we have repeated that
   profession of faith, that confession of hope, for instead of retracting
   it, we have gone on to repeat it. We have been marked anew with the
   King's name. If you ask how you have renewed your vows, I reply--"You
   have done it many a time at the table of communion. You have sat there
   and feasted with your Lord and you have not been ashamed of being
   there, I am sure. No, you have often feared that it was too good to be
   true that such a one as you should be eating bread with the children
   when not long ago you begged for the crumbs which fell from their
   table! You have sat at the banquet of bread and wine and, in so doing,
   you have borne witness to the death of Christ until He comes. Thus you
   have in frequent feasts of love confessed your joyful hope!"

   And beside that, in many a Prayer Meeting you have been present and, by
   your very presence, have expressed your belief that it is not a vain
   thing to wait upon God. You have also joined in the prayer and this is
   no mean profession of faith. In many a service, when Christ has been
   preached, you have been there, not merely to assist by your presence,
   but because you have agreed with it all. Your heart has, at times, so
   burned within you, that you have thought it proper to say, "Amen!" You
   longed to cry, "Hallelujah!" And it was almost a pity you did not do
   so, for the outburst would have done no hurt to anybody. Perhaps,
   sometimes, you have done it and you have startled yourself and many
   others! By such an exclamation you have renewed your profession of your
   faith.

   You have repeated your profession in the shop, in the market, in the
   place of business, among your friends, in your family and to the
   partner of your life. Those around you know you to be professedly an
   heir of Heaven, a child of God! It is well that they should. Why should
   not the children of Light be as well known as the children of darkness?
   Why should you conceal yourselves?

   As for me and such of us as stand prominently out to preach the Word of
   God, how many times have we made a profession? I hope our preaching has
   not been done "professionally," but certainly we can neither preach,
   nor lead the devotions of a congregation without professing our faith
   and declaring our hope!

   I again break in upon the latter part of my discourse by saying--after
   all these times in which we have worn our Master's livery, shall we
   desert Him? After those many occasions in which we have borne His mark
   upon our foreheads, can we think of becoming apostates? Christ has been
   confessed by us in the most solemn forms over and over again--shall we
   be doubly forsworn? Shall we become sevenfold traitors? No, by His rich
   and Sovereign Grace, I would say to you, believing that the Holy Spirit
   will help you to keep the command, "Hold fast the profession of your
   faith without wavering; for He is faithful who promised."

   We have considered how we began this profession and we have also seen
   how often we have made it since. Let us think for a minute what it has
   cost us. Has it been worthwhile to be on the Lord's side? Religion has
   cost many of its disciples somewhat dear but it has cost nothing
   compared with its worth! What bashfulness it cost you to make the first
   confession of your faith! What a struggle it then appeared! You were
   weeks, some of you, before you dared to come and see such an awful
   person as the minister, to speak of your conversion to him. It had
   taken you weeks even to tell it to your wife or your husband! The dear
   soul, for once, seemed to grow into a very dragon when you needed to
   tell him that you had found the Lord. I have known parents terribly
   afraid to let their children know of their conversion. They were never
   half so afraid of sinning as they became afraid of being charged with
   repenting! You surmounted that difficulty, did you not? You cried to
   God about it and you obtained courage--and now you wonder how you could
   have been so foolishly timid. Do not, in the future, fall back into the
   same fears.

   But perhaps some of you lost the friendship of many by becoming
   disciples of the Lord Jesus. I know one who became a member of this
   Church--she had moved in high and fashionable circles, but she said to
   me, "they have left me--every one of them." I said, "I am very
   thankful, for it will save you the trouble of quitting them. They will
   do you no good if they profess to be your friends. And they will do you
   less harm by giving you the cold shoulder." It is about the best thing
   that happens to a Christian when worldlings cut his acquaintance. "Come
   you out from among them," is to many a severe command. But all
   difficulty is removed when the world turns out from us and casts out
   our name as evil! Still, it has cost many a tear, and many a sigh for
   the first Believer in certain families to take up his cross and come
   right out and follow Christ. "Canting hypocrite!" "Sniveling
   pretender!" Such titles and worse are quickly thrown at us! It is but
   natural that the world we leave should give us a parting kick.

   We, of course, are everything that is bad as soon as we forsake the
   ways of the world to follow Christ. It is the old fashion--after this
   manner they dealt with our fathers. I do not suppose that any two men,
   after a while, counts it at all a hardship, or mourns as though some
   strange thing had happened to him! Did they not swim through seas of
   blood in the old times? Did they not fight with beasts at Ephesus and
   reach to Heaven by the way of the stake? We suffer so little compared
   with the persecutions of our forerunners that it is hardly worth a
   thought! But yet, to some very tender hearts, it is a costly business
   to make a profession of faith. And I say to them--Have you suffered
   these many things in vain? Will you now go back? Will you turn, again,
   to the beggarly elements of the world, after having confronted
   persecution and borne the enmity of men? No, by the Grace of God you
   will "hold fast the profession of your faith without wavering!"

   "But what good does our profession do?" asks one. I do not know that we
   need ask that question, or answer it, either. If a course of action is
   commanded of God, it is ours to obey whether we can see any use in it
   or not. It is put continually in the Word of God, "He that with his
   heart believes, and with his mouth makes confession of Him, shall be
   saved," or in other words, "He that believes and is baptized shall be
   saved." Faith in the Truth of God and an open profession of that faith
   are constantly put together in the Scriptures! There must be the
   confession of Christ outwardly, as well as the believing in Christ
   inwardly. The Lord Jesus, Himself, has said, "Except a man shall take
   up his cross and follow Me, he cannot be My disciple." It is not the
   Lord's will that we should go in the dark to Heaven along some private
   road of our own! We are to come out and follow Him in this evil
   generation, or else He will be ashamed of us when He comes in the Glory
   of His Father.

   If the question is asked again, "What is the good of an open
   profession?" I would say, Much every way. It is, in itself, a grand
   thing for his manliness for a man to boldly say, "I am a Christian." It
   is good for a soldier of the Cross to draw the sword and throw away the
   scabbard by being openly known to be a Christian. The world then ceases
   to urge its

   coarser temptations. The enemies know where you are and do not raise
   that question again. Your profession becomes a confirmation of your
   purpose to lead a better life. You say, "I have lifted up my hand unto
   the Lord and how can I go back? How can I do this great wickedness and
   sin against God? The vows of the Lord are upon me!" All this is a
   protection to you in the hour of trial. To show your colors may not
   appear to be a great thing, but to many it is half the battle.

   Besides, the open confession of our faith has a good influence upon
   others. How could there be a Christian Church at all if every Christian
   concealed his faith in his own bosom? Without the Christian Church as
   an organization, how would all the good work that has to be done in the
   reclaiming of sinners be attended to? Where would be our public
   proclamation of the Gospel? Where our missions and ministers? If you
   love your Lord and have faith and hope in Him, do not delay to come
   forward and acknowledge His name and cause. Say boldly, "Where are His
   people? I will join with them! Do they meet with any reproach for
   obedience to Him? I will share that reproach! Have they any work for
   Christ on hand? I will take my share of that work! Yours am I, Son of
   David, and all that I have, and I give myself to You to be Yours
   forever and ever."

   It will be to your lasting honor and enduring joy to be found wearing
   the livery of the Prince of Peace, marching in the ranks of the saints,
   contending earnestly for the Truth of God and advancing the Kingdom of
   your God! Thus have I spoken upon the profession of our faith and hope.

   III. The third point is, WHAT ARE WE NOW TO DO? I have entrenched upon
   it, already, and I have done so intentionally. The answer is--we are
   called upon to holdfast the profession of our faith.

   Of course this includes the holding fast of your faith. The things
   which you have believed, continue to believe. There may be an
   advance--there ought to be an advance--in politics because the basis to
   begin with was wrong. And, as you advance, you only approximate a
   little more nearly to that which is perfectly just, honest and
   righteous. It is a far cry from feudalism to a righteous commonwealth!
   But there can be no advance in true religion! If it is true at first,
   the same things are still true and must be true forever and ever. We
   feel that there can be no progress in the foundational Truths of
   Christianity when we remember such a text as this, "Jesus Christ, the
   same yesterday, today, forever." Revelation comes from the mind of God,
   like Minerva is fabled to have sprung from the brain of Jove, full
   grown, full armed. Nothing may be taken from it! Nothing may be added
   to it!

   I, for one, am perfectly satisfied with an Apostolic faith. It anyone
   can go beyond the Apostles, let him go--I shall not attempt to do so. I
   am satisfied to believe what Paul believed. Oh that I were worthy to
   unloose the laces of his shoes! Though Paul is not my Lord and Master,
   yet I reverence the Holy Spirit as He speaks through Paul's Epistles. I
   am perfectly satisfied with what Jesus revealed by His own teaching and
   the teaching of His Apostles--and going beyond that seems to me to
   imply that the Revelation is imperfect. But imperfect it is not! It is
   plain, clear and finished, and they that add to it, or take from it,
   will incur the plagues with which the Book is closed and guarded. God
   shall take away from such their names out of the Book of Life and out
   of the Holy City. Hold fast to the old Truth of God!

   The ships in yonder port are swinging with the tide just now. Please
   God they will swing back to the same place when the tide turns. They
   have done so before. There came a day when our dissenting Churches
   almost all went round to Socinianism and then their chapels were empty
   and their day of power was gone. Earnest men rose up and preached the
   old Gospel, again, and there was a grand revival! Now they are going
   off again, turning every man to his own error, except that the Lord has
   a faithful company that hold fast the faith and will not let it go--and
   these will yet live to see a great revulsion of feeling! If they do
   not, that is a small matter to them--to be faithful to their God is
   their first and their last business!

   Hold, next to your hope. Hope in Christ and in His coming and in the
   victory of the Truth of God. If the storms lower, believe that there is
   fair weather ahead. And if the night darkens into a seven-fold
   blackness, believe that the morning comes despite the darkening glooms!
   Have faith and trust in Him that lives, and was dead, and is alive
   forever-more! Let your hope begin to hear the hallelujahs which
   proclaim the reign of the Lord God Omnipotent, for reign He must, and
   the victory shall be unto Him and to His Truth. Hold fast your faith.
   Hold fast your hope.

   But that is not the text. It is holdfast your profession of faith, your
   confession of hope--that is to say, stand to what you have done by way
   of open declaration of these things. Constantly keep up your
   confession. You made it once. Renew it. Often and often say--

   "I'm not ashamed to acknowledge my Lord,

   Nor to defend His cause; Maintain the honor of His Word, The Glory of
   His Cross."

   You are Christians, not for a time, but for eternity1 Your new birth is
   not into a dying existence, but into life everlasting! You are born
   again of a living and incorruptible seed that lives and abides forever!
   Therefore, quit yourselves like men and be strong. Stand fast, "Be
   steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord."
   Continue your confession and never conceal it.

   There are times when you will be inclined to put your flag away into
   the canvas case and hide your coat of arms in the cellar. Then you may
   fitly judge that the devil is getting an advantage over you and that it
   is time that you ceased to be beguiled by his sorceries. Tear up the
   wrappings, throw the bag away and nail your flag aloft where every eye
   can see it! Whenever you feel inclined to be ashamed of Christ, do not
   deliberate, but say, "This is wrong. There is coming over me something
   that I must not endure. If I were in a right state of mind I should
   never feel like this." Never yield to shameful cowardice--scorn such
   detestable meanness! Away with it, man! Away with it! If you might have
   gone on peaceably and said nothing about your religion, yet whenever
   you feel at all afraid to do it, then say, "I must do it. I cannot
   allow my principles to remain in question. I will, in some way, make a
   demonstration of the faith that is in me, lest I prove a coward and a
   castaway after all."

   Perhaps you may have to go into a certain company where you do not want
   to have it known that you are a Christian. It is imperative that you
   break through that snare and put the case beyond debate. If I were you,
   I would make my profession known in that very company because the idea
   that you must not be known to be a Christian will be very dangerous to
   you. I cannot exactly tell in what way it may endanger you, but it will
   surely do so and, therefore, whenever the thought of concealment crops
   up, down with it and come out clear and straight for Jesus! Only when
   you are out-and-out for Jesus can you be in a right condition. Anything
   short of this is full of evil! Since Satan tempts you to hide your
   faith, feel that he seeks your harm and, therefore, come out all the
   more decidedly.

   Beloved Friends, may God help us never to do anything contrary to the
   confession of our faith. I have heard of such a thing as a Christian
   man making a confession of his faith by paying sixpence in the pound in
   the Bankruptcy Court. They say that he is making a good thing out of
   his failure. He is making his own damnation sure if he is robbing his
   creditors and yet professing to be a Christian! Here is a man making a
   confession of his faith. He is a very good Christian man in his own
   esteem, but he also knows a good glass of wine and is most fluent when
   he is getting far into the bottle. Have drunks any hope of eternal
   life? Look at yonder professor--he is going across to the public house
   to stand at the counter and drink with those who blaspheme! That is his
   way of confessing his faith, I suppose. It is not mine!

   Have I not seen Christian women become noisily angry and say harsh
   things to their servants? That is showing your Christianity, is it? I
   do not want to be sarcastic, but I don't want you to tempt me to be so.
   If you love the Lord, live as if you loved Him! Let us all try to do so
   and let us watch that we never undo with our hands what we say with our
   tongues. I heard in Lancashire of some people who preached with their
   feet. It is the best way of preaching in the world. By your walk and
   conversation you will preach twice as well as by your talk! Your tongue
   is too soft a thing to influence dull minds, you must influence such by
   your lives.

   When we come to die we will gather up our feet in the bed and bear
   another and more solemn testimony to the Lord our God. We will set up
   one Ebenezer more on Jordan's brink and bear one more witness for Him
   who loved us and washed us from our sins in His blood. I recollect what
   Whitefield said of himself. Someone said, "Dear Mr. Whitefield, I
   should like to be present with you when you come to die. What a
   testimony you will bear in your parting moments." "No," said that
   eminent servant of God, "I do not think I shall bear any testimony in
   death because I have borne so many testimonies in my life that my Lord
   will not want any from me when I die." So it came to pass. He stood at
   the top of the stairs the night before he died and preached his last
   sermon and then turned in and went to Heaven! Perhaps that is how some
   of us will write the finis to our lifework. At any rate, let us bear
   our testimonies while we can. Let us speak up for our Master while we
   may and, by-and-by, we shall see Him whom our soul loves and rejoice in
   Him forever!

   IV. I may not detain you many more moments and, therefore, let me
   answer the question WHY ARE WE TO DO THIS? We are to hold fast the
   profession of our faith without wavering, because He is faithful who
   has promised.

   Have you found Him faithful? Has the Lord failed you? Has the Lord been
   untrue in His promises to you? If He has, then do not hold fast your
   profession! If, after all, it has been a mistake and a delusion, then
   give it up! But if He is faithful who has promised--if He has kept His
   word to you, helped you in your trouble, sustained your heart under
   burdens, comforted you in the dark hour of trial--if till this moment
   you have proven the power of prayer, the wisdom of Providence and the
   truth of the Sacred Word--then deal with my Lord as He has dealt with
   you! Be not faithless to the Crucified. Oh, be not Judas to Him who is
   Jesus to you! He gave His heart for you and even after death it poured
   out blood and water for you--give your whole heart to Him! If it is so
   that these Truths of God are firmly established and that God keeps His
   Covenant, then let us come at once to the feet of the blessed Lord and
   say, "Lord, we do not regret that we entered Your service. On the
   contrary, we are ready to begin again." If we had our lives to live,
   over again, we that began to be Christians as lads would begin earlier!
   We that have served the Lord desire no better Master and no better
   service, but we would wish Him to find, in each one of us, a better
   servant. Lord, we have been happy with You. When we have been unhappy,
   it has been our own fault, not Yours. We would return to You and say,
   "Permit us to serve You still. We would be Your servants forever."

   I have heard of a husband and wife who felt their love for each other
   to be so strong that they almost wished to go through the wedding
   ceremony again, to show how content they were to bear the easy yoke of
   married love. Many of us could say the same. We would also be joined
   anew to our Lord! Let us take afresh His yoke upon us. Let us put our
   shoulder down to the Cross, again, and commence again to serve the Lord
   Jesus with the love of our espousals and the freshness of our earliest
   days. May the Lord bless us to that end!

   While we are doing this, hope that others who never did love Him before
   will now say, "We will come with you and begin a new life from this
   good hour." It will be a happy, happy circumstance if this should be
   the case. God grant it may be so with many, for Jesus' sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Mouth and Heart

   (No. 1898)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, APRIL 25, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "That if you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and shall
   believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall
   be saved." Romans 10:9.

   PAUL'S great work was saving souls. Whatever else he might be doing, he
   never forgot, "by all means to save some." Whatever else he aimed at in
   his Epistles, he always took care to write that men might, by his
   teaching, be led to the Lord Jesus. He sought to speak so that troubled
   consciences might come to peace through Jesus Christ his Lord, whom he
   loved so well. This is one of the reasons why he so often gives us
   weighty condensations of the Gospel, packing the Truths of God together
   very closely. He knew that these are very useful and so he prepared
   them for his Brothers and Sisters, as one provides portable meats or
   condensed milk for travelers. When the reader finds a compact sentence
   of this sort, he has met with a little Bible, a miniature Body of
   Divinity. Behold the whole story of redeeming love told out in a line
   or two, easy to be understood, likely to be remembered, calculated to
   impress! He who composes short and striking summaries of Gospel Truth
   may be working as effectively for the salvation of men as another who
   delivers earnest, pleading discourses. In this chapter Paul several
   times puts the Gospel in a remarkably plain, simple and brief manner.
   He is the master of condensation and our text is a specimen of his
   power! He here gives the plan of salvation in a line or so--"If you
   shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in your
   heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved."

   I wish to preach in the same spirit in which Paul wrote, aiming from my
   first word to my last at the conversion of any of you who have not yet
   known the Lord. I pray that we may all mean business at this time and
   may get at it in downright earnest. May you be determined to come to
   the point and no longer hesitate! How glad I should be if any would say
   to themselves, "I will run in the way, if I can but see it. I will lay
   hold of that which is put before me, if I may but grasp it. I will
   hesitate and trifle no longer, but I will deal solemnly with solemn
   matters, so that this day I may find peace with God!"

   I am not going to enter into any profound exposition of the deep things
   of God, but I shall keep to those simple matters through which
   salvation comes to plain men and women. Oh that the Spirit of God may
   bless my words to the immediate conversion of my hearers!

   I. I shall need you to notice in our text, first, that the Gospel, as
   Paul here sets it forth, is a Gospel of faith. And THIS GOSPEL OF FAITH
   IS EVIDENTLY INTENDED FOR LOST MEN. Observe, he says, "If you shall
   believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead you shall
   be saved." When Moses wrote the Law, he spoke upon obedience to the
   command as securing life, for, he says, "This do, and you shall live."
   It was presupposed by the Law that those to whom the Law came already
   possessed life and the fulfilling of the Law did but preserve them in
   the life which they already possessed. We read in the fifth verse of
   this chapter, "For Moses describes the righteousness which is of the
   Law, that the man which does those things shall live by them." You see,
   the Law continues life to those who have already life enough to do good
   works. The Gospel comes to us under quite another aspect--it does not
   regard us as having life, but as needing that life. The Gospel comes to
   us not as to servants who need to be told how they are to continue to
   live, but as to dead sinners who need to be made to live and then to be
   kept alive and preserved in happy and holy being! The Gospel says not
   only that we shall live by it, but that we shall be saved by it, which
   promise goes much lower and further. When it is said that we shall "be
   saved," it implies that we have fallen into a lost, ruined and undone
   condition--and out of this the Gospel is to rescue us.

   It is well to start fairly in preaching the Gospel, by declaring
   plainly to whom this Gospel is sent. It is sent to you that need it--it
   is sent, therefore, to you who are lost, because if you are not lost,
   you do not need saving. If you have not fallen, you do not need
   restoring. If you have not sinned you do not need forgiving. If you are
   not far off from the Lord, you do not require to be brought near by the
   blood of Christ. The Gospel of salvation is sent to those who are under
   the curse of the Law and condemned to pay its penalties. What a joyous
   note this is! Hear it, you broken-hearted, and be encouraged! To you we
   proclaim the free gift of God!

   Some fancy that we are to preach to you a milder kind of Law, a more
   easy way of works, an amended dispensation. But, on the contrary, we
   preach to you not demands but gifts, not Law but love. Our Gospel is,
   in very deed, good news! We have come to tell men not what they are to
   do for God, but what God has done for them! We speak not of what men
   are to bring to Jesus, but of what Jesus has brought to them and has
   freely and graciously put forward for their acceptance! Listen, then,
   you who need saving--this Book is for you--the Christ whom this Book
   reveals is for you! The Spirit of God who bears witness to Christ is
   for you! Ah, you guilty, you self-condemned, you utterly disheartened,
   it is to such as you that the risen Savior is preached today!

   Jesus comes to bring salvation. What a great word that is! The text
   says the Believer shall "be saved"--saved is a little word for letters,
   but it is a great word for meaning! What is it to be saved? It means to
   be saved from the punishment of all your sins, saved from going down
   into the Pit, saved from the blackness of darkness forever, saved from
   the everlasting wrath of the Most High, saved from the second death
   whose terror is the Hell of Hell. Whoever confesses the Lord Jesus and
   believes that God has raised Him from the dead, shall be saved from the
   penal consequences of his guilt.

   Better still, you shall be saved from sin itself. The criminality and
   guilt of it shall be removed--from its stain you shall be washed whiter
   than snow. The sin itself, that black cloud, as well as the tempest
   with which it is charged, shall be removed, even as it is written, "I
   have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions, and, as a
   cloud, your sins." We preach not only deliverance from the punishment,
   but deliverance from the crime, itself--deliverance from the charge and
   accusation which otherwise would lie against the transgressor. The sin
   shall be blotted out in the case of the Believer and he shall be
   forgiven and justified--justified from all things from which the Law
   could never clear him. Righteousness shall be imputed to him, even the
   righteousness of the Lord Jesus, who is the end of the Law for
   righteousness to everyone that believes. If you confess with the mouth
   and believe with the heart, the Lord Jesus shall be made of God unto
   you wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption! The
   confessing Believer shall be delivered from the guilt of his sin and he
   shall stand accepted before the Judgement Seat of God!

   What is still more, you shall not only be delivered from the punishment
   of sin and the guilt of sin, but from the power of sin. Oh, to be saved
   from sinning! This is our chief desire. It the guilt of sin could
   possibly be put away and we could still be left as much the slaves of
   sin as before, very little would have been done for us. It would be a
   doubtful blessing. If the children of Israel in Egypt had been screened
   from serving with rigor, had been fed to the fullest and made content
   in their slavery, would it have been a real blessing to them? Would it
   not have riveted the chains of their bondage? The Lord did not send
   them relief in the form of bread, meat and garments, with which to be
   comfortable in Egypt, but He brought them out of Egypt with a high hand
   and an outstretched arm. To be made happy in sin would be dangerous to
   us and unworthy of God!

   The Lord Jesus Christ has come to save His people from their sins, to
   break the chains of evil habit, to subdue sinful influences which now
   dominate us and to put within us a new heart and a right spirit. He, by
   the infusion of a new life, makes us sigh and pant after holiness! He
   answers to that sighing and works in us to will and to do of His good
   pleasure. He subdues our iniquities and makes the power of evil in us
   to wax weaker and weaker while Grace grows stronger and stronger. At
   last He will present us faultless before His Presence with exceedingly
   great joy. We preach emancipation for the slaves of sin! You that are
   worried and wearied with temptation shall be saved from yielding to it!
   You that cry out by reason of indwelling sin shall receive salvation
   from the power of evil! The living and holy seed within you cannot sin
   because it is born of God and its growing force shall, at last, hold
   your every thought in captivity to Christ!

   It is a blessed salvation--an all-round salvation for the past, for the
   present and for the future. This is what we are sent to testify! We
   could not have a more full or a more Divine message! We could not have
   a grander blessing to present to the sons of men than that of being
   saved! In the grand completeness of it, it comprehends Heaven itself
   and all its bliss. "You shall be saved" reaches from the gates of Hell
   to God's own Throne and lifts the sinner up from between the jaws of

   death to the white-robed orchestra of the New Jerusalem! Though now an
   heir of wrath even as others, the believing sinner shall be made like
   unto the First-Born, even to the Lord Jesus Christ who is bringing many
   sons unto Glory.

   I begin, then, with the proclamation of salvation for the lost. Hear
   it, you unworthy ones! Hear it, you who cannot say a good word on your
   own account! Hear it and catch at this hope. If God the Spirit will
   bless the Word, according to His gracious habit, you mourning and heavy
   laden ones will joyfully cry, "There is a message for us in this text!"
   Then you will lean forward lest you should lose a word of the discourse
   and your minds will lean forward as well as your bodies. Your hearts
   will lie open like plowed land ready for the seed, ready for the
   showers. You will be responsive to the voice of mercy, even as the echo
   to the horn. By repentance and faith you will answer to the call of
   Divine Love!

   II. I now advance to my second point, which is this--SAVING FAITH
   CONCERNS ITSELF ONLY ABOUT JESUS, HIMSELF. I will read to you the
   connection of my text. "But the righteousness which is of faith speaks
   on this wise, Say not in your heart, Who shall ascend into Heaven?
   (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, Who shall descend into
   the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead). But what
   says it? The word is near you, even in your mouth, and in your heart:
   that is, the word of faith, which we preach; that if you shall confess
   with your mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in your heart that God
   has raised Him from the dead you shall be saved."

   True faith, the faith which saves, concerns itself wholly about the
   glorious Person and gracious work of Him whom God raised from the dead!
   Within the compass of Bethlehem, Gethsemane and the right hand of the
   Father lies the sphere of the sinner's faith. Faith is where Jesus is
   and she asks no wider range. Unbelief is speculative, but faith deals
   with facts. Unbelief says, "Who shall ascend into Heaven? Who shall
   descend into the abyss?" Unbelief is always starting questions--she is
   so dissatisfied with the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ that she demands
   another Savior, or no Savior, or 50 Saviors! She does not know what she
   wants! Her cry is, "Who will show us any good? Who in the heavens, who
   in the depths, who anywhere?"

   Unbelief has a very attentive ear to every new notion. This man has a
   novel doctrine, another has just ferreted out a fresh idea and unbelief
   goes helter-skelter this way and that. She hears voices crying, "Lo
   here, and lo there!" and, like a silly bird, she is lured and snared!
   She flies away to the hills, or plunges into the abyss to find the
   promised good. At one time she is aloft in delusion, at another she is
   beneath in despair--pessimism, or optimism, or some other "ism" will
   charm her--but she will not keep to the Truth of God.

   Faith is of another mind--she takes her stand where Christ is and she
   says, "If salvation is anywhere it is in Him. Is it not written, 'Look
   unto Me, and be you saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and
   there is none else'?" She bows before Jesus at Bethlehem and sees hope
   in His Incarnation. She traverses the fields of Judea with Jesus and
   sees hope in the holy, tender-hearted Lover of souls. She goes with Him
   to Gethsemane and views Him covered with the bloody sweat and begins to
   read her pardon there. She sees Him die upon the accursed tree and she
   says, "My life is here. If ever I am saved, I must be saved here." She
   sees Jesus in the tomb. She watches and beholds Him rise again--and as
   He rises, she claps her hands with delight, for she sees hope and
   immortality in Him! She looks up yonder to the Throne of the Most
   High--she sees Jesus interceding for transgressors that the Lord God
   may dwell among them! She understands that He is carrying on a noble
   enterprise which will soon be brought forth to victory and she glories
   in her Lord--her All--

   "All our immortal hopes are laid In You, our Surety and our Head! Your
   Cross, Your Cradle and Your Throne, Are big with glories yet unknown."

   Faith's resolve is to look only to Jesus, her God, for she is persuaded
   that beside Him there is none else. You are saved, my dear Friend, when
   you come to that point! When Jesus is all your salvation and all your
   desire, the work of Grace has begun in you. Jesus is your Boaz and you
   have come to the right conclusion about Him when you are resolved never
   to glean in any other field! You will be satisfied, now that you have
   determined to drink waters only from His fountain and to be satisfied
   only from His table.

   The faith which saves is not dreamy. Do you not notice how unbelief,
   here, dreams of skies and seas, and all immeasurable things? "Who shall
   ascend into Heaven?" What a picture! Imagination is at work--she
   beholds her mighty merits scaling the everlasting ramparts--she dotes
   upon her dream! If she hears a discourse, she only cares for the
   oratory of it. "What a sermon that man preached! How full of poetry!"
   She must have something high and lofty--nothing common will suit her.
   At another time, when she is heavy, her dream is of a wretched diver
   into the deep seas of anguish plunging

   down into the abyss to find the pearl of peace. Imagination raises in
   the soul despondency, despair, frenzy and madness-- and many foolish
   ones hope to find a ransom in these. Faith has done with these Arabian
   nights, for she has done with Sinai. She dreams no more, for perfectly
   healthy men have done away with dreams! With open eyes, faith reads
   facts. She dwells on what Jesus did and suffered. She reflects that He
   died, He rose again and is gone into Glory. Facts, not fiction, are her
   solace. She accepts matters of history, not figments of imagination.
   Something actually done, something really accomplished, faith requires
   and accepts. The weight of sin is not to be borne by theories--the
   enormous load of human guilt is not to be sustained by speculations.
   Only actual transactions can meet our dire necessity! And these we find
   in Jesus Christ, the Revelation of God.

   I know that I am talking to some of you who are as full of fancies as
   an egg is full of meat and I wish I could get you out of them. All
   sorts of whims and notions please your idle brains. You have followed
   after them as a dog follows a false scent, but you have come upon
   nothing yet--and you never will come upon anything till you accept
   those sure, well-witnessed facts which make up the life of the Lord
   Jesus--especially His Resurrection, which is the best assured fact in
   human history! We this day, in the name of God Most High, the Spirit of
   God being with us, proclaim salvation by a risen Savior and we beseech
   you to believe the Truth of what we say, that you may thereby live!

   Unbelief really puts a sad slur upon Christ. She talks about going up
   to Heaven, but supposes it is needed that somebody should ascend to
   Heaven--that would imply that Jesus had never come down from there to
   reveal the Father! She talks of descending into the abyss, as if Christ
   had never come up from the dead! The fact is, all that can be done has
   been done! Why do you need to do what is already done? All that can be
   felt has been felt--why do you need to feel it? "It is finished," said
   Christ--why do you strive to do it over again? Look how that fable of
   the church of Rome concerning her unbloody sacrifice of the "mass"
   insults the one great sacrifice of Calvary and sets it on one side!
   And, even so, all those works, feelings, preparations and so forth
   which you would add to the finished work of Christ really push Christ
   out!

   You need to feel--are not His feelings enough? You need to work--are
   not His works enough? Trust in self is a disloyal attempt upon the
   crown rights of the Redeemer! All those doings, willings and feelings
   are a setting up of self salvation. It is all a mistake! Oh that you
   would give up those mistakes and hear that your soul may live,
   believing what you hear and accepting it in your very soul! I will not,
   however, stay longer to describe this faith by contrast, but we will
   penetrate a stage further into the center of the text.

   III. The third point of our discourse is that SAVING FAITH HAS A
   CONFESSION TO MAKE--"If you shall confess with your mouth the Lord
   Jesus, and shall believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the
   dead, you shall be saved." Observe here, that this confession is put
   first. I suppose it is because Paul was quoting from the 30th Chapter
   of the Book of Deuteronomy and he had, of course, to place the words as
   Moses arranged them in the passage quoted. Yet there must be other
   reasons. Possibly the confession of the Lord Jesus unto salvation is
   put first because it is most likely to be forgotten. We have plenty of
   preaching of, "Believe and live," and I do not condemn it. But still,
   strictly speaking, it is incomplete. When our Lord bade His servants go
   forth and preach, He said--"He that believes and is baptized shall be
   saved."

   Now Baptism is the confession of our faith. Constantly in Scripture the
   faith to which salvation is promised is a faith which makes a
   confession of itself. It is never a dumb faith--it is a faith that
   speaks, a faith which acknowledges its existence--yes, a faith which
   acknowledges the Lord in the teeth of adversaries! We must confess
   Christ before men, or we may not believe that we have the faith of
   God's elect. The Apostle mentions it first, here, because it is so
   often put into the background and this is a great cause of stumbling.
   He mentions it first, also, because it is first as far as our fellow
   creatures are concerned. How can I know what you believe in your heart?
   I must first hear what you confess with your mouth! An inquirer comes
   to me to join the Church, or to be acknowledged as a Christian. I
   cannot begin with his heart--I have no means of reading his thoughts. I
   say to him, "Speak, that I may see you." If he confesses with his mouth
   the Lord Jesus Christ, he has done what, in the order of practical
   religion, must lead the way towards friend and foe.

   Let me add that, in a certain sense, confession with the mouth is
   actually first in the man. Many persons never receive in their hearts
   the comfort of Christ's Resurrection because they have never, with
   their mouth, confessed the Lord Jesus as their Savior and Master. The
   Lord will not give to you the warmth of faith which cheers the heart
   unless you are willing to yield to Him the obedience of faith by taking
   up your cross and coming out and confessing Him! Their are numbers of
   Christians--Christians, I mean, in the judgment of charity--who never
   enter into the joy of their Lord because

   they have never obeyed His rule, nor acknowledged His name before men.
   The Spirit of God, as a Comforter, has not borne His witness with their
   spirit, that they are the children of God, because they have never
   borne their witness to the Lord Jesus. The comfort of believing with
   the heart is hindered by the absence of confession with the mouth!

   Will you listen to this, some of you who cry, "We desire to be saved?"
   I dare not preach to you a backstairs Gospel for cowards--a secret
   green-lane of salvation which winds about through the woods so that you
   can travel it without being seen! No--at my Lord's bidding, I preach to
   you an open King's Highway which the fearful and the unbelieving refuse
   to go! And yet there is only this one way to the Kingdom! We must not
   attempt to be moonlighters. Let us follow Jesus in broad daylight.
   Jesus says, "He that confesses Me before men, him will I confess before
   My Father which is in Heaven; but he that denies Me"--which, in that
   connection, means he that does not confess Him--"he that denies Me
   before men, him will I deny before My Father which is in Heaven." Hear,
   I pray you, the text--"If you shall confess with your mouth the Lord
   Jesus, and shall believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the
   dead, you shall be saved."

   Notice what it is that is to be confessed--"The Lord Jesus." By which I
   gather that it is essential to salvation that a man confess the Deity
   of Christ. I would not be uncharitable to anybody, but I never can, as
   a believer in the Word of God, expect to see a man saved who denies the
   Godhead of his Savior! He puts himself out of court. He rejects that
   part of the Redeemer's Character which is essential to His being a
   Savior! If any man would be saved, he must believe that Jesus Christ is
   both Lord and God.

   Again, you must confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, that is, Ruler and
   Master. You must cheerfully become His disciple, follower, and servant.
   You must confess--"He is my Master, He is my Lord, I intend to be a
   soldier under Him. He shall be to me Leader and Commander. God has made
   Him such and I accept Him as such."

   We are to confess the Lord Jesus, too. That means the Savior, who has
   come to save His people from their sins. If you would be saved by Him,
   you must acknowledge Him as the Messiah, sent of God, to lead His
   people out of their ruin into eternal salvation. The Lord commands you
   to confess Him in that Character and promises to such a believing
   confessor that he shall be saved! Without such open confession there is
   no promise.

   Note how very definite is the confession. Somebody says, "Well, I will
   believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and I will try and act up to my
   faith." Do so, by all means! But this will not fulfill the demand of
   the text. It is true, your life is a confession and the more pure it
   is, the more excellent it is as a profession. Still, the doing of one
   duty does not exempt us from another! The confession required by the
   text is expressly said to be "withyour mouth." I dare not alter the
   Scripture. Do not blame me--I did not write the words! There they
   are--"If you shall with your mouth confess the Lord Jesus." You are
   vocally to acknowledge Jesus. You are definitely and distinctly to say
   with your tongue, your mouth, your lips that He is your Lord and
   Savior. It is not to be an inference drawn in silence from your life,
   but a declared statement of the mouth. What other meaning can my text
   have but that? If the Apostle meant that we were to obey the Lord Jesus
   Christ and might render no other confession, he would have said so. Why
   did he say, "with your mouth," if he did not require a spoken
   confession? The mode of confession to which the promise of salvation is
   given is clearly set forth in these words, "you shall confess with your
   mouth."

   Why is this? asks one. Well, first, because I believe that confession
   with the mouth is a sort of breaking away from the world. When a men
   says with his mouth, "I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ," it is as
   good as saying to the world, "I have done with you." Those round about
   will conclude that the man has broken loose from his old habits and has
   come right away from the unbelieving world. When the man with the
   withered arm was in the synagogue, our Lord did not take him into the
   corner and heal him, but He said, "Stand forth." He stood right out in
   the middle of the congregation and when he stood forth, then the Lord
   said, "Stretch forth your hand"--and he did so. Dear Seeker, you must
   stand out! You must come away from your old companions and sinful
   connections and say, "I am for Christ. He is my Savior and I am His
   follower." He requires this confession of you that you may thus be cut
   loose from the world which lies in the Wicked

   One.

   This confession is also a way of forming a visible union with the Lord
   Jesus. When a man, with his mouth, confesses Christ, he does, as it
   were, take sides with Jesus and His cause on the earth--and this is a
   very important thing. Besides, this confession is of much use to the
   outside world as a witness reproving their ungodliness and inviting
   them to a better mind. The confessions of the saved are often the means
   of saving others. We are not fully saved till we earnestly wish to save
   others. If any man says, "If I can get to Heaven all by myself I shall
   be satisfied," he has not taken the first step to

   Heaven--assuredly he has not a germ of Heaven within him! The first
   thing that must be slain within us, if we are to dwell with God, is our
   selfishness! Even our concern for our own salvation must yet be
   overridden by a concern for the spread of the Redeemer's Kingdom and a
   desire for the salvation of others. No man is truly sanctified till it
   is so. Therefore you must confess your Lord with your mouth, to prove
   your sacrifice of self.

   Ah, my Friends! This is a hard saying to some of you. You have good
   points about you, but you do not let your light shine before men as
   your Lord commands you. Your candle is under a bushel--it cannot burn
   well in so confined a space! It is apt to make smoke and blackness.
   Bring it out at once! If it is God's own fire and you put it under a
   bed to hide it, it will soon set the bed on a blaze! Mischief comes of
   suppressed Truth. It can never be right to hide away the Light of God.
   Come out, you cowards! Come out, you tremblers! My Master bids me act
   as enlisting sergeant--I set up the banner and invite you to rally to
   it! If you love Christ, confess Him! If you would have the salvation of
   Christ, take up the Cross of Christ and follow Him wherever He goes.
   Have I gone an inch beyond my text? I am sure I have not.

   IV. Time would fail me if I were to dwell longer on this point,
   important as it is. Let us now notice, in the fourth place, that FAITH
   HAS A GREAT COMFORT TO ENJOY. She has truth of which she must speak
   with her mouth, but she has also facts which she ponders in her heart.
   The text says, "With your heart believe that God has raised Him from
   the dead." This does not only mean that you believe the fact that the
   Lord Jesus has been raised from the dead--I suppose everybody here
   believes in our Lord's Resurrection--but we must so believe it that it
   warms and comforts our heart.

   Why, my dear Brothers and Sisters, is salvation promised here
   especially to a belief with the heart that God has raised Christ from
   the dead? Is not our faith to be fixed upon the death of Christ rather
   than upon the Resurrection of Christ? I answer, it is probably here
   stated because in the Resurrection of our Lord all the rest of His
   history is implied and included. If He was raised from the dead, then
   He must have died. If He died, then He must have been a Man and have
   been born into the world. In mentioning that God raised our Lord from
   the dead, the Apostle has really mentioned all the great redeeming work
   of Jesus, since all the other items are involved in it.

   Moreover, the raising from the dead is not only inclusive of the rest,
   but confirmatory of the whole. By raising Him from the dead, the Father
   gave confirmation of the mission of His Son. He set His seal upon His
   Person as Divine, upon His office as commissioned of God to be the
   Messiah, upon His life as well-pleasing and upon His death as being
   accepted of God for full atonement. Therefore the Most High raised Him
   from the dead that He might be declared to be the Son of God with power
   and that, in and through Him, Believers might be justified. We would
   not have had firm ground for our faith in Jesus if the seal of
   Resurrection had not been set to His work. But now, when we believe in
   the seal, we believe, also, in that which is sealed. His Resurrection
   is the seal of all that our Lord is and does--and believing in this
   with our heart, we believe in that which brings salvation!

   Moreover, the Resurrection of Christ from the dead is one of the chief
   of those Truths of God which are to be believed in the heart, because
   it is the source of the heart's best comfort. "Look," says the
   Believer, "I am, by nature, a poor lost sinner, but I shall not be
   destroyed forever, for Jesus my Savior and Surety has been raised from
   the dead! My salvation lies in Him. I am delivered from the dead in
   Him. I see my justification in His Resurrection. Because Jesus lives, I
   have an unfailing Friend to whom I fly. Because God raised Him from the
   dead and so bore witness that He accepted Him, therefore I know that I
   am accepted in Him. If I lay hold upon that righteousness which God has
   accepted, I am accepted in it."

   O dear Friends, when a sinner knows that his salvation does not lie in
   himself at all, but wholly in Christ, then he discovers the great
   secret! The point is to see Jesus dying for our sins and to see
   ourselves dead in Him. To see Jesus risen from the grave and ourselves
   risen in Him. To see Jesus accepted of God and ourselves, therefore,
   accepted in Him. The Lord Jesus is the object of our trust--not
   ourselves. We are in Him and as He is, so are we. We shall rise to
   Glory because He rose to Glory and we shall dwell in Heaven because He
   dwells in Heaven! Union to Christ is the foundation of hope. Oh, to
   live in Christ!

   The difficulty is to wrench you away from yourselves--this needs a
   miracle of Grace. I know where you are--you are saying, "I do not feel;
   I cannot do," etc. Sirs, this is not the point! The ground of salvation
   is in Jesus and not in the sinner! To see salvation, we must mark what
   Christ accomplished and especially we must mark in our heart that the
   Lord Jesus was raised from the dead--and there we shall be comforted
   because the Resurrection of the Savior is the assurance

   of the completion of His atoning work. He who would have sure hope must
   fix his faith upon Jesus living, Jesus crucified, Jesus risen, Jesus
   ascended, Jesus soon to come! If we believe and trust in these facts,
   we shall be saved--so says the text. Put the two things together--you
   confess Jesus to be Lord and Christ and you, also, with all your heart,
   trust in Jesus as risen from the dead--well, then, you shall be saved!

   How this ought to cheer those of you who are near despair! How it
   should encourage those who lie at death's door! You groan out, "I never
   can be saved." Why not? If Christ died and rose again, what then? If
   this is the ground of salvation and you believe it to be the fact, hold
   on to it and never let it go! Never let your heart doubt the
   well-witnessed fact that God has raised Jesus from the dead! Plead the
   promise of our text in life and, in the dying hour! Cry, "O Lord, You
   have said that if with my mouth I confess the Lord Jesus, and with my
   heart believe that You have raised Him from the dead, I shall be saved.
   Lord, I make the confession and my heart also believes! I beseech You,
   therefore, to do as You have said and save me." This plea can never
   fail!

   V. So now I finish with the truth that FAITH HAS A SURE PROMISE TO REST
   UPON. "If you believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the
   dead, you shall be saved."

   "YOU"--Who is that? This is yourself! It is the man who, with his
   mouth, confesses and with his heart believes. Dear Friend, it means
   you! John, Thomas, Sarah, Jane, where are you? Did I hear you cry, "I
   have no merits of my own! I have no good feelings! I have nothing of my
   own that I can rejoice in! I feel myself to be utterly lost!"? Listen!
   "If you shall, with your mouth, confess the Lord Jesus and shall
   believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall
   be saved." The singular pronoun, "you," sets its mark upon you! Put
   your ear to this telephone--a voice speaks to you. God out of Heaven is
   speaking straight down the telephone into your ear--"you shall be
   saved."

   "But I am almost damned." If you confess and believe, "you shall be
   saved." "Alas! I must give up in despair." Yet the promise is to the
   contrary. "But I am the blackest sinner out of Hell." Still the promise
   is to you--"Ifyou shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and
   shall believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you
   shall be saved." I cannot come down from my pulpit and run round to all
   the pews, but, oh, I wish I could look each one of you in the face and
   press your hand and say, "Dear Friend, the text says, 'you.'" Brother,
   Sister, it speaks to you! Youth, child, or gray-headed old man--whoever
   you may be--the text says that if you believe, "you shall be saved."

   Observe the total absence of, "ifs," and, "buts." It is not "you may be
   saved," but, "you shall be saved." When God the Holy Spirit says,
   "shall," there is solidity in it! But you say, "I am afraid." Afraid of
   what? Dare you question the truthfulness of God? When God says,
   "shall," what can you be afraid of? If I were to say, "shall," you
   would receive it as a proof of my fixed intent, but you would know that
   there is only my poor puny arm to carry it out. But when God says,
   "shall," Omnipotence is engaged! He that made Heaven and earth and
   shakes them with His nod--He who creates and destroys--HE says,
   "shall," and who can stand against His will? Devils in Hell go howling
   back to their dens when they hear even the whisper of a, "shall," from
   God!

   There is a sort of passiveness about the expression, "be saved." The
   text does not speak about what you are going to do, but about something
   that is to be done to you--"You shall be saved." "I cannot save
   myself--who said you could? Who asked you to? You can, with your mouth,
   confess the Lord Jesus--do that straight away. You can believe in your
   heart that God has raised Him from the dead. If you are the man I am
   looking for, you are doing so now. You say, "Oh yes, I believe it with
   all my heart; my hope lies in Jesus." Then you shall be saved! The
   power that is needed to deliver you from your sinfulness, the Grace
   that is needed to wash you from your guilt, the blood that is needed to
   cleanse you form your filthiness is all ready--and out of Glory the
   Lord Jesus declares, "you shall be saved."

   There never was, and there never will be a man who, with his mouth
   confessed the Lord Jesus and with his heart believed that God raised
   Him from the dead, who was not saved. Among all the multitudes that
   sink to Hell, there is no confessing Believer and no believing
   confessor! I dare not part the confession and the faith, for God has
   joined them together. The mouth and the heart are equally necessary to
   a living body and a living soul. Open confession and secret
   belief--these together make up the casting of yourself upon the Lord
   Jesus! The full surrender to the Savior--that is the great saving act.
   Do you cast yourself, sink or swim, on what Jesus has done? Then you
   shall be saved, otherwise I am a liar and, what is far worse, this Holy
   Book is a liar, too! And the Spirit of God has borne false witness.
   This can never be! I have no hope, this morning, but what is compassed
   in this verse. With my mouth I do again confess the Lord Jesus, for I

   believe Him to be very God of very God, my Master, my All. Moreover, in
   my heart I do verily and assuredly believe that God raised Him from the
   dead and I am glad of it! It comforts and joys me--

   "He lives, the great Redeemer lives!

   What joy the blessed assurance gives!" I shall be saved, I know I
   shall! I dare not doubt it because God's Word plainly says so!

   I have the same confidence concerning the poorest old woman in this
   house as I have about myself. If she confesses and believes, she is
   saved as I am. The most wicked ruffians and most wanton harlots, if
   they will do as the text directs, shall also be saved. This Gospel is
   not denied to the vilest of the vile. O my Friend, it is not denied to
   you! This is the ship which has carried thousands to Heaven. We who go
   on board shall get to Heaven by it. If it could go down, we should all
   sink together, but as it floats safely, we will all sail together to
   the Fair Havens. There is no second vessel on this line and there is no
   other line! This one chartered boat of salvation by a confessing faith
   now lies at the wharf. Come on board! Come on board at once! God help
   you to come on board at this very moment, for Jesus Christ's sake!
   Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Zealous, But Wrong

   (No. 1899)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israelis that they
   might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God,
   but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God's
   righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness,
   have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God." Romans
   10:1,2,3.

   WE ought to have an intense longing for the salvation of all sorts of
   men and especially for those, if there are any, that treat us badly. We
   should never wish them ill, not for a moment, but in proportion to
   their malice should be our intense desire for their good. Israel had
   persecuted Paul everywhere with the most bitter imaginable hate. When
   he addressed them in their synagogues, they rushed upon him in their
   fury. When he left them alone and preached quietly to the Gentiles,
   they made a mob, dragged him before the magistrates, charged him with
   causing a tumult and either stoned him or beat him with rods. He was
   "an Israelite, indeed," but his people regarded him as a turncoat,
   indeed, because he had become a Christian! Mad as they were against all
   Christians, they had a special spite and fury against the apostate
   Pharisee. Paul's only reply to all their infuriated malice is this
   gentle assertion--"Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for
   Israel is that they might be saved."

   Brethren, let us pray for men that they may be saved! Simple as the
   statement is, I feel sure that we shall see more conversions when more
   people pray for conversions. If, as we went about the streets, we made
   a rule that whenever we heard a man swear, we would pray that he might
   be saved, might we not hope to see a great many more saved? If,
   whenever we saw a case of special sin, or read of it in the newspaper,
   we were to make it a habit always to offer our heart's desire and
   prayer for such offenders that they might be saved, I cannot tell what
   countless blessings would come from God's right hand.

   I would bring before you one peculiar class of persons whose conversion
   some of us should very earnestly pray for. They are the kind of people
   who are here described by the Apostle--Israelites--religious people,
   intensely religious in their way, although that way is not the way of
   the Truth of God. They have a zeal for God, but not according to
   knowledge. They are righteous people--self-righteous people--people
   that have done no ill, but, on the contrary, have labored to do a great
   deal of good. They are running and running well, but they are not
   running on the right road. They are laboring and laboring hard, but
   they are not laboring in the right style. And so they will miss their
   reward. Many of these people are around us and very admirable people
   they are in many ways, but their condition causes us the utmost
   anxiety. There are a few such persons in this present congregation--and
   though they are not so numerous among us as in many other quarters, yet
   they have a peculiar place in our affectionate regard. We esteem them
   so highly that we would be shocked and grieved that one single person
   of their character should perish. I say most solemnly, "My heart's
   desire and prayer for such is that they might be saved; for I bear them
   record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge."

   Bear with me at this time while I talk about these people. If you do
   not belong to this order of minds yourselves, I am glad of it. Pray for
   them if you, yourselves, are saved. If you know any such, keep on
   mentioning them to God in prayer, while I am preaching. Use the next
   half-hour as a time of quiet pleading with God about individuals of
   whom you will be reminded while I am talking. Say, "Lord, bless her,"
   or, "Lord, bless him." If you are not one of those at whom I shall be
   specially aiming, then help me with your prayers that this sermon may
   be clothed with power by the Holy Spirit!

   I. And first, why ARE WE SPECIALLY CONCERNED FOR THESE PEOPLE? The
   answer is, "Because they are so zealous." They have a zeal of God. I
   feel right glad to meet with a zealous man, nowadays, for zeal for God
   has become a rare quality in our land. You see plenty of zeal where
   politics are concerned. Fashion, art, society and literature--each one
   evokes zeal of a certain kind, but we are not overdone with those who
   are zealous in the matter of religion! We seem to be pretty nearly gone
   to sleep as to essentials of creed and worship. Who is zealous? Who
   burns with holy ardor? Who is consumed with sacred enthusiasm? If
   anybody comes to be a little zealous above others, he is straightway
   condemned. The man of fervent spirit is laughed at as "a hot
   Gospeller." He is called a fanatic and great efforts are made to put
   him down. I fear that both the wise and the foolish virgins are going
   to sleep at this present time. There is a dullness in the religious
   world, as if we had passed into a dull, thick, autumn fog. We need a
   great and general revival.

   Meanwhile, when we do meet with people who are zealous, we take an
   interest in them. Zealous at Church, zealous in their ceremonies,
   zealous in their belief of what they believe--however mistaken their
   zeal may be, there is something interesting about it. We like to
   associate with people who have hearts--not dry leather bottles out of
   which all the juice has gone--but those who have heart, soul, life,
   fire and go. I love to meet with those who believe in something and who
   work under the pressure of their belief--and give their strength to the
   carrying out of what they believe to be the will of God. It does seem a
   very great pity that any zeal should be wasted and that anyone full of
   zeal should yet miss his way. We fear that there are some who will do
   so. If you want to go to York, you may ride very fast, due south, but
   you will not get to York with all your speed! Unless you turn your rein
   towards the north, you may ride a thousand horses to death and never
   see the gates of the old city! It is of no use to be zealous if you are
   zealous in a wrong cause. But when we meet with any who are such, I say
   that they become peculiarly the object of a Christian's prayers. Pray
   for the zealous with all your hearts, for it is such a pity that one of
   them should go astray.

   Again, they should be especially the subject of our prayers because
   they may go so very wrong and may do much mischief to others. Those who
   have no life nor energy may easily ruin themselves, but they are not
   likely to harm others. Whereas a mistaken zealot is like a madman with
   a firebrand in his hand! Persons who are zealous and are under a
   mistake may do a great deal of mischief! What did those Scribes and
   Pharisees in Christ's day do? They were very zealous and, under the
   pressure of their zeal, they crucified the Lord of Glory! What did Saul
   do in his time? He was very zealous and, under the influence of his
   zeal, he dragged men and women to prison and compelled them to
   blaspheme. And when they were put to death he gave his voice against
   them. I do not doubt that many who burned the martyrs were quite as
   sincere in their faith as those whom they burned. In fact it must have
   taken an awful amount of sincerity in the case of some to have been
   able to believe that the cruelties which they practiced were really
   pleasing to God. We cannot doubt that they had such sincerity.

   Did not our Lord, Himself, say, "Yes, the time comes, that whoever
   kills you will think that he does God service"? Documents, written by
   men who stained their hands with the blood of Protestants prove that
   some of them had a right heart towards God. In their mistaken zeal for
   God, truth and church unity, they believed that they were crushing out
   a very deadly error and that the persons whom they sent to prison and
   to death were criminals that ought to be exterminated because they were
   destroyers of the souls of men.

   Take heed that none of you fall into a persecuting spirit through your
   zeal for the Gospel! A good woman may be intensely zealous and for that
   reason she may say, "I will not have a servant in my house who does not
   go to my place of worship." I have known landlords, wonderfully zealous
   for the faith, who have, therefore, turned every Dissenter out of their
   cottages and have refused to let one of their farms to a Nonconformist.
   I do not wonder at their conduct--if they are zealous and, at the same
   time, blind, they will naturally take to exterminating the children of
   God! Of course, in their zeal they feel as if they must root out error
   and schism. They will not have Nonconformity near them and so they get
   to work and, in their zeal, they hack right and left. They say strong
   things and bitter things--and then proceed to do cruel things--very
   cruel things--verily believing that, in all that they do, they are
   doing God a service, not thinking that they are violating the crown
   rights of God who alone is Lord of the consciences of men!

   They would not oppose the will of God if they knew it and yet they are
   doing so. They would not willingly grieve the hearts of those whom God
   loves and yet they do so when they are browbeating the humble cottager
   for his faith. They look upon the poor people who differ a little from
   them as being atrociously wrong and they consider it to be their duty
   to set their faces against them and so, under the influence of the zeal
   that moves them, which, in itself, is a good thing,

   they are led to do that which is sinful and unjust! Hence the Apostle,
   after he had felt the weight of the stones from the hands of the Jews,
   prayed that they might be saved, for if they were not saved, their zeal
   for God would continue to make murderers of them!

   Another reason why we long to see the zealous converted is
   this--because they would be so useful. The man that is desperately
   earnest in a wrong way, if you can but show him his error and teach him
   what is right, will be just as earnest in the right way! Oh, what
   splendid Christians some would make who are now such devotees of
   superstition! Despite their superstition, I look upon many High
   Churchmen with admiration. Up in the morning early, or at night late,
   ready to practice all kinds of mortifications--to give their very
   bodies to be burned and all their substance in alms, ready to offer
   prayers without number and to be obedient to rites without end--what
   more could external religion demand of mortal men? Oh, if we could get
   these to sit at Jesus' feet and leave the phylacteries and the
   broad-bordered garments-- and worship God in spirit--and have no
   confidence in the flesh--what grand people they would make!

   See what Paul himself was, when, counting all he had valued so dear to
   be but dung, he left it and began to preach salvation by Grace alone.
   While he flew over the world like a lightning flash and preached the
   Gospel as with a peal of thunder, he loved, he lived, he died for the
   Nazarene whom once, in his zeal, he had counted to be an impostor!
   Brethren, pray with all your might for zealous but mistaken persons who
   have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.

   Once more, we are bound to make these people the subject of specially
   earnest prayer because it is so difficult to convert them. It requires
   the power of God to convert anybody, really, but there seems to be a
   double manifestation of power in the conversion of a downright bigot
   when his bigotry is associated with dense ignorance and gross error.
   "Oh," he says, "I do that which is right. I am strict in my religion.
   My righteousness will save me." You cannot get him out of that. It is
   easier to get a sinner out of his sin than a self-righteous man out of
   his self-righteousness! Conceit of our own righteousness sticks to us
   as the skin to the flesh. Sooner may the leopard lose his spots than
   the proud man his self-righteousness. Oh, that righteousness of ours!
   We are so fond of it. Our pride hugs it. We do so like to think that we
   are good, that we are upright, that we are true, that we are right in
   the sight of God by nature!

   And though we are beaten out of it with many stripes, yet our tendency
   is always to return to it. Self-righteousness is bound up in the heart
   of a man as folly in the heart of a child. Though you crush a fool into
   a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet his self-righteous folly will
   not depart from him! He will still stick to it because, after all, he
   is a good fellow and deserves to be saved. We must, therefore, in a
   very special manner pray for such, seeing that self-righteousness is a
   deep ditch and it is hard to draw him out who has once fallen into it.
   Prejudice, of all other opponents, is one of the worst to overcome. The
   door is locked. You may knock as long as you like, but the man will not
   open it. He cannot! It is locked and he has thrown away the key! You
   may tell him, "You are wrong, good Friend," but he is so comfortably
   assured that he is right, that all your telling will only make him more
   angry at you for attempting to disturb his peace. O God! who but You
   can draw a man out of this miry clay of self-righteousness? Therefore
   do we cry to You, of Your great Grace, to do it!

   For these and many other reasons those who have a zeal for God, but not
   according to knowledge, must have a chief place in our importunate
   prayers.

   II. And secondly, WHAT IS IT THAT THESE PEOPLE ARE, ACCORDING TO OUR
   TEXT? These people will not like the text, nor yet like me for honestly
   explaining it. According to our text, it is very clear that these good
   people are ignorant. "For they being ignorant of God's righteousness,
   go about to establish their own righteousness." Ah, you may be brought
   up under the shadow of a church. You may sit all your life in a meeting
   house. You may hear the Gospel till you know every term and phrase by
   heart and yet you may be ignorant of the righteousness of God! This is
   not a very complimentary statement, but as it is made upon Inspiration,
   it behooves us to give earnest heed to it.

   Listen! There are many who are quite ignorant as to the natural
   righteousness of God's Character. They do not know how intensely He
   hates sin, how His anger burns against injustice and untruth. They have
   never conceived an idea of how pure He is, how infinitely holy. They
   have never been in sympathy with the angel's adoration so as to know
   what is meant by the celestial chant, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of
   Sabaoth." "You think," says God, "that I am altogether such a one as
   yourself--that if you are pleased with your righteousness, I must be
   pleased with it, too. And if your poor pride and stupefied conscience
   is satisfied, therefore your God must be satisfied, also." Those who
   are satisfied with their own holiness are ignorant of God's attribute
   of righteousness!

   Again, they are ignorant of the righteousness of the Law of God.
   Indeed, there is awful ignorance about that. You may hear the Ten
   Commandments read every Sabbath and I think that it is a good thing to
   have them read and a good thing to have them posted up where they can
   be read, but you will not know anything about them by merely reading
   them. There is a depth of meaning in those Commandments, of which
   self-righteous persons are ignorant. For instance, when they read, "You
   shall not commit adultery," does it strike most men's minds that even a
   lascivious look breaks that Commandment? Do they reflect that not only
   acts of fornication and uncleanness, but indecent words, thoughts and
   looks are forbidden by that Command? A man reads, "You shall not kill,"
   and he thinks to himself, "I never committed a murder. I can shake
   hands with that Commandment and sing a merry song under the gallows."
   But Christ says, "He that is angry with his brother, without a cause,
   is a murderer"--and ill-will is murder at bottom. Murder is but hate
   ripened into deed and, therefore, the least degree of hate is a
   violation of the Commandment, "You shall not kill."

   Who among us has ever measured the full compass of the great Law of
   God? Let me stretch out the line before you for a moment. "You shall
   love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and
   with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as
   yourself." Who among us has ever done that? The man who says, "I have
   kept the Law" is simply ignorant of the righteousness which the Law of
   God sets before us as the Divine requirement! Could we behold the Law
   in all its full-orbed majesty, we would as soon expect to hold the sun
   in the hollow of our right hand as to fulfill the Law in all its length
   and breadth!

   Further than this, dear Friends, a man that is self-righteous and hopes
   to get to Heaven by his works and his religion, is ignorant of God's
   righteous requirements with regard to his own heart. God requires not
   only that you should do that which is right, but that you should think
   that which is right, that you should love that which is right, yes, and
   that you should be that which is right! He desires His Truth in the
   inward parts and in the hidden part He would have us to know wisdom. If
   I could entirely govern my tongue, yet I might be guilty before God,
   even with that tongue, for there is such a thing as idle silence as
   well as idle speech! If it were possible to keep the hands right in all
   things, yet the heart might, all the while, be willing and anxious to
   move the hands wrong and, after all, it is the way of the heart which
   is the true gauge of the man's life. Unless you are clean through and
   through in your very inwards, in the core and center of your being, you
   have not reached to the righteous requirements of God. What do you say
   to this? Are not many grossly ignorant of this?

   And then, again, all persons who are self-righteous must surely be
   ignorant of God's righteousness in another sense, namely, they are
   ignorant that God has prepared a better righteousness for us. The Lord
   God has prepared for man a perfect and Divine righteousness, by which
   He justifies the ungodly! He has sent His own Son into the world, pure
   in heart and pure in life, to work out that righteousness! That Son of
   His has kept the Law in every point and, what is more, He has honored
   the Law by His death, whereby He vindicated its tarnished honor and
   gave Glory to the Law-Giver! God now says, "Sinner, I can make you
   righteous through Christ--righteous by imputation. I will impute to you
   what Jesus did for you. I will accept you on account of what He is and
   of what He did. He shall be your righteousness! He shall be made of God
   unto you, your righteousness."

   Now surely, if you say, "No, but I will have a righteousness of my
   own," why, Man, you must be ignorant of God's righteousness! Would God
   have taken the trouble to make another righteousness if you could have
   made one of your own? Is not Calvary, with all its griefs, a
   superfluity of naughtiness if men could be saved without it! The death
   of Christ upon the tree was an extravagance--a needless
   extravagance--if men can be saved without it! And if any man can be
   saved without Christ--saved by his own works and saved by the principle
   of the Law--then for him Christ died in vain! There was no need, in the
   first place, that Christ should have died for such a man--and to such a
   man Christ has died for nothing. If you are righteous, you have nothing
   to do with Christ, for He is a Savior of sinners. If you have a
   righteousness of your own, you are a rival to Christ! You are holding
   up your two-penny garment of rags and saying, "This is as good as the
   Divine robe of Christ's righteousness."

   Man, you are stitching together your poor fig leaves and you are
   saying, "This is garment enough for me. I need not to wear the livery
   of God, the garment of Christ." But those leaves will wither before the
   sun goes down and leave you, to your shame, naked! You are in
   opposition to Christ, you are an Antichrist--and your sin in setting up
   such a righteousness is, perhaps, greater than if you had lived in open
   sin! You are, at any rate, casting as much dishonor upon Christ and
   doing as much displeasure to God by this vain-glorious attempt to set
   up your own righteousness, as if you had gone

   about, like Pharaoh, to ask, "Who is the Lord that I should obey His
   voice?" It is only another form of the same pride! In the Egyptian king
   it takes one shape and in you it takes another. Therefore, beware!

   Brothers and Sisters, are you praying for these zealous but ignorant
   and vain-glorious people? Go on with your prayers. Now, in silence,
   cry, "Lord, of Your great mercy, be pleased to deliver them from their
   headstrong zeal! Give them light, that they may quit their ignorance
   and be no longer enemies to the Cross and Grace of our Lord Jesus

   Christ!"

   III. That brings me to my third point which is this--I have shown you
   why they should be prayed for. I have shown you that they are ignorant.
   Now I am going to show you WHAT THEY DO. According to the text they are
   going about to establish their own righteousness. I do not know whether
   I can give you the idea which this language suggests to my mind, but it
   is this--here is a kind of stuffed image, or, if you like, a statue,
   and they have set it up and they want it to stand. But it is so badly
   constructed that it tumbles down. So they set it up again and over it
   goes! In other words, they use all manner of plots and schemes to set
   up their righteousness upon its legs, but it repeatedly topples over.

   Another figure which may illustrate the expression is this. They have
   bad foundations for a house--and bad materials, bad mortar and they,
   themselves, are by no means good workmen. They have built up quite a
   height of wall to make a shelter for themselves, but it tumbles down.
   Never mind--they are very industrious--and so they set to work to put
   it up again. They are perseveringly determined, somehow or other, to
   build up a righteousness of their own. That is the meaning of this
   text. They go about to set up, to establish, to make it stand--their
   own righteousness--and it is such a crazy thing that it falls down of
   its own weight! And whenever it tumbles down, they set it up again.

   They go about to do it, that is, they invent all sorts of ways. They go
   to the ends of the earth to find another bit of stone that will just
   wedge in and help to settle the cornerstone. All their industry is
   spent in trying to set up this thing which is not worth a button when
   it is set up! Alas, that folly should be so desperately entrenched in
   the heart of man, that he will spend his whole life in a persevering
   attempt to insult his Maker by preparing a righteousness of his own,
   when his Maker has already worked out and brought in a righteousness
   perfect in every respect!

   While I am preaching about this, I am thinking of myself and smiling
   and yet mourning to think how, in the days of my ignorance, I, myself,
   tried this ridiculous pastime. The pictures which I shall paint will be
   drawn from my own personal experience. At first the man says, "I shall
   be saved, for I have kept the Law of God. What do I yet lack?" Now a
   very small hole will let enough light into the man's heart to force him
   to see that this pretence will not answer. No one of us has kept the
   Law of God! What says the Scripture? "They are all going out of the
   way. They are together become unprofitable; there is none that does
   good, no not one." You have only to read the Law over by the light of
   conscience and you must say to yourself, "I see that I cannot be saved
   by the perfect keeping of the Law, since I have already broken that
   Law."

   When driven from this foolish hope, the man readily sets up another. If
   he cannot work, then a man tries to feel-- and I know I tried to feel.
   Or else he cries, "I must join a bit of religion to my pure morals. I
   do not quite understand how the combination is to be made, but we have
   to maintain a reputation for righteousness and we must do it by hook or
   by crook. It is true that I have not kept the Law. Well, then, I will
   pray every morning and pray every night very regu-larly--and take a
   good long time over it, too--when I do not go to sleep, or when I do
   not wake up too late! And I will read so much of the Bible every
   day--surely that is a grand thing! And if I can get through the Bible
   in a certain time, that will score one, will it not? Then I shall
   regularly attend a place of worship and then, I think--well, I must be
   baptized, perhaps, or at any rate, confirmed, or I must go to the
   sacrament! And when I have done all this, do you not think it will come
   pretty square?"

   If a man's conscience is awake, it will not come square! Or, to go back
   to the old figure, the image will not stand upright--it will tumble
   over! After appearing to stand firm for a while, our poor wretched
   righteousness grows top-heavy, again, and over it goes. The man says,
   "No, I do not feel righteous after all! There is something wrong."

   Conscience begins to call out, "It will not do." Perhaps, the man is
   taken ill. He thinks that he is going to die and he says, "Alas, I
   could not die with so poor a hope as this! This boat would never carry
   me across the river Jordan. I can see that it leaks very terribly.
   There are a hundred points in which my hope utterly fails me. What
   shall I do?" Well, then, he must keep his wretched presence afloat,
   someway, and so he cries, "At length I must go in for something really
   good. I will give a lot of money away!"

   If he is a rich man, he says, "I will endow an almshouse. You see I
   need not give the money till I die. That will do very well. I had
   better keep it while I am alive and then leave it when I cannot keep
   it. Won't it be a splendid thing? And if I put a painted window in a
   church, surely that will go a long way! Or I will give a lump sum to a
   hospital." To build a bridge, or mend the common roads used to be the
   way in which a man who wanted to bid high for Heaven made his offers in
   olden times. Or else the monks and friars promised to sing him into
   Glory for the small consideration of 10,000 a year. And so men go into
   that line and seek salvation by purchase. And they hear about saints
   who fast. Well, then, they say, "Oh, I shall fast!" Then they say, "I
   have not prayed long enough. I must pray twice as long."

   According to the church to which he belongs, the zealous person becomes
   a determined partisan of his sect. Remember how Mr. Bunyan said that
   when he was a godless man, he could have kissed the earth on which the
   clergy walked and he thought that every nail in the church door was
   sacred? Among Dissenters, the man who is trying to save himself usually
   thinks that every practice of the little community with which he is
   united is infallibly correct. He has no real love to Christ and has no
   trust in Christ's righteousness, but how he will work at his favorite
   self-salvation! And you will have to work at it, Sirs, if you are going
   to Heaven by your works! To work your fingers to the bones is nothing!
   You might as well try to climb to the stars on a treadmill as to get to
   Heaven by your good works and, certainly, you might more easily sail
   from Liverpool to America on a sere leaf than ever get to Heaven by
   works and doings of your own! There is more needed than will ever come
   of yourself. You need a Savior! You must be born again from above. You
   need a salvation that shall be a gift of infinite charity, a blessing
   of the boundless mercy of the eternal God--NOTHING else will save you!

   But, oh, men will go about to set up their own righteousness--and I
   will tell you what some of them will do tonight! "Ah!" they will say,
   "quite right, Mr. Spurgeon. Quite right! I cannot bear that
   work-mongering and self-justification, but I hope that I shall be saved
   because I feel so deeply my sinnership and I groan so heavily under a
   sense of guilt!" You trust to that, do you? It is only another form of
   trusting to your own works! I must rout you out of your feelings, as
   well as out of your works. You may just as well trust in the one thing
   that comes of you, as in the other thing that comes of you. Your
   salvation lies absolutely outside of yourself, in the Person of the
   Lord Jesus Christ and not in what you do, but in what He is. If you add
   to that foundation one stick or stone of your own--thought, feeling, or
   work of your own--by way of trusting in it you have spoiled the
   salvation of Christ! It shall never be "Christ and Company." Therefore
   be sure that if Jesus is to save you, you must let Him do it and you
   must stand out of the way.

   "What? Am I not to work?" Oh, yes! Work as hard as you like, if He has
   saved you! But as to the salvation, itself, that is with Him. "But we
   are to work out our own salvation." Certainly you are, after He has
   worked it in you to will and to do of His own good pleasure! But you
   cannot work out of yourself what is not in yourself--and you cannot put
   it into yourself--the Lord Jesus must put it there for you and then you
   must, with diligence, work it out in your life and conversation. The
   inner and spiritual work is all His doing, from first to last.

   I know that you do not like this doctrine, Sir. You are sitting very
   uneasily and looking towards the door. I thought I saw you seize your
   cane just now. Have patience a few minutes longer. Suppose that you
   were to get to Heaven in your way, what would happen? I am afraid that
   sacred place would become more than a little mixed up. Whenever I get
   to Heaven, I will sing to the praise of the Glory of His Grace to whom
   I shall owe it all! When you get there, you cannot sing with me. You
   must have a new tune. You will throw up your cap and say, "I have
   managed it, after all!" This will lead to a very speedy contest and
   quarrel. You will glorify yourself and, depend upon it, sinners saved
   by Grace will glorify Christ! Our jealousy for His Glory will not allow
   us to tolerate you in the realms of the blessed! Our Lord is not going
   to have any discord in Heaven--we shall all sing His praises there, or
   never sing at all! There will be no divided praise and the strain shall
   be set to the tune of Salvation all of Grace. "Salvation to our God
   that sits upon the Throne, and unto the Lamb, forever and ever."

   IV. Lastly, dear people of God, are you praying about these zealous,
   mistaken people all this while? Let me entreat you to renew your
   supplications. Shall we stop a minute while you do? Remember that you,
   also, were once in the dark and that you foolishly hoped to be saved in
   the same proud and selfish manner which has such charms for them. Pray
   about them that the Lord will fetch them out of their
   self-righteousness--"O Lord, in Your infinite mercy, bring to Yourself
   and to Your dear Son, those earnest persons who have a zeal for You,
   but not according to knowledge! O You, who do great marvels, enlighten
   the darkness of those who are prejudiced against the day!"

   The fourth thing is, WHAT THEY WILL NOT DO. "Going about to establish
   their own righteousness, they have not submitted themselves unto the
   righteousness of God."

   "They have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God."
   Why, there are some that have not submitted even to hear it! Possibly,
   I address, tonight, one who never came here before and has always said,
   "No, I would not think of going to such a place." You are only one of a
   numerous band of people of that character. Our law does not judge any
   man before it hears him, but these people both judge and condemn the
   Gospel without giving it an hour's attention! If you speak to them
   about it, they are wrapped up in an idea of their own righteous
   perfectness and they really cannot endure to hear themselves talked to
   as if they were common sinners. Are they not good enough of themselves?
   What can you tell them better than they already know? They do not want
   to hear the Gospel! I think that I would recommend they, at any rate,
   hear what it is, because the next time they speak against it, they will
   speak with more knowledge. It is always a pity not to know even that
   which we most despise!

   Even contempt should have a rational foundation. It will not hurt you,
   Friend, to know. And yet there is such prejudice in the mind of some
   that they refuse to acquaint themselves with the Truths which God has
   revealed. "Sinners saved by Grace?" they say, "Salvation by faith? It
   is all very well for the commonalty, but it does not do for ladies and
   gentlemen like us. We were always so good." Very well, then. If that is
   really the case, you know there is a Heaven for the commonalty and, it
   is highly probable that you ladies and gentlemen are too good to go
   there! Where will you go? There is but one way to Heaven and that way
   is closed against the proud. And if you choose to be so proud, you will
   close it against yourself and we cannot help you.

   But we will pray--pray God that your prejudice may yield and that,
   tonight, and at other times, those who have a zeal for God, but not
   according to knowledge, may, at least be willing to hear what the
   Gospel is. How many have been brought to Christ in the old times by
   reading Martin Luther upon the Galatians? That is a book in a rough
   enough style. What sledge-hammer words Martin uses! Only the other day
   I met a man who came to me like one of the old Puritans and he said to
   me that he had traversed the line of the two covenants. He began to
   converse with me in that antique, majestic style which comes of Puritan
   theology. I thought--Bless the man! He has risen from the dead! He is
   one of Oliver Cromwell's gray Ironsides! He will be able to tell me of
   Naseby and Marston Moor!

   So I said to him, "Covenant and Law, where did you pick that up,
   Friend?" "Not at any church or chapel," he said. "There are none round
   about where I live who know anything at all about it. They are all in
   the dark together--dumb dogs that cannot bark." "How did you stumble on
   the true light?" I asked. The man replied, "In the good Providence of
   God I met with Master Martin Luther on the Galatians. I bought it for
   six-pence out of a box in front of a bookseller's shop." Oh, it was a
   good find for that man! Six-penny worth of salvation according to the
   judgment of men, but infinite riches according to the judgment of God!
   He had, indeed, found a jewel when he learned the truth of Salvation by
   Grace through faith! I recommend persons, whether they will read Martin
   Luther or any other author, to be especially careful to read the
   Epistle to the Galatians, itself. Paul hammers, there, against all hope
   of salvation by the Law and puts salvation on the basis of Grace, and
   Grace alone, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Still there are
   many who will not incline their ears and come to Christ--they will not
   even hear that their souls may live! Do not they deserve to die who are
   too proud to hearken to the Way of Life?

   And then there are others who, when they hear it, will not admit that
   they need it. "What, Sir? Must I go down on my knees? Must I confess
   that I am a sinner, a real sinner? Must I come before God as if I had
   been a criminal? Must I stand in the dock and plead guilty?" Yes, you
   must, or else you will never be saved. "They that are whole have no
   need of a physician, but they that are sick." Off with that helmet of
   obstinacy! Down with the plumes of pride! You must come to God on your
   bended knees, with a rope about your neck--as one who is only fit to
   die and be cast into Hell--for He will never save you on any other
   terms! He must extend to you the scepter of His absolutely Sovereign
   Grace and save you as an undeserving, ill-deserving, Hell-deserving
   sinner--or else you can never be saved at all! What do you say to this?
   Do you reply, "I will never submit to such a humiliation"? God will
   never alter His terms to please you. Some will not submit to accept
   salvation. It is freely offered, without money and without price, but
   men would like to pay for it at least with something and they turn upon
   their heels. They will not have it as a free gift!

   Again, there are others who will not submit to the spirit of it--to the
   influence of it, for you must know that the spirit of Free Grace is
   this--if God saves me for nothing, then I belong to Him forever and
   ever. If He forgives me every

   sin simply because I believe in Jesus, then I will hate every sin and
   flee from it. If He grants me forgiveness on no ground but that of His
   own absolute mercy and good pleasure--as He has put it, "I will have
   mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I
   will have compassion"--then I will love Him with all my heart, soul and
   strength till time shall be no more. Now, for the love I bear Him, I
   will lead a holy life. I will serve Him with every power of my being.
   The virtue I aimed at before, in my own strength, I will now ask for
   from His Holy Spirit. The goodness that I thought I had, but never had,
   I will seek to have as a gift of His Grace worked in me and I, because
   of His great goodness to me, will live to Him and will not, from this
   day on, serve myself or serve sin, but will serve Him who has bought me
   with His precious blood!

   Many will not submit to that, yet they can never be saved from sin
   unless they yield themselves as the blood-bought servants of Christ.
   Christ comes to save His people from their sins and from their sins He
   will save them! They shall no longer be in bondage to the powers of
   evil. The Lord Jesus accomplishes this salvation by freely forgiving
   them and then moving their hearts to such a love of Him that they
   become in love with everything that is pure and holy--and are filled
   with hatred of everything that is unjust, wrong and wicked--and their
   life becomes totally changed! What the principle of Law talked about
   doing, but never did, the principle of Grace actually does! It puts a
   new mainspring into the man and when the works within are right, then
   the hands outside soon move according to right rules.

   I most earnestly pray that many of you may submit to the righteousness
   of Christ. Yield yourselves up! Trust in Christ! Believe in Him who
   died for sinners! Take Him to be your Savior right now! Do not go to
   sleep till this is done, lest you wake up in the bottomless Pit!

   With my whole soul I offer the prayer of my text this night. And you,
   also, dear Friends, keep on praying! I ask all of you Christian people
   to insert a special petition into all your prayers and to keep it
   there--"O Lord, save by Your Grace those who have a zeal for You which
   is not according to knowledge! Grant that they may not go about to
   establish their own righteousness, but may submit themselves unto the
   righteousness of God!" Amen and Amen!
     __________________________________________________________________

Rejoice Evermore

   (No. 1900)

   A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, MAY 23, 1886,

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Rejoice evermore." 1 Thessalonians 5:16.

   THIS is a sunny precept. When we read it, we feel that the time of the
   singing of birds has come. That joy should be made a duty is a sure
   token of the blessedness of the New Covenant. Because Jesus has
   suffered, we are encouraged, commanded and enabled to rejoice. Only the
   Man of Sorrows and His chosen Apostles can teach for a precept such a
   word as this--"Rejoice evermore" Happy people who can be thus exhorted!
   We ought to rejoice that there is a command to rejoice! Glory be unto
   the God of happiness who bids His children be happy. While musing on
   this text, I seem carried in spirit to the green woods and their
   bowers. As in a dell, all blue with flowers, where the sun smiles down
   upon me through the half-born oak leaves, I sit down and hear the
   blessed birds of the air piping out their love-notes--their music says
   only this--"Rejoice evermore." All that I see, and hear, and feel
   surrounds me with garlands of delight, while the fairest of all the
   shepherds of Sharon sings to me this delicious pastoral--"Rejoice
   evermore" The very words have breathed spring into my soul and set my
   heart blossoming! Thus am I also made to be as a daffodil which long
   has hidden away among the clods, but now, at last, ventures to lift up
   her yellow lily and ring out her golden bell. Who can be sad, or
   silent, when the voice of the Beloved says, "Rejoice evermore"!

   Our Apostle speaks of rejoicing as a personal, present, permanent duty
   to be always carried out by the people of God. The Lord has not left it
   to our own option whether we will sorrow or rejoice, but He has pinned
   us down to it by positive injunction--"Rejoice evermore." He will have
   this cloth of gold spread over the whole field of life. He has laid
   down as first and last, beginning, middle and end--"Rejoice evermore."
   Some things are to be done at one time, some at another, but rejoicing
   is for all times, forever and forevermore, which, I suppose, is more
   than ever, if more can be! Fill life's sea with joy up to the high
   water mark. Spare not, stint not, when rejoicing is the order of the
   day. Run out to your fall tether, sweep your largest circle when you
   use the golden compasses of joy!

   Some things being once done are done with and you need not further
   meddle with them; but you have never done with rejoicing. "Rejoice
   evermore."

   Our text is set in the midst of many precepts. Notice how from the 14th
   verse, the Apostle packs together a number of duties of Christian
   ministers and Church members--one towards another. "We exhort you,
   Brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feeble-minded, support
   the weak, be patient toward all men." All these things are to be done
   in turn, according as occasion requires, but, "rejoice evermore." You
   have plenty to do, but this thing you have always to do. You shall
   never be able to fold your hands for lack of some holy task or other,
   but be not worried--be not fretted by what you have to do--on the
   contrary, take up the sacred duties with alacrity, welcoming each one
   of them and entering upon them with delight! Rejoice in each one,
   because you "rejoice evermore." You will have to warn the unruly and
   their rebellious tempers will, perhaps, irritate you. Or, if in
   patience you possess your soul, yet you may grow sad at having so
   melancholy a duty to perform, but be not troubled, even by the grief of
   injured love. Warn the unruly, but "rejoice evermore."

   Do not pause in the blessed service of rejoicing when you are called
   upon to comfort the feeble-minded. There is a danger that the
   feeble-minded may rob you of your comfort, but let it not be so. In
   attempting to lift them out of the waters you may, perhaps, be almost
   drowned, yourself--your deliverance will lie in the sweet words,
   "Rejoice evermore." You will lose your power both to warn the unruly
   and to comfort the feeble-minded if you lose your joy. The joy of the
   Lord will be your strength in all these matters. Therefore, "rejoice
   evermore." Close at your hand will lie the weak who

   need supporting and you may be half saying to yourselves, "We wish that
   all God's people were strong, that we might unitedly spend all our
   strength against the foe instead of having to use it at home for
   supporting our own weak soldiers." But be not dejected on that
   account--while you are supporting the weak, still, "rejoice evermore."
   Your rejoicing will be a great support to the faint--your ceasing to
   rejoice will be a terrible confirmation of their sorrow! Lend the
   feeble a hand, but do not stop your own singing! Does not a mother
   carry her baby and sing at the same time?

   As you turn about, you find all men gathering to hinder you, to grieve
   you, to slander you, or to make use of you for their base purposes. But
   be not grieved. Put up with your poor fellow creatures since the Lord
   puts up with you, but do not leave off rejoicing! As you are patient
   towards all men, let your patience have a flavor of joy in it. However
   great the provocations that you endure, still, "rejoice evermore." As
   it is written, "With all your sacrifices you shall offer salt," so let
   it be your settled purpose with every other duty to offer rejoicing. I
   am sure, Brothers, that we make a very great mistake if we get like
   Martha--cumbered with much serving--for that cumbering prevents our
   serving our Master well. He loves to see those who serve in His house
   of a cheerful countenance. He wants not slaves to Grace His Throne. He
   would have His children wait upon Him with a light in their faces which
   is the reflection of His own! He would have His joy fulfilled in them,
   that their joy may be full. It is His royal pleasure that His service
   should be delight, His worship, Heaven, His Presence, Glory! Let your
   hearts be sanctified, but let not your hearts be troubled. Amidst a
   thousand duties give not way to a single anxiety! While you are
   desirous to honor God in everything, yet be not overburdened, even,
   with the cares of His cause and service, lest you put forth the hand of
   Uzzah to stay the Ark of the Lord. The Lord forbade His priests to wear
   garments that caused sweat and He will not have any of us fret and
   worry about His cause so as to lose our rest in Himself. Wrestle for a
   blessing, but still "rejoice evermore."

   The command to rejoice is set in the midst of duties--it is put there
   to teach us how to perform them all.

   Also notice that our text comes just after a flavoring of trouble and
   bitterness. Read verse 15--"See that none render evil for evil unto any
   man." Children of God are apt to have evil rendered to them. They may
   have slanderous reports spread about them. They may be accused of
   things they never dreamed of. They may be cut to the heart by the
   ingratitude of those who ought to have been their friends, but still
   they are bid, "rejoice evermore." Even rejoice in the persecution and
   in the slander! "Blessed are you when men shall revile you, and
   persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely,
   for My sake. Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward
   in Heaven: for so persecuted they the Prophets which were before you."
   So says our Lord. "Rejoice," He says, "and be exceedingly glad."

   There is an expression in the Greek that never has been rendered into
   English, and never will be--agalliasthe. Old Trapp half puns upon the
   agalliasthe as he says, "dance a galliard." I do not know what a
   "galliard" was, but I suppose that it was some very joyous kind of
   dance. Certainly we know of no better way of translating our Lord's
   word than by--exult, or leap for joy. Even when your good name shall be
   tarnished by the malice of the wicked, then you are to leap for joy!
   When are you to be wretched? Surely despondency is excluded. If slander
   is to make us dance, when are we to fret? Suppose some other kind of
   trial should come upon you? You are still to rejoice in the Lord
   always. The dearest friend is dead--"rejoice evermore." The sweet babe
   is sickening, the darling of your household will be taken away--
   "rejoice evermore." Trade is ebbing out, prosperity is disappearing
   from you--you may even be brought to poverty-- but, "rejoice evermore."
   Your health is affected, your lungs are weak, your heart does not beat
   with regularity, very soon you may be sick unto death, but, "rejoice
   evermore." Shortly you must put off this tabernacle altogether! Tokens
   warn you that you must soon close your eyes in death, but, "rejoice
   evermore." There is no limit to the exhortation! It is always in
   season! Through fire and through water, through life and through death,
   "rejoice evermore."

   Now and then a commentator says that the command of our text must mean
   that we are to be in the habit of rejoicing, for there must necessarily
   be intervals in which we do not rejoice. It is to be "constant but
   intermittent." so one good man says. I do not know how that can be,
   though I know what he means. He means that it ought to be the general
   tenor of our life that we rejoice, yet he evidently feels that there
   must be black clouds, now and then, to vary the abiding sunshine. He
   warns us that there will be broken bits of road where as yet the steam
   roller has not forced in the granite. But that will not do as an
   interpretation of the text, for the Apostle expressly says, "Rejoice
   evermore"--that is, rejoice straight on and never leave off rejoicing!
   Whatever happens, rejoice! Come what may, rejoice! If the worst darkens
   to the worst--if the night lowers into a sevenfold midnight, yet,
   "rejoice evermore!" This carillon of celestial bells is to keep on
   ringing through the night as well as through the day. "Rejoice,
   rejoice, you saints of God at every time, in every place,

   and under every circumstance. Joy, joy, forever! Rejoice evermore. In
   the midst of a thousand duties, amid the surges of 10,000 trials, still
   rejoice." There is to be about the Christian a constancy ofjoy.

   I am bound to mention that among the curiosities of the Churches I have
   known many deeply spiritual Christian people who have been afraid to
   rejoice. Much genuine religion has been "sickened over with the pale
   cast of thought!" Some take such a view of religion that it is, to
   them, a sacred duty to be gloomy! They believe in the holiness of
   discontent, the sanctity of repining--and they recoil from grateful joy
   as if it were the devil in the form of an angel of light! One of the
   commandments of the saints of misery is, "Draw down the blinds on
   Sunday." Another is, "Never smile during a sermon--it is wicked." A
   third precept is, "Never rest yourself and be sure that you never let
   anybody else rest for an instant. Why should anybody be allowed a
   moment's quiet in a world so full of sin? Go through the world and
   impress people with the idea that it is an awful thing to live."

   I have known some very good people spoiled for practical
   usefulness--and spoiled as to being like the Lord Jesus Christ by their
   deeply laid conviction that it was wicked to be glad. Well do I
   remember an earnest Christian woman who saw me when I was first
   converted, full of the joy of the Lord and joyfully assured of my
   salvation in Christ Jesus. She seemed distressed at the sight of so
   much joy! She shook her head. She looked at me with that
   heavenly-minded pity which these good people usually lay by in store.
   It seemed to her a dreadful thing that so young a Christian should dare
   to know whom he had believed! If you had been a Christian a hundred
   years you might, perhaps, begin to think it possible that you were
   saved--but to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ straight away like a
   little child--and at once to rejoice in His salvation seemed to this
   dear old Christian woman to be an act of such shocking temerity that
   she could only shake her dear head and prognosticate all sorts of
   horrible things!

   Since then I have found a great many like she and when I have seen them
   shake their heads they have not shaken me half so much as she shook my
   heart on that first occasion! I know them, now, and I know that there
   is, after all, nothing in that shake of the head. The fact is that they
   ought to shake their heads about themselves for getting into so sad a
   state while this text stands on the sacred page, "Rejoice evermore." It
   cannot be a wise and prudent thing to neglect this plain precept of the
   Word of God! It cannot be an unsafe thing to do what we are commanded
   to do! It cannot be a wrong thing for a Believer to abide in that state
   of mind which is recommended by the Holy Spirit in words so plain and
   so unguarded, "Rejoice evermore."

   Oh, dear Friends, you may rejoice! God has laid no embargo upon
   rejoicing! He puts no restriction upon happiness. Do believe it that
   you are permitted to be happy! Do believe that there is no ordinance of
   God commanding you to be miserable. Turn this Book over and see if
   there is any precept that the Lord has given you in which He has said,
   "Groan in the Lord always, and again I say, groan." You may groan if
   you like. You have Christian liberty for that, but, at the same time,
   do believe that you have larger liberty to rejoice, for so it is put
   before you! He bids you rejoice and yet, again, He says "rejoice." Some
   of God's sheep dare not go into the Lord's own pasture. It is dark and
   thick with rich and luscious food--and into that field their Shepherd
   has already led them. Yet they dream that there is a gate and that gate
   is shut--and across it is written this word--"Presumption." They are
   afraid to feed where God has made the best grass to grow for them
   because they are afraid of being presumptuous! The fear is groundless,
   but painfully common.

   Oh that I could deliver the true Believer from this evil influence! If
   you are Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, everything that there is in
   Christ is yours! If you are resting in Jesus Christ, though you have
   only lately begun to trust in Him, the whole Covenant of Grace with all
   its infinite supplies belongs to you and you have the right to partake
   of that which Grace has provided! Jesus invites you to eat and drink
   abundantly. Beloved in the Lord, the only sin that you can commit at
   the banquet of love will be to deny yourselves! The feast is spread by
   royal hands--and royal bounty bids you come! Hold not back through
   shame or fear! Come and saturate your souls with goodness. "Eat you
   that which is good and let your soul delight itself in fatness," for so
   God permits you to do.

   But I go a step farther and that is, that it is a sin not to rejoice. I
   will not say it harshly--I should like to say it as softly and tenderly
   as it could be put--but it must be said and I must not take away from
   the force of it by my tenderness. If it is a command, "Rejoice
   evermore," then it is a breach of the command not to rejoice evermore!
   And what is a breach of a command? What is a neglect to obey a precept?
   Is it not a sin--a sin of shortcoming, though not of transgression?
   Beloved, why do your faces wear those gloomy colors? Why do you
   distrust? Why do you mourn? Why are you continually suspicious of the
   faithfulness of God? Why are you not rejoicing when there is God's Word
   for it, first permitting,

   and then commanding you? Come, you unhappy and dolorous professors,
   question yourselves rather than others! O you forlorn one, cease to
   judge those whose eyes flash with exultation!

   Next time that you meet with a rejoicing Christian, do not begin to
   chide him, but quietly chide yourself because you do not rejoice. As
   for you who are swift of foot, I hope that you will not say an unkind
   word of poor Mephibosheth who is lame in both his feet, for he is dear
   to David and he shall sit at David's table. But, on the other hand,
   Mephibosheth, in his lameness, must not grow bitter and censorious and
   find fault with Asahel who is fleet of foot as a young roe, or
   otherwise it may seem almost too ridiculous! No, no, Heavy-Heart, chide
   not the glad. Glad-Heart, deal not roughly with the sorrowful! Bear one
   another's burdens and share one another's joys! If there is any
   chiding, let it be the chiding of Little-Faith, sorrowfully bemoaning
   his own weakness of Grace. Oh that God would help us to be faithful to
   our own experiences--then we shall not criticize others, but judge
   ourselves. All this by way of introduction.

   And now, just for a minute or two, I desire to speak upon THE QUALITY
   OF THIS REJOICING which is commanded in our text. May the Holy Spirit
   enable me to set before you the select taste and special quality of a
   Believer's lifelong joy! "Rejoice evermore."

   Brothers and Sisters, this is not carnal rejoicing. If it were, it
   would be impossible to always keep it up. There is a joy of harvest,
   but where shall we find it in winter? There is a joy of wealth, but
   where is this joy when riches take to themselves wings and fly away?
   There is a joy of health, but that is not always with us, for the evil
   days come and the years of weakness and sorrow. There is a joy in
   having your children round about you. Sweet are domestic joys, but
   these do not last forever. At the house of the happiest, knocks the
   hand of death! No, if your joys spring from earthly fountains, those
   fountains may be dried up and then your joys are gone. If the
   foundation of a man's joy is anywhere on earth, it will be shaken, for
   there is a day coming when the whole earth shall shake and even now it
   is far from being a stable thing.

   Build not on the floods and what are outward circumstances but as waves
   of the changeful sea! No, Beloved, it cannot be carnal joy which is
   commanded here, since carnal joy in the nature of things cannot be
   forevermore. I know not that carnal joy is commanded anywhere. Men are
   permitted to rejoice in the things of this life, but that is the most
   that we can say. They are forbidden to rejoice too much in these
   things, for they are as honey, of which a man may soon eat till he is
   sickened. The joy which God commands is a joy in which it is impossible
   to go too far. It is a heavenly joy, based upon things which will last
   forever, or else we could not be bid to "rejoice evermore."

   Again, as this joy is not carnal, so I feel quite sure that it is not
   presumptuous. Some persons ought not to rejoice. Did not the Prophet
   Hosea say, "Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people, for you
   have departed from your God"? There are some persons who rejoice and it
   would be well if a faithful hand were to dash the cup from their lips!
   They have never fled to Christ for refuge--they have never been born
   again--they have never submitted themselves to the righteousness of God
   and yet they are at ease in Zion. Ah, wretched ease! Many are ignorant
   of their ruin, strangers to the remedy of Grace, strangers to the blood
   that bought redemption--and yet they rejoice in their own
   righteousness. They have a joy that has been accumulated through years
   of false profession, hypocritical formality and vain pretence. Such as
   these are not told to "rejoice evermore."

   There must be sound reasons for rejoicing, now, or there can be no
   reason for rejoicing always. If your joy will not bear looking at, have
   done with it! If, when you run with the footmen of common
   self-examinations in time of health, they weary you, what will you do
   when you contend with the black horsemen of dark thought in the hour of
   death? The joy that will abide forever is the joy to be sought after!
   But joy which a man cannot justify never ought to be thought of as
   enduring "evermore." Is your hope fixed on what Jesus did for sinners
   on the Cross? Are you really a partaker of the life that is in Him?
   Have you been begotten again unto a lively hope by the Resurrection of
   Jesus Christ from the dead? If so, it is safe for you to rejoice at
   once and it will be equally safe for you to "rejoice evermore!" Is it
   not clear that the rejoicing commanded in our text is not a
   presumptuous joy, or a carnal joy?

   Again, dear Friends, I feel bound to add that it must not be a
   fanatical joy. Certain religious people are of a restless, excitable
   turn and never feel good till they are half out of their minds. You
   would not wonder if their hair should stand bolt upright, like the
   quills of the fretful porcupine. They are in such a state of mind that
   they cry, "hallelujah," at anything or nothing, for they feel ready to
   cry, or shout, or jump, or dance. I do not condemn their delirium, but
   I am anxious to know what goes with it? Come here, Friend. Let us have
   a talk. What do you know? What? Is it possible that I

   offend you the moment I seek a reason for the hope that is in you? Is
   it so that you do not know anything of the Doctrines of Grace? You were
   never taught anything? The object of the institution which enlisted you
   is not to teach you, but only to excite you! It pours boiling water
   into you, but it does not feed you with milk. That is a miserable
   business!

   We like excitement of a proper kind and we covet earnestly a high and
   holy joy, but if our rejoicing does not come out of a clear
   understanding of the things of God and if there is no Truth of God at
   the bottom of it, what does it profit us? Those who rejoice without
   knowing why can be driven to despair without knowing why--and such
   persons are likely to be found in a lunatic asylum before long. The
   religion of Jesus Christ acts upon truthful, reasonable, logical
   principles--it is sanctified common sense. A Christian man should only
   exhibit a joy which he can justify and of which he can say, "There is
   reason for it." I pray you, take care that you have joy which you may
   expect to endure forever because there is a good solid reason at the
   back of it. The excitement of animal enthusiasm will die out like the
   crackling of thorns under a pot--we desire to have a flame burning on
   the hearth of our souls which is fed with the fuel of Eternal Truth and
   will, therefore, burn on forevermore.

   I go a little farther, and I say that I believe that this joy which is
   commanded here, "Rejoice evermore," is not even that high and Divine
   exhilaration which Christians feel upon special occasions. We could
   tell of rapturous ecstasies and sublime joys which, if they are not
   Heaven, itself, are so near akin to it that we would not change them
   for the place that Gabriel fills when nearest to his Master's Throne!
   Oh, there are times when God's Elijah, having brought down the fire
   from Heaven, girds up his loins and runs before Ahab's chariot with a
   Divine enthusiasm which onlookers cannot understand! There are moments
   on the top of the mountain when Peter is no fool for saying, "Let us
   build three tabernacles." It is so good to be there that we would
   willingly stay on that mountain and never come down again to the
   bustle, turmoil and sin of a guilty world!

   Now, you are not commanded in the text to be always in such a high,
   exalted, rapturous state of mind as that. "Rejoice evermore," but you
   cannot always rejoice at that rate! I have said that you cannot and I
   mean it literally. There is a physical impossibility in it! The strain
   upon the mind would be much too great. We could not live in such a
   condition of excitement and tension. Sometimes we can swim in the deep
   waters, but who can always swim? We can take to ourselves the wings of
   eagles and soar beyond the stars--but we are not condors and cannot
   always fly--we are more like the sparrows which find a house near the
   altar of God. When we cannot mount as on wings, we think it quite
   sufficient if we can run without weariness and walk without fainting.
   The ordinary joy of the Christian is that which is commanded here--it
   is not the joy of Jubilee but of every year. It is not the joy of
   harvest but of all the months. "Rejoice evermore." No, Miriam, no, not
   always the timbrel! Not every day, "Sing unto the Lord, for He has
   triumphed gloriously." There is other work for you. No, Moses, not
   every day, "Your right hand, O Lord, has dashed in pieces the enemy."
   No, you have other work to do among these rebels, quite as honoring to
   your God and quite as useful as writing Israel's triumphal hymn!

   No, James and John and Peter, not always on the top of Tabor. Sometimes
   in the house of death with your Master where the young girl is raised.
   And sometimes in Gethsemane to keep watch, if you can, while He sweats
   great drops of blood. You are to "rejoice evermore," but you are not
   always to be clashing the high-sounding cymbals--sometimes the softer
   psaltery must satisfy your hand. All days are not holidays. There was a
   day when Job lost his cattle and his children and yet blessed the name
   of the Lord. All days are not wedding days. There was a day wherein
   Jacob cried, "All these things are against me!" All days are not as the
   days of Heaven upon earth. And until the day breaks and the shadows
   flee away, we shall have to bear about a joy that is rather a lamp in
   the night than a sun in the day--a joy that gladdens us when we are
   cast down, rather than lifts us up to ecstasy.

   I hope that you catch my thought, though I am afraid that I do but
   dimly put it. This shows you what kind of joy could not always be with
   us. The joy that can always be with us is a part of ourselves--a power
   of the new nature which God works in us by His own Spirit. It consists
   in the great cheerfulness of the new-born disposition--a full
   conviction that whatever God does is right--a sweet agreement with the
   Providence of God--let it ordain what it will, an intense delight in
   God, Himself, and in the Person of His dear Son. And, consequently, a
   quietness, a calm, a stillness of soul, "the peace of God which passes
   all understanding." This holy rejoicing is a drop of the essence of
   Heaven! You have heard of "songs without words"--such is the joy of the
   Lord in the soul--a sort of silent song forever sung within the

   spirit. It is a quiet making of music with every pulse of the heart, a
   living Psalmody before God with every heaving of the lungs.

   I hope that you know what it means, or that if you do not, you may soon
   learn. This is a joy that has no wear and tear about it. You can keep,
   from year to year, the even tenor of this way, for this is the pace for
   which men's minds were made. "Rejoice evermore." You can live to be as
   old as Methuselah in this frame, for this rejoicing will never tear you
   to pieces. It will conserve you and act as the salt of your physical,
   mental, and spiritual man.

   Thus much upon the quality of this joy.

   Suffer a few words upon THE OBJECT OF THE REJOICING, in order to help
   you, dear Friends, to indulge it. "Rejoice evermore." How can we keep
   this feast? What are the objects of such a joy as this?

   God helping us, we can always rejoice in God. What a God we have! "God,
   my exceeding joy," said the Psalmist. "Delight yourself, also, in the
   Lord." Every attribute of God, every characteristic of God is an
   inexhaustible gold mine of precious joy to every man who is reconciled
   to God. Delight yourself in God the Father, His electing love, His
   unchanging Grace, His illimitable power, His transcending Glory, in
   your being His child and in that Providence with which He orders all
   things for you! Delight yourself in your Father God! Delight yourself,
   also, in the Son, who is, "God with us." God with us before the earth
   was, in the Covenant Council when He became our Surety and our
   Representative. God with us when His delights were with the sons of
   men. Delight in Him as Man suffering, sympathizing with you. Delight in
   Him as God putting forth infinite wisdom and power for you. I would
   need a month in which to give a bare outline of the various points of
   our Lord's Divine and human Character which furnish us with objects of
   joy! Do but think of Him. Do but for a moment consider His love and if
   you are at all right in heart, it must bring unspeakable pleasure to
   you--

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

   Then think of the Holy Spirit and rejoice in Him as dwelling in you,
   quickening you, comforting you, illuminating you, and abiding with you
   forever. Think of the Triune God and be blessed.

   Then muse upon the Covenant of Grace. Think of redemption by blood.
   Think of Divine Sovereignty and all that has come of it in the form of
   Grace to men. Think of your effectual calling, your justification, your
   acceptance in the Beloved. Think of your final perseverance. Think of
   your union with the glorious Person of the Well-Beloved and of all the
   life and all the Glory that is wrapped up in that surpassing truth.
   "Rejoice evermore." With such a God, you have always a source of joy!

   I believe, dear Friends, that if we are right-minded, every doctrine of
   the Gospel will make us glad, every promise of the Gospel will make us
   glad, every precept of the Gospel will make us glad. It you were to go
   over a list of all the privileges that belong to the people of God, you
   might pause over each one and say, "I could rejoice always in this if I
   had nothing else." If ever you fail to rejoice, permit me to exhort you
   to awaken each one of the Graces of the Spirit to its most active
   exercise. Begin with the first of them--faith. Believe, and as you
   believe this and that out of the 10,000 blessings which God has
   promised, joy will spring up in your soul! Have you exercised faith?
   Then lead out the sister Grace of hope. Begin hoping for the
   resurrection, hoping for the Second Coming, hoping for the glory which
   is then to be revealed. What sources of joy are these!

   When you have indulged hope, then go on to love and let this fairest of
   the heavenly sisters point you to the way of joy. Go on to love God
   more and more and to love His people and to love poor sinners. And, as
   you love, you will not fail to rejoice, for joy is born of love! Love
   has on her left hand sorrow for the griefs of those she loves, but at
   her right hand a holy joy in the very fact of loving her fellows, for
   he that loves does a joyful thing. If you cannot get joy either out of
   hope, or faith, or love, then go on to patience. I believe that one of
   the sweetest joys under Heaven comes out of the severest suffering when
   patience is brought into play. "Sweet," says Toplady, "to lie passive
   in Your hands and know no will but Yours." And it is so sweet, so
   inexpressibly sweet, that to my experience the joy that comes of
   perfect patience is, under certain aspects, the most Divine of all the
   joys that Christians know this side of Heaven. The abyss of agony has a
   pearl in it which is not to be found upon the mountain of delight. Put
   patience to her perfect work and she will bring you the power to
   rejoice evermore.

   I will suppose that you have gone through all this and that you still
   say, "I cannot rejoice as I would." Then arise, dear Brothers and
   Sisters, and gird yourself for holy exercise. Begin with prayer. Prayer
   will make the darkening cloud disappear and then you will rejoice. If
   supplication is over and you are not rejoicing, then sing a Psalm.
   "Bring here the minstrel." Often does holy music set the Prophet going.
   Let us sing a song unto the Lord and if we have no joy in our hearts,
   already, we shall not have sung very many verses before rejoicing will
   drop on us like the dew which soaks the dry and dusky tents of the
   Arabians. If neither prayer nor praise will do it, then read the Word.
   Sit still and meditate on what the Lord has spoken. Go up to the
   Communion Table--gather with the people of God in sweet mutual
   converse. Or go out and preach, my Brothers, to sinners! Go to the
   Sunday school class, and tell the dear children about Christ. In
   Christian labor you will joy in the Lord as you would not have rejoiced
   in Him if you had been at home idle.

   At any rate, when you do not rejoice, say to yourself, "Come, Heart,
   this will not do. Why are you cast down, O my Soul?" I have heard of a
   mother that whenever her children began to cry and grow fretty, she
   said, "They must have medicine." She was sure that they were not well.
   Whenever you begin to fret and worry, say to yourself, "I must take
   heavenly medicine, for I am not right. The leaves of the Scriptures are
   for my healing--I will use them for my soul's good. If my heart were
   right, I would rejoice in the Lord, and as I am not rejoicing I must
   resort to the great Physician."

   Brothers and Sisters, we must rejoice. Why should we not rejoice, since
   all things are ours? Heaven is ours in the future and earth is ours in
   the present. With the past and all its sins blotted out, the future and
   all its needs provided for by the bounty of an unchanging God, why
   should we be sad? If we are not glad, the stars may rebuke us as they
   twinkle amid the darkness--the sun may rebuke us for refusing to shine
   in the light of God. Come, Brothers and Sisters, let us obey the Word
   that says, "Rejoice evermore."

   Lastly, somebody will say, "But why should we rejoice?" What are THE
   REASONS FOR THIS REJOICING? We ought not to need arguments to persuade
   us to be happy! The worldling says that, "he counts it one of the
   wisest things to drive dull care away." The child of God may count it
   the wisest thing to cast his care upon his God. You do not need an
   argument for rejoicing, but if you did, it is found in the command of
   your Lord, who says to you, "Rejoice evermore."

   Rejoicing wards off temptation. The Christian may be tempted, but
   little impression is made upon him by the pleasurable bait if he is
   happy in the Lord. There is a passage in Paul--I forget, just now,
   where it is--where he speaks of putting on the armor of light. It is
   fine poetry as well as solid fact that we wear the armor of light. And
   part of the meaning is that we are so surrounded with seraphic joy that
   nothing can tempt us. The joy which we wear is far superior to any
   which the Evil One can offer us and so his temptation has lost its
   power. What can the devil offer the joyous Christian? Why, if he were
   to say to him, "I will give you all the kingdoms of the world and the
   glory thereof, if you will fall down and worship me," the Believer
   would reply to him, "Fiend, I have more than that! I have perfect
   contentment! I have absolute delight in God. My soul swims in a deep
   sea of bliss as I think of God." The devil will speedily quit such a
   man as that, for the joy of the Lord is an armor through which he
   cannot send the dagger of his temptation!

   This joy of the Lord will shut out worldly mirth from the heart. The
   rejoicing Christian is not the kind of man that needs to spend his
   evenings in a theater. "Pooh!" he says, "what can I do there?" You say
   to the man who has once eaten bread, "I will take you to such a grand
   feast. I will show you a company of swine all feeding upon husks. Look
   upon them, see how they enjoy themselves! You shall have as much as you
   like and be as happy as they are." He says, "But you do not know me!
   You do not understand me. I have none of the qualities that link me
   with swine! I cannot enjoy the things which they enjoy." He that is
   once happy in God pours contempt upon the most sublime happiness that a
   worldling can know! It is altogether out of his line. He does not know
   their mirth, even as they do not know his rejoicing. I suppose that the
   fish of the sea have joys suitable to their natures. I do not envy
   them--I am not inclined to dive into their element. It is so with the
   children of God--they are not inclined to go after worldly things when
   they are happy in the Lord.

   But your miserable professors who simply go to a place of worship
   because they ought to go, and who are very good because they dare not
   be anything else, they have no joy in the Lord! They go to the devil
   for their joy--they openly confess that sometimes they must have a bit
   of pleasure and, therefore, they go to questionable amusements. No
   wonder that they are found in Satan's courts, looking up to him for
   delights, since they find no rejoicing in the ways of the Lord!

   He that rejoices in the Lord always will be a great encouragement to
   his fellow Christians. He comes into the room-- you like the very look
   of his face. It is a half-holiday to look at him and as soon as he
   speaks, he drops a sweet word of

   encouragement for the weak and afflicted. We have some Brothers and
   Sisters round about us whose faces always refresh me before preaching!
   Their words are cheering and strengthening. Those who rejoice in the
   Lord evermore cannot help perfuming the room where they are with the
   aroma of their joy. Others catch the blessed contagion of their
   contentment and become happy, too.

   This is the kind of thing that attracts sinners. They used, in the old
   times, to catch pigeons and send them out with sweet salves on their
   wings--other pigeons followed them into the dovecote for the sake of
   their perfume and so were captured. I would that everyone of us had the
   heavenly anointing on our wings, the Divine perfumes of peace, joy and
   rest! For then others would be fascinated to Jesus, allured to Heaven.
   God grant that it may be so, for Jesus' sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Mysterious Meat

   (No. 1901)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MAY 23, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "In the meantime His disciples urged Him, saying, Master, eat. But He
   said to them, I have meat to eat that you know not of. Therefore the
   disciples said to one another, Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?
   Jesus said to them, My meat is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to
   finish His work Do you not say, There are yet four months, and then
   comes harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look at
   the fields, for they are already ripe for harvest! And he who reaps
   receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who
   sows andhe who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the sayingis
   true, One sows, and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which
   you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into
   their labors." John 4:31-38.

   THE disciples had gone away into the city to buy meat and for this they
   cannot be censured. It was necessary that food should be provided and
   it naturally fell to their lot to perform that duty. Do not say that
   they were carnal or un-spiritual because of this, for the most
   spiritual people must eat to live. When they came back from making
   their purchases, they found their Master sitting by the well, as they
   had left Him. They naturally expected that He would be as ready to
   partake of the provision as they were to offer it to Him, but He made
   no movement in that direction. His mind was evidently far away from the
   idea of food. He was absorbed in something else and, therefore, His
   disciples sought to call Him back to a sense of His need. I do not
   suppose that they had, themselves, eaten. It was hardly like them to do
   so while their Lord was not with them. They, therefore, wished to eat
   and they were all the more struck with the fact that He had no care for
   refreshment. Knowing how weary He had been when they left Him--so weary
   that He bade them go alone into the city--they were perplexed at His
   indifference to food and, perhaps, judged that He was over-fatigued
   and, therefore, they urged Him to eat. Importunately, one after another
   said, "Good Master, it is long since You have eaten; the way has been
   weary, the day is hot, You seem very faint. We pray You, eat a little
   that You may be revived. The woman to whom You spoke has gone. Your
   good work, for a while, is over, let us eat together."

   Again I confess that I do not agree with those who blame these
   disciples. If it is true that there is nothing very elevated in
   providing food, there is certainly nothing unworthy in the act. I
   admire their care for their Master. I praise them for so lovingly
   pressing upon Him the supply of His necessities. It is right for the
   spiritual man to forget his hunger, but it is equally right for his
   true friends to remind him that he ought to eat for his health's sake.
   It is commendable for the worker to forget his weakness and press
   forward in holy service, but it is proper for the humane and thoughtful
   to interpose with a word of caution and to remind the ardent spirit
   that his frame is but dust. I think the disciples did well to say,
   "Master, eat." What is more, I will hold them up to your imitation!
   Jesus has gone from you, now, in actual Person, but His mystical body
   is still with you and, if you meet with any part of His body in need,
   make it your earnest care. Still pray to Him, saying, "Master, eat." If
   you know any of His people in poverty, ask them to partake of your
   abundance, lest your Lord should say to you at the last, "I was hungry
   and you gave Me no meat. I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink." Our
   Lord's spirituality is not of that visionary sort which despises the
   feeding of hungry bodies! Look after His poor and needy ones. How can
   you be truly spiritual if you do not? "Pure religion and undefiled
   before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows
   in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
   There is much in the commonplace attentions of charity--Jesus commands
   our consideration of the weaknesses and needs of others--therefore, I
   say again, I commend the disciples that they urged Him saying, "Master,
   eat."

   Having done this justice to the 12, let us do higher honor to the
   Divine One about whom they gathered. His mind was, at that time,
   absorbed in spiritual matters and, being so, He wished to lead them
   into that higher field wherein He was so much at home and, therefore,
   He transfigured their common words by giving them a higher meaning.
   "You pray Me to eat," He said, but, "I have meat to eat that you know
   not of." They did not comprehend what He meant. As the Samaritan woman
   did not understand Him, when He spoke of water, neither did His
   disciples when He spoke of meat. But you see, the Lord endeavored to
   use the lower expression as a ladder to something higher and more
   spiritual. This was the Master's way from the beginning to the
   end--always to be making similitudes of things seen to set forth the
   things unseen--always to take the thing which men had grasped and use
   it as the means of helping them to lay hold on some great Truth of God
   which, as yet, was out of their reach. Inasmuch as refreshments were
   spoken of and His disciples saw the need of those refreshments, the
   Master turns that thought into a deeper channel and tells them of other
   refreshments which He, Himself, enjoyed and wished them to share with
   Him. In effect our Lord's reply to the request, "Master, eat," is
   this--"I have eaten, in the best sense, and I wish you, also, to eat
   with Me." He would have them enter into that service which had yielded
   so intense a satisfaction to Himself--He would have them know His joy
   in it!

   This morning the run of my subject will be just this--first, there are
   refreshments for our hearts which are but little known--"I have meat to
   eat that you know not of." Secondly, these refreshments satisfied our
   Lord--so satisfied Him that He forgot to eat! And thirdly, and a very
   practical thirdly, I hope it will be, let us seek these refreshments at
   once, that we, too, may forget our earthly needs in a heavenly
   enthusiasm. O blessed Spirit of all Grace, give us secret, sacred food
   this morning while meditating upon this theme!

   I. First, THERE ARE REFRESHMENTS WHICH ARE LITTLE KNOWN. Generally men
   know enough about refreshments of the body. Those questions--What shall
   we eat, and what shall we drink?--have been long and carefully studied.
   It seems obvious to all men that if we are to be restored and lifted
   above fatigue or weakness, it must be by corporeal food. Yet there is,
   in the Word of God, an intimation of another principle. As we read,
   "Man shall not live by bread, alone, but by every Word that proceeds
   out of the mouth of God shall man live." The Lord has been pleased to
   make it generally necessary that the body should be sustained with
   food, but that is only because the body is to be destroyed, for it is
   written, "Meats for the body, and the body for meats, but God shall
   destroy both it and them." That new body, which will never be
   destroyed, will probably need no meats. If God so willed it, this frame
   might be sustained without visible food. There is no absolute necessity
   that the order of Nature or of Providence should be just as it is. Even
   now we know that there are many ways by which waste can be suspended
   and the need of food greatly lessened. And there are conditions under
   which life has been sustained upon an almost incredibly small portion
   of food. If God willed it, He could secretly infuse strength into the
   system, keeping the lamp of life burning by means of a subtle,
   invisible oil. We are not so absolutely dependent upon the bread we eat
   as, at first sight, seems--food is but the vehicle of sustenance--God
   could sustain us without it.

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, our Lord Jesus Christ found for Himself a
   sustenance other than that of food--a food superior to the ordinary
   meat of men. But these refreshments were not known to His disciples.
   The common throng of mankind have no idea of spiritual food, but the
   disciples were not of the common throng--they were chosen out of the
   world and they had been with their Lord for some little time! And yet
   they had not grasped the idea of a man being fed and strengthened by an
   influence upon his spiritual nature which could raise him above the
   dragging down of his bodily needs. They could not yet enter into their
   Lord's secret--He had a meat to eat which even they knew not of.

   The reason for His knowing what they knew not was, in part, the fact
   that this nourishment was enjoyed upon a higher plane than these
   servants of Christ had yet reached. They were spiritual men in some
   degree, but they were not highly spiritual--they were mere babes in
   Grace, though men in physical development. They had not yet reached to
   the height of letting their spirits rule the rest of their nature, nor
   had they yet learned the proper occupation of their spirits. They could
   not yet enjoy spiritual meat to the fullest because they were so little
   spiritual. Our Savior was full of the Holy Spirit and, in His inmost
   Nature, He was deeply and intensely spiritual. He lived in constant
   communion with invisible things and, therefore, it was that He
   perceived that "meat to eat" which they knew not of. Oh, that we may
   not miss the delicacies of Heaven from lack of a purified taste! It is
   a sad ignorance which comes of lack of spirituality. The Lord lift us
   out of it!

   Further, these refreshments were unknown to the Apostles, as yet,
   because they implied a greater sinking of self than they as yet knew.
   "My meat," said Jesus, "is to do the will of Him that sent Me." How
   condescendingly does our Lord sink Himself in this expression! He does
   not even say, "My meat is to do My Father's will." He takes a lower
   position than that of sonship and dwells chiefly upon His mission, its
   service and the absorption in the will of God which it involved. He
   finds His refreshment in being the commissioned officer of God and in
   carrying out that commission. In being a Servant obeying the will and
   doing the work of Another, He feels Himself so much at home that it
   revives Him to think of it! Others have been refreshed by gaining honor
   for themselves--our Lord is refreshed by laying that honor aside! The
   carnal mind finds its meat and drink in self-will, but Christ, in doing
   the will of God! Doing his own work and carrying out his own purpose is
   the meat and drink of the natural man--the very opposite was the joy of
   our Lord Jesus!

   Is it so with you, my Hearer, that you will have your own way and be
   your own lord and master? You feed upon wind! You seek after emptiness
   and, in the end, your hunger shall devour you! But oh, Believer, have
   you ever tried your Lord's plan? Have you taken your Lord's yoke upon
   you and learned of Him? Thus it is that you shall find rest unto your
   soul! Not in self, but in self-surrender, is there fullness for the
   heart! You are no longer to live unto yourself, for you are not your
   own, but you are the servant of Him who has bought you with a
   price--you will find peace in taking up your proper place. Your
   lifework is, from this day on, not to be one of your own selecting, but
   the work which your great Lord and Master has chosen for you. Servants
   lay their wills aside and do what they are bid. When a man gets fully
   into this condition, I bear witness that he will be refreshed by it! If
   I felt that my calling were of my own choosing and that my message were
   of my own inventing, I should have no rest--the responsibility would
   crush me! But now that I feel that I am doing the will of Him who sent
   me and know that I am committed wholly to the work of the Lord, I pluck
   up courage and put my shoulder to the wheel without misgiving!

   In the name of Him who has sent me to do this work, I find a fountain
   of fresh strength! But, Brothers, we must get low down. We must come
   right away from the idea of being original and inventing something and
   carrying out a novel purpose of our own--we must act only upon
   commission--we must say only our Lord's Words and do only His work! And
   then we shall eat of that same loaf on which Jesus fed when He had food
   to eat which even the 12 knew not of. When we get to know that we are
   sent of the Most High, there is nourishment in that very fact! We need
   to feel that as the Father has sent Christ into the work, even so has
   Christ sent us into the world--and if we do not so feel, we shall miss
   a choice form of spiritual meat.

   Further, our Lord not only lived on a higher plane and felt a greater
   sinking of Self, but He was in fuller harmony with God than His
   disciples. He says. "My meat is to do the will of Him who sent Me and
   to finish His work." God's will was His will, not only passively, but
   actively, so that He wished to do it. God's work was His work
   completely, so that He wished to finish it. He longed to go all the
   length of God's eternal purpose and carry it out as far as that purpose
   concerned Himself. Now, when a man feels, "My one desire is that I may
   do God's will. I have no other will but His will. My own will has
   fallen into God's will as a brook falls into a river"--then he is at
   peace! It is a blessed thing to rejoice in being crossed in our own
   purpose in order that the purpose of the Lord may be more completely
   fulfilled. When a man wants to do God's work and to get through with
   it, whatever it may cost, he is sure to feel strength in his heart. He
   who will glorify God, whatever it may cost him, is a happy man! He that
   serves God in body, soul and spirit to the utmost of his power, finds
   new power given to him hour by hour, for God opens to him fresh
   springs!

   Perhaps you do not see this truth, but if you have ever experienced
   what it is to lay your whole soul on the altar and feel that for Christ
   you live and for Christ you would die, why then you will know, by
   experience, that I speak the truth! If your heart's desires were as
   ravenous as that of the young lions when they howl for their prey, they
   would be abundantly satisfied by your soul's being tamed into complete
   submission to the will of God! When your will is God's will, you will
   have your will! When your will rings out in harmony with the will of
   God, there must be sweet music all around your steps! Our chief sorrows
   spring from the roots of our selfishness. Hang up self before the face
   of the sun, as Joshua hung up the Canaanite kings, and your soul will
   no longer be consumed with the hunger and thirst of discontent. When
   you are tuned to perfect harmony with God, you begin your Heaven upon
   earth, even though your lot is cast in the hut of poverty, or on the
   bed of sickness. I know by experience that the way to renew your
   strength for suffering or for service is to become more and more at one
   with the will and the purpose of the Most High. As God's Glory becomes
   the one objective of life, we find in Him our All in All!

   Once more--our dear Savior was sustained by these secret refreshments
   because He understood the art of seeing much in little. Our Master had
   been feasting. He had partaken of a more than royal banquet. How? He
   had been made a blessing to a woman--an ill-famed, very sinful woman.
   He had led her up to the point at which she could perceive that He was
   the Messiah--this was, to Him, a festival! Some would have thought it a
   trifle, but, as a wise man sees a forest in an acorn, so did Jesus see
   grand results in this little incident. Many a man would say, "I could
   easily forget hunger and a thousand other inconveniences if called to
   preach to a vast congregation like that which assembles in the
   Tabernacle. It ought to inspirit a man to see so many faces." But note
   well that it inspirited your Master to see only one face and that the
   common face of a villager of mournful character who had come forth from
   Sychar with her water pot upon her head. It was not an oration that He
   delivered--He had not even preached a sermon which would command
   admiration as a masterpiece of eloquence--His whole soul was absorbed
   in what He had done! It was only a talk such as a city missionary would
   have at any door, or such as would naturally fall from a Bible-woman in
   her calls from room to room. Yet our Divine Exemplar saw so much in one
   soul and so much valued one opportunity of enlightening it, that He
   felt a sacred satisfaction in His simple conversation! He saw in the
   woman the seed-corn of a harvest and, therefore, drew a large
   refreshment from her conversion.

   We do not usually measure things rightly. I am persuaded that our
   weights and scales are out of order. We think we are doing a great deal
   when we get into a big controversy, or write an article that is read
   all over the nation, or create a sensation which startles thousands.
   But, indeed, it is not so! The Lord is not in the wind, nor in the
   tempest--we must go on with the still small voice of loving instruction
   and persuasion. You must go on talking with your little children in
   your classes; you must go on speaking to the few sick persons you are
   able to visit; you must try and preach Jesus Christ in little rooms, or
   to dozens and scores in the street corner or on the village green. It
   is the old-fashioned, quiet personal work which is effective! If we get
   to think that everything must be big to be good, we shall get into a
   sorry state of mind. In the little bit of work thoroughly done, God is
   glorified much more than in the great scheme that is superficial. That
   word, superficial, gives a true description of very much Christian work
   nowadays. A huge piece of moral architecture is carried out by
   jerry-builders to whom appearance is everything and reality is nothing!
   It tumbles down before long and then its authors begin, again, in the
   same wretched manner, with the same flourish of trumpets and bragging
   of what is going to be done!

   It is worthwhile to spend a year upon the conversion of a single woman,
   yes, worthwhile to spend a lifetime on the conversion of a single
   child, if it is soundly done. And there might more come of the true
   conversion of that woman or child than of all your noise and shouting
   over a hundred supposed conversions, forced by excitement like
   mushrooms in a hotbed! We need real work, not noisy work--work done in
   the center of the soul of man, such as Jesus did upon the well! This
   sort of work will bring refreshment to our spirit, but any other will
   end in bitter disappointment. I am sure if we are content to do little
   things in the power of the great God, we shall find our meat in it.
   Someone here gets up and says, "I see, I see! I always thought that
   ministers and other workers who are always before the public would have
   most joy, but now I see that there is a reward for the obscure and
   hidden worker." The Lord Jesus Christ was satisfied to sit by a well
   and talk to one--be you satisfied, from this day on, to keep on with
   your mother's meeting, or your tract district, or your Bible class, or
   your family of little ones. Plod away, for infinite possibilities lie
   concealed within the least work done for Jesus in the power of the Holy
   Spirit by a sincere heart! Perfume which may fill the halls of princes
   lies asleep within a tiny rosebud--despise no little service--but be
   grateful for permission to render it.

   Thus the Master found satisfying meat--meat little known, even by His
   disciples and, therefore, He said, "I have meat to eat that you know
   not of."

   II. Advance with me, dear Friends, to our second theme--THESE SECRET
   REFRESHMENTS SATISFIED OUR LORD. I bring this forward to remind you
   that where He found refreshment, we, also, should find it. Why did it
   satisfy our Lord to be doing the will of Him that sent Him and to be
   finishing His work?

   Well, first, because He had so long hungered to be at it. For thousands
   of years the Christ had longed to be here among men. He said, "My
   delights were with the sons of men." Before He actually appeared in
   human flesh and blood, our Lord made many appearances in different
   forms because He was eager to be at His work. And when He was born,
   while He was yet a Boy, He said, "Know you not that I must be about My
   Father's business?" This was the spirit of Him all His life. "I have a
   baptism to be baptized with and how am I straitened until it is
   accomplished!" He longed to be at

   work saving men. He hungered to perform His chosen deeds of mercy. Read
   in the second chapter of John at the 17th verse. He went into the
   Temple and He purged it and, then we read, "His disciples remembered
   that it was written of Him, the zeal of Your house has eaten Me up."
   That was before He had told them that it was His meat to do the will of
   Him that sent Him. Our Lord was so full of such zeal to be serving God
   and blessing men that when He did get at it, He was so joyful that
   everything else fell into the background as if it were not worth a
   thought! If you and I felt our Lord's anxiety to be serving God and
   winning souls, we should find refreshment in the service, itself, even
   as He did.

   When our Lord did get at His work, He gave Himself wholly up to it--He
   went in for soul-winning, heart and soul. There was a wonderful
   concentration of purpose about our Savior. His face was always
   steadfastly set to His work. He was instant and constant in it--He was
   all there and always there. Time was--and I hope the time has gone
   forever-- when there were professed ministers of Jesus Christ whose
   hearts were in the hunting field. Do you wonder that their ministry was
   a scandal? Others have been naturalists, first, and divines afterwards!
   Do you wonder that their ministry proved to be a failure? Time was and
   time is, I am sorry to say, when many professed ministers of Christ
   have their hearts more set upon criticizing the Gospel than preaching
   it! They are more at home in scattering doubts than in promoting faith!
   They preach what they are not sure of and what they have no interest
   in. It is not their meat to do the Lord's will, for He never sent them!
   They get their meat by preaching, but it is not their meat to preach.
   Surely it must be misery to them to have to tell out an old tale which,
   in their souls, they despise. Wretches that they are! I cannot call
   them better than that. It seems an awful thing, to me, that a man
   should profess to be a servant of Christ and not put his heart into the
   Redeemer's service. You may go and sell your calicoes and your teas and
   your sugars, if you like, half-heartedly--it will not spoil your
   calicoes or your teas! But if you preach the Gospel half-heartedly,
   that is another matter! You will spoil every bit of what you preach.
   What good can come of half-hearted preaching?

   And you, good Friends, who teach in the school or do any work for
   Jesus, remember you spoil with that touch of yours all the work you do
   if your hand is numbed with a cold indifference. If your soul is not in
   what you do, you had better leave it undone--you will do mischief
   rather than service unless your heart is in it! When Jesus talks with
   that woman, He is, every bit of Him, there. He avails Himself of every
   opportunity and catches up every chance. He converses like a master of
   the art of teaching because teaching is the master passion of His soul!
   Now, Brothers, when we get to work like that, we, too, shall be
   refreshed by it. If you do what you do not like to do, it will be
   weariness to you. But if your work is the joy of your heart, you will
   find in the doing of it that you have meat to eat that idlers know
   nothing of!

   Our Lord found great joy in the work itself. I believe it was an
   intense delight to Him to be telling about that Living Water to a
   thirsty soul. It was a high pleasure to Him to be liberating a spirit
   which had so long been shut up in prison--to be creating new thoughts
   in a mind which had long groveled in the mire of sin. How pleased He
   was to hear the woman say to Him, "Why, then, have You that Living
   Water?" What a host of thoughts it stirred up in His own soul! The
   woman had given Him to drink, though she had not let her water pot down
   into the well. It was such glad, such happy work to Him to be doing
   good that it was its own reward!

   I think the Lord forgot to eat bread that day partly because of the
   enthusiasm which filled Him in the pursuit of that soul. The chamois
   hunter quits his couch long before the sun is up and climbs the
   mountains. He watches from the first gray light for the creature which
   is the object of his pursuit. Ask him how it is when he returns late in
   the evening that he has had nothing to eat all day long. He answers, "I
   never thought of it. I saw a chamois on a distant crag and I hastened
   after it. I leaped the ravines, I climbed the steep faces of the rocks,
   I sprang down again. I was almost on my prey, but it was gone. I crept
   up within range again, holding my breath lest my scent should alarm the
   watchful chamois. I thought of nothing but my sport and I never knew
   what hunger meant until my bullet found its mark in the heart of my
   prey and I had drawn out my hunting knife. It was not until I began to
   lift the game to my shoulder that I thought that I had neither eaten
   nor drunk that day."

   You understand what this enthusiasm means and how it refreshes the
   hunter. Some of you have been salmon fishing in the Scot rivers. You
   have fished on and on until you have hooked a huge fish and, by the
   time you have landed him, on taking out your watch, you discover that
   it is long past your dinner hour and you are surprised that you had not
   noticed that you were almost faint! Your excitement kept you
   going--only when it was over did you begin to hunger. Thus the Master
   was so taken up with soul-saving that He had meat to eat that others
   knew not of. I hope we sometimes get into this state of entire
   absorption under the influence of a burning desire to bring sinners
   away from sin to their Savior and

   lead them to put their trust in Him who is able to save to the
   uttermost them that come unto God by Him. I see the riddle all solved.
   They said, "Master, eat," but I see that He had meat to eat that they
   knew not of, for the enthusiasm of soul-winning was strong upon Him!

   Moreover, the Master had not only felt the enthusiasm of pursuit but He
   was moved greatly by the sympathy of pity. The man that hunts the
   chamois has no sympathy with his prey. The man who would take his
   salmon has no pity for the creature. But he that labors to bless souls
   is full of tenderness. Many noble women love nursing the sick. Their
   hearts are at home at the bedside of the suffering. They do not sleep
   at night while pain needs relief and cold sweat needs to be wiped away.
   Their tender pity gives them a more than ordinary power of endurance.
   They watch and wait hour after hour. Exhaustion comes, at last, to them
   and then they begin to enquire of themselves, "How was it I held out so
   long?" Generous sympathy conquered fatigue! How mothers can and do
   endure with sick children! They feel that they cannot sleep while the
   dear one tosses to and fro in fever, or moans in pain. They have lost
   all care for eating while they guard the brittle thread which threatens
   so soon to snap. Real sympathy seems as if it swallowed up everything
   else, as Aaron's rod swallowed up all the other rods! Sometimes you
   have seen suffering which you could not help and you have come away
   forgetful of all else but the dreadful scene. You loathed the sight of
   food. You were sick at heart. The sorrow had become your own! You
   started in your sleep weeks afterwards for the person wounded in the
   accident had come before you. Thus was our Savior carried away with
   pity for lost souls--He knew the danger of that Samaritan city--and
   that thought caused Him to forget to eat.

   More than that--it was not only sympathy--He felt great joy in present
   success. He delighted to see that He had led a soul into life and
   light. He had the bliss of seeing a sinful woman believe in the Messiah
   and of knowing that her heart and life would thus be purified. I do not
   know anything that can make a man forget his pain and weariness like
   grasping the hand of a sinner saved. "Oh," says the saved one, "God
   Almighty bless you! You have brought me to Jesus." This nerves us to
   new effort! I speak, here, from experience, for yesterday evening, when
   I was thinking of this subject, I was myself somewhat dull through pain
   and weakness and, as God would have it, I took up the Report of the
   Baptist Missionary Society which will be issued to you on the 1st of
   June. And as I glanced over it, I saw my own name. It seems that our
   missionary in San Domingo has had a discouraging year, but it was
   lighted up with one most pleasing incident. A man had come down from
   the interior of Haiti to ask for Baptism. Finding him to be a most
   intelligent Christian, well instructed in the Gospel, the missionary
   asked how he came to know anything about it. In reply he told him that
   he had fallen in with a sermon translated into the French language
   which was preached by Mr. Spurgeon.

   Oh Friends, I was dull no longer! I had meat to eat! Had an angel stood
   in the study, I could not have felt more delighted with his visit than
   I did when I read of a sinner saved! Here was a sermon translated into
   French, which was carried far away to Haiti, I do not know how, and
   there was read by a Romanist who found salvation by it! God bless him!
   You cannot faint after such a success, can you? As for myself, despite
   my sickness I resolve to go on again, preach with all my might and
   print more sermons! And send them out to the ends of the earth!
   Brethren, never say die! Never dream of giving up! Let God's blessing
   on your work refresh you!

   To complete the list, the blessed Master had something else which made
   Him forget hunger--it was that He saw the prospect of better things.
   Enquirers were coming out of the city--that one female missionary had
   gone back and told her story and the men were coming to hear what Jesus
   had to say! Our Lord, also, with prescient eyes, beheld the day when
   Philip the Evangelist would go down to Samaria and when many Samaritans
   would be brought to the knowledge of the Truth of God. O Friends, let
   us open our eyes and find refreshment in what God is about to do! Let
   us have bright views of the future! The Gospel which has saved 20 can
   save twenty thousand! The same kind of preaching which has blessed this
   one congregation can bless all congregations! We have only to exercise
   more faith in it and proclaim it with greater confidence--and make it
   more our lifework to proclaim it--and the world shall yet come to
   Jesus' feet and the old, old Gospel now despised shall yet again be had
   in honor! Let us be of good cheer. If we do but serve God as Jesus
   served Him, we shall have meat to eat that will fully satisfy us as it
   did our Lord!

   III. Thirdly, LET US AT ONCE SEEK THIS REFRESHMENT. That is our
   practical business. If there is meat to eat that we know not of, let us
   try to know of it at once. I am speaking, of course, only to you who
   are converted and are thus saved by faith in Jesus Christ. You who are
   not yet Believers cannot eat of this secret meat, for you are not alive
   unto God--you need to be quickened by the Spirit of our God--you must
   be born again before you can eat the Bread of

   Heaven. May the Lord lead you to saving faith in Jesus Christ at once!
   But I speak to you that know the Lord, you who labor for Him and need
   to be refreshed this day. Look you to the right place for nourishment.
   Are we weary? Then let us seek refreshment by following out the
   directions of our Lord in the text before us.

   First, let us remember that we are sent of God. Do not forget that. Say
   with your Lord, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me." Each
   redeemed one is sent forth by his Redeemer. I do not know what the Lord
   has sent you to do. I hope you know that, each man for himself, but
   when you know what work you are called to do, do not be held back by
   anyone! Wait for no man's consent, patronage, or help. Strengthen your
   soul upon the persuasion that God has sent you and then go forward. If
   God has sent you, who can stand against you? A Queen's messenger
   insists that we clear the road for him. An officer who bears the
   Queen's authority is authorized to lay all persons under orders to help
   him. He who rides on royal business has precedence over all others. Get
   to feel, Christian Friend, that Jesus has sent you and herein will lie
   food for your courage! Know that you have a mission and go for it--and
   let it be unsafe for anyone to stand in your way! Let opposers know
   that somebody will have to clear out, for if God sent you, in that
   sending there is a force and an energy which nothing can safely resist!
   Do not make a noise. Forbear all blustering, but quietly set yourself
   to work. If God has sent you, you will be like the greater Sent One, of
   whom we read, "He shall not strive, nor cry, nor cause His voice to be
   heard in the streets," but at the same time, "He shall not fail, nor be
   discouraged."

   Next, if we desire to be refreshed, let us find joy at once in God's
   work and will. You have been trying to find joy and refreshment in your
   own work and your own will--and you have failed. Come, then, and sail
   in another direction. But upon this I have already spoken. If all the
   work you and I have to do can be made to be God's work. If we will do
   all things for His Glory, whether it be mending of shoes, or making
   garments, or preaching sermons, or plowing of fields, then shall we be
   happy in God and our souls shall be fed upon the finest of the wheat!
   No drudgery remains when the lowliest labor is seen to be part of a
   priestly service. When the meanest work glows with the Glory of a
   Divine call, there is refreshment in it! I am sure I am directing you
   in the right way to find sweet morsels for your heart when I urge you
   to have joy in God's work rather than in your own.

   Next, let us get to work. The Master says to His Apostles, "Do you not
   say, There are yet four months and then comes harvest"? This was a
   common saying among the lazy. The time for work was never come--they
   always found reason for delay--the harvest was always four months off.
   Many are going to do a lot of work one of these days. Just now they
   take things easy, but in four months they will let you see how they can
   labor! We have too many Christian people around us who find no joyful
   satisfaction in Divine things because they do not, at once, spend
   themselves for Christ. One enquires, What is the best way to do good?
   Our answer is, do it! I cannot give you any better recommendation. The
   best way to serve Christ is to serve Him! A man who was hungry, when he
   was asked what was the best way to dine, said, "Give me a knife and
   fork. Give me a chance and I will soon show you." When asked how you
   can serve God, reply by seizing the first opportunity and doing it! For
   our joy and comfort, be it remembered that opportunities are many and
   present. "Do you not say, There are yet four months and then comes
   harvest? Lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already
   ripe for harvest!"

   Further, if we want to have joy and refreshment in our own Christian
   life, let us leap into our place at once. These disciples were not to
   be sowers, but reapers. Many others are not to be reapers, but sowers.
   You must get to work in the place into which the Lord puts you--there
   must be no picking of positions--you must jump into the saddle and be
   off! It may be that you say, "I should like to begin an altogether new
   work," but if the Lord appoints you to go on with the work that someone
   else has carried on for years, do not hesitate. Perhaps you say, "I
   would like to labor where the first rough work is done," but if your
   Lord directs you to commence on the uncleared forest, do not raise an
   objection. It may be you wish to carry up the last load of bricks to
   put on the chimney, but if the house has not reached that condition
   yet, be quite as willing to dig out the cellar. We must be willing to
   hook on anywhere. Be leader or shaft-horse! Be first or last. Be sower
   or reaper, as the Lord ordains! Dear Friends, you will never get
   refreshment in Christ's service if you bring a dainty self-will into
   the field and set it to make a selection, for this is contrary to the
   true spirit of service. Have no choice and then you will find
   satisfaction.

   If we are to get refreshment for our souls we may also anticipate the
   wages. There is to be a time when workers together with Christ are to
   receive wages. The text says, "He that reaps, receives wages." In our
   own country agricultural laborers have been paid so little that we
   could hardly call it receiving wages. But when harvest time comes, then
   the

   reaper is paid and truly receives wages. The hardest-fisted churl must
   pay for reaping, must he not? Even the most grudging miser must pay his
   reapers. There must be special money for mower and reaper. Let us work
   on, for our Master speaks to us of wages and He always pays liberally.
   Your reward is not what you get at present--it lies in the glorious
   future! When the Lord Jesus comes, He will reward all His stewards and
   servants. No Truth of God is more plain in the four Gospels than this
   fact, that when Jesus returns to this earth, He will distribute
   recompense in proportion to work done. Herein is meat for us to eat
   which may well sustain us under the burden and heat of the day.

   Then comes the end. If any of you wish to be refreshed, remember the
   end. What is the end of sowing and the end of reaping? Is it not the
   completed harvest? See you not the last wagon loaded with grain? See
   the children on the top there! Listen how the servants shout their joy
   as they bring in the precious fruits of the earth! And there is a
   supper at night. The master has been killing his fatlings and he
   invites all his laborers to supper. How they feast with him! Sow on!
   Work on! Reap on, for there will come a day when Heaven and earth shall
   be moved with joyous acclamations because the Lord's purpose is
   accomplished and His work is finished! Then shall we sit down at the
   supper of the Lamb and rejoice together, as many of us as have had a
   hand in the blessed work and service in which our Master laid down His
   life! Therefore gird up the loins of your mind. Be sober and hope to
   the end. Be encouraged and refreshed this morning. Feed upon the
   eternal dainties which are provided for you by your Lord and be glad in
   His name!
     __________________________________________________________________

The Happy Duty of Daily Praise

   (No. 1902)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORDS-DAY MORNING, MAY 30, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I will extol You, my God, O King; and I will bless Your name forever
   and ever. Every day will I bless You; and I will praise Your name
   forever and ever." Psalm 114:1,2.

   IF I were to put to you the question, "Do you pray?" the answer would
   be very quickly given by every Christian person, "Of course I do."
   Suppose I then added, "And do you pray every day?" the prompt reply
   would be, "Yes, many times in the day. I could not live without
   prayer." This is no more than I expect and I will not ask the question.
   But let me change the enquiry and ask, "Do you bless God every day? Is
   praise as certain and constant a practice with you as prayer?" I am not
   sure that the answer would be quite so certain, so general, or so
   prompt. You would have to stop a little while before you gave the reply
   and, I fear in some cases, when the reply did come, it would be, "I am
   afraid I have been negligent in praise." Well, then, dear Friend, have
   you not been wrong? Should we omit praise any more than we omit prayer?
   And should not praise come daily and as many times in the day as prayer
   does? It strikes me that to fail in praise is as unjustifiable as to
   fail in prayer! I shall leave it with your own heart and conscience,
   when you have asked and answered the question, to see to it in the
   future that far more of the sweet frankincense of praise is mingled
   with your daily oblation of devotion.

   Praise is certainly not at all so common in family prayer as other
   forms of worship. We cannot, all of us, praise God in the family by
   joining in song, because we are not all able to raise a tune, but it
   would be well if we could. I agree with Matthew Henry when he says,
   "They that pray in the family do well; they that pray and read the
   Scriptures do better; but they that pray, read and sing do best of
   all." There is a completeness in that kind of family worship which is
   much to be desired.

   Whether in the family or not, yet personally and privately, let us
   endeavor to be filled with God's praise and with His honor all the day.
   Be this our resolve--"I will extol You, my God, O King; and I will
   bless Your name forever and ever. Every day will I bless You; and I
   will praise Your name forever and ever."

   Brethren, praise cannot be a second-class business, for it is evidently
   due to God and that in a very high degree. A sense ofjustice ought to
   make us praise the Lord. It is the least we can do and, in some senses,
   it is the most that we can do in return for the multiplied benefits
   which He bestows upon us. What? No harvest of praise for Him who has
   sent the sunshine of His love and the rain of His Grace upon us? What?
   No revenue of praise for Him who is our gracious Lord and King! He does
   not exact from us any servile labor, but simply says, "Whoever offers
   praise glorifies Me."

   Praise is good, pleasant and delightful. Let us rank it among those
   debts which we would not wish to forget, but are eager to pay at once.
   Praise is an act which is pre-eminently characteristic of the true
   child of God. The man who does but pretend to piety will fast twice in
   the week and stand in the temple and offer something like prayer. But
   to praise God with all the heart, this is the mark of true adoption!
   This is the sign and token of a heart received by Divine Grace! We lack
   one of the most sure evidences of pure love to God if we live without
   presenting praise to His ever-blessed name.

   Praising God is singularly beneficial to ourselves. If we had more of
   it, we should be greatly blessed. What could lift us so much above the
   trials of life; what could help us to bear the burden and heat of the
   day so well as songs of praise unto the Most High? The soldier marches
   without weariness when the band is playing uplifting strains; the
   sailor, as he pulls the rope or lifts the anchor, utters a cheery cry
   to aid his toil--let us try the animating power of hymns of praise!
   Nothing would oil the wheels of the chariot of life so well as more of
   the praising of God. Praise would end murmuring and nurse contentment.
   If our mouths were filled with the praises of God, there would be no
   room for grumbling. Praise

   would throw a halo of glory around the head of toil and thought! In its
   sunlight, the most common duties of life would be transfigured!
   Sanctified by prayer and praise, each duty would be raised into a
   hallowed worship akin to that of Heaven! It would make us more happy,
   more holy and more heavenly, if we would say, "I will extol You, my
   God, O

   King."

   Besides, Brothers and Sisters, unless we praise God here, are we
   preparing for our eternal Home? There, all is praise! How can we hope
   to enter there if we are strangers to that exercise? This life is a
   preparatory school and in it we are preparing for the high engagements
   of the perfected. Are you not eager to rehearse the everlasting
   hallelujahs?--

   "I would begin the music here,

   And so my soul should rise.

   Oh, for some heavenly notes to bear

   My passions to the skies!"

   Learn the essential elements of heavenly praise by the practice of
   joyful thanksgiving, adoring reverence and wondering love, so that,
   when you step into Heaven, you may take your place among the singers
   and say, "I have been practicing these songs for years. I have praised
   God while I was in a world of sin and suffering and when I was weighed
   down by a feeble body. And now that I am set free from earth and sin
   and the bondage of the flesh, I take up the same strain to sing more
   sweetly to the same Lord and God!"

   I wish I knew how to speak so as to stir up every child of God to
   praise. As for you that are not His children--oh, that you were! You
   must be born again! You cannot praise God aright till you are. "Unto
   the wicked, God says, What have you to do to declare My statutes, or
   that you should take My Covenant in your mouth?" You can offer Him no
   real praise while your hearts are at enmity to Him. Be you reconciled
   to God by the death of His Son and then you will praise Him! Let no one
   that has tasted that the Lord is gracious; let no one that has ever
   been delivered from sin by the Atonement of Christ ever fail to pay
   unto the Lord his daily tribute of thanksgiving! To help us in this
   joyful duty of praise we will turn to our text and keep to it. May the
   Holy Spirit instruct us by it!

   I. In our text we have, first of all, THE RESOLVE OF PERSONAL
   LOYALTY--"I will extol You, my God, O King." David personally comes
   before his God and King and utters this deliberate resolution that he
   will praise the Divine Majesty forever.

   Note here, first, that he pays homage to God as his King. There is no
   praising God aright if we do not see Him upon the Throne, reigning with
   unquestioned sway. Disobedient subjects cannot praise their sovereign.
   You must take up the Lord's yoke--it is easy and His burden is light.
   You must come and touch His silver scepter and receive His mercy--and
   acknowledge Him to be your rightful Monarch, Lawgiver and Ruler. Where
   Jesus comes, He comes to reign--where God is truly known, He is always
   known as supreme. Over the united kingdom of our body, soul and spirit
   the Lord must reign with undisputed authority. What a joy it is to have
   such a King! "O King," says David, and it seems to have been a sweet
   morsel in his mouth. He was, himself, a king after the earthly fashion,
   but to him, God, alone, was King. Our King is no tyrant, no maker of
   cruel laws. He demands no crushing tribute or forced service! His ways
   are ways of pleasantness and all His paths are peace. His Laws are just
   and good and in the keeping of them there is great reward. Let others
   exult that they are their own masters--our joy is that God is our King!
   Let others yield to this or that passion, or desire--as for us, we find
   our freedom in complete subjection to our heavenly King! Let us, then,
   praise God by loyally accepting Him as our King. Let us repeat with
   exultation the hymn we just now sang--

   "Crown Him, crown Him, King of kings, and Lord of lords." Let us not be
   satisfied that He should reign over us, alone, but let us long that the
   whole earth should be filled with His Glory. Be this our daily
   prayer--"Your Kingdom come. Your will be done, in earth as it is in
   Heaven." Let this be our constant ascription of praise--"For Yours is
   the Kingdom, and the power, and the Glory, forever. Amen."

   Note that the Psalmist, also, in this first sentence, praises the Lord
   by a present personal appropriation of God to himself by faith--"I will
   extol You, my God." That word, "my," is a drop of honey. No, it is like
   Jonathan's woods, full of honey--it seems to drip from every bough and
   he that comes into it stands knee-deep in sweetness! "My God" is as
   high a note as an angel can reach! What is another man's god to me? He
   must be my God or I shall not extol Him! Say, dear Heart, have you ever
   taken God to be your God? Can you say with David in another place,
   "This God is our God forever and ever. He shall be our guide, even unto
   death"? Blessed was Thomas when he bowed down and put his finger into
   the

   print of his Master's wounds and cried, "My Lord and my God!" That
   double-handed grip of appropriation marked the death of his painful
   unbelief! Can you say, "Jehovah is my God?" To us there are Father, Son
   and Holy Spirit, but these are one God, and this one God is our own
   God! Let others worship whom they will, this God our soul adores and
   loves-- yes, claims to be her personal possession! O Beloved, if you
   can say, "My God," you will be bound to exalt Him! If He has given
   Himself to you so that you can say, "My Beloved is mine," you will give
   yourself to Him and you will add, "And I am His." Those two sentences,
   like two silken covers of a book, shut in, within them, the full score
   of the music of Heaven!

   Observe that David is firmly resolved to praise God. My text has four,
   "I wills," in it. Frequently it is foolish for us poor mortals to say,
   "I will," because our will is so feeble and fickle. But when we resolve
   upon the praise of God, we may say, "I will," and, "I will," and, "I
   will," and, "I will," till we make a solid square of determinations!
   Let me tell you, you will have need to say, "I will," a great many
   times, for many obstacles will hinder your resolve. There will come
   depression of spirit and then you must say, "I will extol You, my God,
   O King." Poverty, sickness, losses and crosses may assail you--and then
   you must say, "I will praise Your name forever and ever." The devil
   will come and tell you that you have no interest in Christ, but you
   must say, "Every day will I bless You." Death will come and, perhaps,
   you will be under the fear of it--then it will be incumbent upon you to
   cry, "And I will praise Your name forever and ever!"--

   "Sing, though sense and carnal reason

   Gladly would stop the joyful song!

   Sing and count it highest treason

   For a saint to hold his tongue."

   A bold man took this motto--"While I live, I'll crow." But our motto
   is, "While I live, I'll praise." An old motto was, "Dum spiro spero,"
   but the saint improves upon it, and cries, "Dum expiro spero." Not only
   while I live, I will hope, but when I die, I will hope! And he even
   gets beyond all that, and determines--"Whether I live or die I will
   praise my God!" "O God, my heart is fixed, my heart is fixed; I will
   sing and give praise."

   While David is thus resolute, I want you to notice that the resolution
   is strictly personal. He says, "/ will extol You." Whatever others do,
   my own mind is made up. David was very glad when others praised God. He
   delighted to join with the great congregation that kept Holy Day, but
   still, he was attentive to his own heart and his own praise. There is
   no selfishness in looking well to your own personal state and condition
   before the Lord. He cannot be called a selfish citizen who is very
   careful to render his own personal suit and service to his king. A
   company of persons praising God would be nothing unless each individual
   was sincere and earnest in the worship. The praise of the great
   congregation is precious in proportion as each individual, with all his
   heart, is saying, "I will extol You, my God, O King." Come, my Soul, I
   will not sit silent because so many others are singing! However many
   songsters there may be, they cannot sing for me--they cannot pay my
   private debt of praise--therefore awake, my Heart, and extol your God
   and King! What if others refuse to sing? What if a shameful silence is
   observed in reference to the praises of God? Then, my Heart, I must
   bestir you all the more to a double diligence that you may, with even
   greater zeal, extol your God and King! I will sing a solo if I cannot
   find a choir in which I may take my part! Anyway, my God, I will extol
   You. At this hour men go off to other lords and they set up this and
   that new-made god, but as for me, my ear is bored to Jehovah's
   doorpost. I will not go out from His service forever. Bind the
   sacrifice with cords, even with cords to the horns of the altar.
   Whatever happens, I will extol You, my God, O King!

   Now Brothers and Sisters, have you been losing your own personality in
   the multitude? As members of a large Church, have you thought, "Things
   will go on very well without me"? Correct that mistake! Each individual
   trust has its own note to bring to God. Let Him not have to say to you,
   "Fou have bought Me no sweet cane with money, neither have you filled
   Me with the fat of your sacrifices." Let us not be slow in His praise,
   since He has been so swift in His Grace.

   Once more upon this head--while David is thus loyally resolving to
   praise God, you will observe that he is doing it all the time. The
   resolution to praise can only come from the man who is already praising
   God. When he says, "I will extol You," he is already extolling! We go
   from praise to praise. The heart resolves and so plants the seed. And
   then the life is affected and the harvest springs up and ripens. O
   Brothers and Sisters, do not let us say, "I will extol You tomorrow,"
   or, "I will hope to praise You when I grow old, or when I have less
   business on hand." No, no! You are this day in debt! This day
   acknowledge your obligation. We cannot praise God too soon. Our very
   first breath is a gift from God and it

   should be spent to the Creator's praise! The early morning hour should
   he dedicated to praise--do not the birds set us the example? In this
   matter he gives twice who gives quickly. Let your praise follow quickly
   upon the benefit you receive, lest even during the delay you be found
   guilty of ingratitude! As soon as a mercy touches our coasts, we should
   welcome it with acclamation. Let us copy the little chick, which, as it
   drinks, lifts up its head, as if to give thanks. Our thanksgiving
   should echo the voice of Divine loving kindness. Before the Lord our
   King, let us continually rejoice as we bless Him and speak well of His
   name.

   Thus I have set before you the resolve of a loyal spirit. Are you loyal
   to your God and King? Then I charge you to glorify His name. Lift up
   your hearts in His praise and in all manner of ways make His name
   great. Praise Him with your lips. Praise Him with your lives. Praise
   Him with your substance. Praise Him with every faculty and capacity. Be
   inventive in methods of praise--"sing unto the Lord a new song." Bring
   forth the long-stored and costly alabaster box! Break it and pour the
   sweet nard upon your Redeemer's head and feet. With penitents and
   martyrs extol Him! With Prophets and Apostles extol Him! With saints
   and angels extol Him! Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.

   II. And now I must conduct you to the second clause of the text which
   is equally full and instructive. We have in the second part of it THE
   CONCLUSION OF AN INTELLIGENT APPRECIATION--"And I will bless Your name
   forever and ever." Blind praise is not fit for the all-seeing God. God
   forbade of old the bringing of blind sacrifices to His altar. Our
   praise ought to have a brain as well as a tongue. We ought to know who
   the God is whom we praise--therefore David says, "I will bless Your
   name," by which he means--Your Character, Your deeds, Your revealed
   attributes.

   First, observe that he presents the worship of inward admiration--he
   knows and, therefore, he blesses the Divine name. What is this act of
   blessing? Sometimes, "bless," would appear to be used interchangeably
   with, "praise," yet there is a difference, for it is written, "All your
   works shall praise You, O Lord; and Your saints shall bless You." You
   can praise a man and yet you may never bless him. A great artist, for
   instance--you may praise him, but he may be so ungenerous to you and
   others that it may never occur to you to bless him. Blessing has
   something in it of love and delight. It is a nearer, dearer, heartier
   thing than praise. "I will bless Your name," that is to say--"I will
   take an intense delight in Your name--I will lovingly rejoice in it."

   The very thought is that God is a source of happiness to our hearts and
   the more we muse upon His Character, the more joyous we become. The
   Lord's name is Love. He is merciful and gracious, tender and pitiful.
   Moreover, He is a just God and righteous, faithful, true and holy. He
   is a mighty God and wise and unchanging. He is a prayer-hearing God and
   He always keeps His promise. We would not have Him other than He is. We
   have a sweet contentment in God as He is revealed in Holy Scripture. It
   is not everybody that can say this, for a great many professors
   nowadays desire a god of their own making and shaping. If they find
   anything in Scripture concerning God which grates upon their tender
   susceptibilities, they cannot stand it! The God that casts the wicked
   from His Presence forever--they cannot believe in Him-- they therefore
   make unto themselves a false deity who is indifferent to sin! All that
   is revealed concerning God is, to me, abundantly satisfactory. If I do
   not comprehend its full meaning, I bow before its mystery. If I hear
   anything of my God which does not yield me delight, I feel that in it I
   must be out of order with Him, either through sin or ignorance, and I
   say, "What I know not, teach me, O God." I doubt not that perfectly
   holy and completely instructed beings are fully content with everything
   that God does and are ready to praise Him for all. Do not our souls
   even now bless the Lord our God who chose us, redeemed us and called us
   by His Grace? Whether we view Him as Maker, Provider, Savior, King, or
   Father, we find in Him an unfathomable sea of joy! He is God, our
   exceeding joy. Therefore we sit down in holy quiet and feel our soul
   saying, "Bless the Lord! Bless the Lord!" He is what we would have Him
   to be. He is better than we could have supposed or imagined! He is the
   crown of delight, the climax of goodness, the sum of all perfection! As
   often as we see the light, or feel the sun, we would bless the name of
   the Lord!

   I think when David said, "I will bless Your name," he meant that he
   wished well to the Lord. To bless a person means to do that person
   good. By blessing us, what untold benefits the Lord bestows! We cannot
   bless God in such a sense as that in which He blesses us, but we would
   if we could. If we cannot give anything to God, we can desire that He
   may be known, loved and obeyed by all our fellow men. We can wish well
   to His Kingdom and cause in the world. We can bless Him by blessing His
   people, by working for the fulfillment of His purposes, by obeying His
   precepts and by taking delight in His ordinances. We can bless Him by
   submission to His chastening hand and by gratitude for His daily
   benefits. Sometimes we say with the Psalmist, "O my Soul, you have said
   unto the Lord, You are my Lord: my goodness extends

   not to You; but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the
   excellent, in whom is all my delight." Oh, that I could wash Jesus
   Christ's feet! Is there a Believer here, man or woman, but would aspire
   to that office? It is not denied you--you can wash His feet by caring
   for His poor people and relieving their needs. You cannot feast your
   Redeemer--He is not hungry--but some of His people are! Feed them! He
   is not thirsty, but some of His disciples are. Give them a cup of cold
   water in the Master's name and He will accept it as given to Himself.
   Do you not feel, today, you that love Him, as if you wanted to do
   something for Him? Arise and do it! And so bless Him. It is one of the
   instincts of a true Christian to wish to do something for his God and
   King who has done everything for him. He loved me and gave Himself for
   me--should I not give myself for Him? Oh, for perfect consecration! Oh,
   to bless God by laying our all upon His altar and spending our lives in
   His service!

   It seems, then, dear Friends, that David studied the Character and
   works of God and thus praised Him. Knowledge should lead our song. The
   more we know of God, the more acceptably shall we bless Him through
   Jesus Christ. I exhort you, therefore, to acquaint yourselves with God!
   Study His Holy Book. As in a mirror you may here see the Glory of the
   Lord reflected, especially in the Person of the Lord Jesus who is, in
   truth, the Word, the very name of the Lord! It would be a pity that we
   should spoil our praises by ignorance--they that know the name of the
   Lord will trust Him and will praise Him.

   It appears from this text that David discovered nothing, after a long
   study of God, which would be an exception to this rule. He does not
   say, "I will bless Your name in all but one thing. I have seen some
   point of terror in what You have revealed of Yourself and, in that
   thing I cannot bless You." No, without any exception he reverently
   adores and joyfully blesses God! All his heart is contented with all of
   God that is revealed. Is it so with us, Beloved? I earnestly hope it
   is.

   I beg you to notice how intense he grows over this--"I will bless Your
   name forever and ever." You have heard the quaint saying of, "forever
   and a day"? Here you have an advance upon it--it is, "forever," and
   then another, "forever." He says, "I will bless your name forever." Is
   not that long enough? No, he adds, "and ever." Are there two forevers,
   two eternities? Brothers and Sisters, if there were 50 eternities, we
   would spend them all in blessing the name of the Lord our God! "I will
   bless Your name forever and ever." It would be absurd to explain this
   hyperbolical expression. It runs parallel with the words of Addison,
   when he says--

   "Through all eternity to You

   My song of joy I'll raise!

   But oh, eternity's too short

   To utter all Your praise!"

   Somebody quibbled at that verse the other day. He said, "Eternity
   cannot be too short." Ah, my dear Friend, you are not a poet, I can
   see. But if you could get just a spark of poetry into your soul,
   literalism would vanish! Truly, in poetry and in praise, the letter
   kills! Language is a poor vehicle of expression when the soul is on
   fire. Words are good enough things for our cool judgement, but when
   thoughts are full of praise, they break the back of words! How often
   have I stood here and felt that if I could throw my tongue away and let
   my heart speak without these syllables and arbitrary sounds, then I
   might express myself! David speaks as if he scorned to be limited by
   language. He must leap over even time and possibility to get room for
   his heart! "I will bless Your name forever and ever." How I enjoy these
   enthusiastic expressions! It shows that when David blessed the Lord, he
   did it heartily. While he was musing, the fire burned. He felt like
   dancing before the ark. He was in much the same frame of mind as Dr.
   Watts when he sang--

   "From You, my God, my joys shall rise

   And run eternal rounds,

   Beyond the limits of the skies,

   And all created bounds."

   III. But time will fail me unless I pass on at once to the third
   sentence of our text, which is, THE PLEDGE OF DAILY REMEMBRANCE. Upon
   this I would dwell with very great earnestness. If you forget my
   discourse, I would like you to remember this part of the text. "Every
   day will I bless You." I will not do it now and have done with it. I
   will not take a week of the year in which to praise You and then leave
   the other 51 weeks silent, but, "every day will I bless You." All the
   year round will I extol my God. Why should it be so?

   The greatness of the gifts we have already received demands it. We can
   never fully express our gratitude for saving Grace and, therefore, we
   must keep on at it. A few years ago we were lost and dead, but we were
   found and made alive

   again. We must praise God every day for this. We were black as night
   with sin, but now we are washed whiter than snow--when can we leave off
   praising our Lord for this? He loved me and gave Himself for me--when
   can the day come that I shall cease to praise Him for this? Gethsemane
   and the bloody sweat; Calvary and the precious blood--when shall we
   ever have done with praising our dear Lord for all He suffered when He
   bought us with His own heart's blood? No, if it were only the first
   mercies, the mercy of election, the mercy of redemption, the mercy of
   effectual calling, the mercy of adoption--we would have had enough to
   begin with to make us sing unto the Lord every day of our lives! The
   Light of God which has risen upon us warms all our days with
   gladness--it shall also light them up with praise!

   Today it becomes us to sing of the mercy of yesterday. The waves of
   love as well as of time have washed us up upon the shore of today and
   the beach is strewn with love! Here I find myself on a Sunday morning,
   exulting because another six days work is done and strength has been
   given for it! Some of us have experienced a world of loving kindness
   between one Sabbath and another. If we had never had anything else from
   God but what we have received during the last week, we have
   overwhelming reason for extolling Him today! If there is any day in
   which we would leave off praising God, it must not be the Lord's Day,
   for--

   "This is the day the Lord has made, He calls the hours His own. Let Hea
   ven rejoice, let earth be glad, And praise surround the Throne." Oh,
   let us magnify the Lord on the day of which it can be said--

   "Today He rose and left the dead And Satan's empire fell!

   Today the saints His triumphs spread, And all His wonders tell."

   When we reach tomorrow, shall we not praise God for the blessing of the
   Sabbath? Surely you cannot have forgotten the Lord so soon as Monday!
   Before you go out into the world, wash your face in the clear crystal
   of praise. Bury each yesterday in the fine linen and spices of
   thankfulness.

   Each day has its mercy and should render its praise. When Monday is
   over, you will have something to praise God for on Tuesday. He that
   watches for God's hand will never be long without seeing it. If you
   will only spy out God's mercies with half an eye, you will see them
   every day of the year. Fresh are the dews of each morning and equally
   fresh are its blessings. "Fresh trouble," says one. Praise God for the
   trouble, for it is a richer form of blessing! "Fresh care," says one.
   Cast all your care on Him who cares for you and that act will, in
   itself, bless you. "Fresh labor," says another. Yes, but fresh
   strength, too.

   There is never a night but what there comes a day after it--never an
   affliction without its consolation. Every day you must utter the memory
   of His great goodness.

   If we cannot praise God on any one day for what we have had that day,
   let us praise Him for tomorrow. "It is better on before." Let us learn
   that quaint verse--

   "And a new song is in my mouth, To long-lived music set-- Glory to You
   for all the Grace I have not tasted yet."

   Let us forestall our future and draw upon the promises. What if today I
   am down? Tomorrow I shall be up! What if today I cast ashes on my head?
   Tomorrow the Lord shall crown me with loving kindness! What if today my
   pains trouble me, they will soon be gone! It will be all the same a
   hundred years from now, at any rate, and so let me praise God for what
   is within measurable distance. In a few years I shall be with the
   angels and be with my Lord, Himself. Blessed be His name! Begin to
   enjoy your Heaven now! What says the Apostle? "For our citizenship is
   in Heaven"--not is to be, but is! We belong to Heaven, now, our names
   are enrolled among its citizens and the privileges of the New Jerusalem
   belong to us at this present moment. Christ is ours and God is ours!--

   "This world is ours and worlds to come!

   Earth is our lodge and Hea ven our home." Therefore let us rejoice and
   be exceedingly glad and praise the name of God this very day.

   "Every day," he says, "will I bless You." There is a seasonableness
   about the praising of God every day. Praise is in season every month.
   You awoke, the sunlight streamed into the windows and touched your
   eyelids. And you said, "Bless God. Here is a charming summer's day."
   Birds were singing and flowers were pouring out their perfume. You
   could not help praising God. But another day it was dark at the time of
   your rising. You struck a match and lit your candle. A thick fog hung
   like a blanket over all. If you were a wise man, you said, "Come, I
   shall not get through the day if I do not make up my mind to praise
   God. This is the kind of weather in which I must bless God or else go
   down in despair." So you woke yourself up and began to adore the Lord.
   One morning you awoke after a refreshing night's rest and you praised
   God for it. But on another occasion you had tossed about through a
   sleepless night and then you thanked God that the weary night was over.
   You smile, dear Friends, but there is always some reason for praising
   God. Certain fruits and meats are in season at special times, but the
   praise of God is always in season. It is good to praise the Lord in the
   daytime--how charming is the lark's song as it carols up to Heaven's
   gate! It is good to bless God at night--how delicious are the liquid
   notes of the nightingale as it thrills the night with its music! I do,
   therefore, say to you right heartily, "Come, let us together praise the
   Lord, in all sorts of weather and in all sorts of places."

   Sometimes I have said to myself, "During this last week I have been so
   full of pain that I am afraid I have forgotten to praise God as much as
   I should have done and, therefore, I will have a double draught of it
   now. I will get alone and have a special time of thankful thought. I
   would make up some of my old arrears and magnify the Lord above
   measure. I do not like feeling that there can ever be a day in which I
   have not praised Him. That day would surely be a blank in my life.
   Surely the sweetest praise that ever ascends to God is that which is
   poured forth by saints from beds of languishing. Praise in sad times is
   praise, indeed! When your dog loves you because it is dinnertime, you
   are not sure of him, but when somebody else tempts him with a bone and
   he will not leave you, though just now you struck him, then you feel
   that he is truly attached to you! We may learn from dogs that true
   affection is not dependent upon what it is just now receiving.

   Let us not have a cupboard love for God because of His kind Providence,
   but let us love Him and praise Him for what He is and what He has done.
   Let us follow hard after Him when He seems to forsake us--and praise
   Him when He deals harshly with us--for this is true praise. For my
   part, though I am not long without affliction, I have no faults to find
   with my Lord, but I desire to praise Him and praise Him--and only to
   praise Him! Oh, that I knew how to do it worthily! Here is my
   resolve--"I will extol You, my God, O King; and I will bless Your name
   forever and ever. Every day will I bless You."

   IV. The last sentence of the text sets forth THE HOPE OF ETERNAL
   ADORATION. David here exclaims, "And I will praise Your name forever
   and ever."

   I am quite sure when David said that, he believed that God was
   unchangeable, for if God can change, how can I be sure that He will
   always be worthy of my praise? David knew that what God had been, He
   was and what He was, then, He would always be. He had not heard the
   sentence, "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever,"
   nor yet that other, "I am the Lord, I change not; therefore you sons of
   Jacob are not consumed," but he knew the Truth of God contained in both
   these texts and, therefore, he said, "I will praise Your name forever
   and ever." As long as God Is, He will be worthy to be praised!

   Another point is also clear--David believed in the immortality of the
   soul. He says, "I will praise Your name forever and ever." That Truth
   was very dimly revealed in the Old Testament, but David knew it right
   well. He did not expect to sleep in oblivion, but to go on praising
   and, therefore, he said, "I will praise Your name forever and ever." No
   cold hand fell upon him and no killing voice said to him "You shall die
   and never praise the Lord again." Oh, no! He looked to live forever and
   ever--and praise forever and ever! Brothers and Sisters, such is our
   hope and we will never give it up. We feel eternal life within our
   souls! We challenge the cold hand of death to quench the immortal flame
   of our love, or to silence the ceaseless song of our praise! The dead
   cannot praise God and God is not the God of the dead, but of the
   living! Among the living we are numbered, through the Grace of God, and
   we know that we shall live because Jesus lives. When death shall come,
   it shall bring no destruction to us!

   Though it shall change the conditions of our existence, it shall not
   change the object of our existence! Our tongue may be silenced for a
   little while, but our spirit, unaffected by the disease of the body,
   shall go on praising God in its own fashion and then, by-and-by, in the
   resurrection, even this poor tongue shall be revived--and body, soul
   and spirit shall together praise the God of Resurrection and eternal
   Glory. "I will praise Your name forever and ever." We shall never

   grow weary of this hallowed exercise forever and ever. It will always
   be new, fresh, delightful! In Heaven they never require any change
   beyond those blessed variations of song, those new melodies which make
   up the everlasting harmony. On and on, forever telling the tale which
   never will be fully told, the saints will praise the name of the Lord
   forever and ever!

   Of course, dear Friends, David's resolve was that, as long as he was
   here below, he would never cease to praise God, and this is ours, also.
   Brethren, we may have to leave off some cherished engagements, but this
   we will never cease from. At a certain period of life a man may have to
   leave off preaching to a large congregation. Good old John Newton
   declared that he would never leave off preaching while he had breath in
   his body--and I admire his holy perseverance--but it was a pity that he
   did not leave off preaching at St. Mary Woolnoth, for he often wearied
   the people and forgot the thread of his discourse. He might have done
   better in another place. Ah, well, we may leave off preaching, but we
   shall never leave off praising! The day will come when you, my dear
   Friend, cannot go to Sunday school--I hope you will go as long as you
   can toddle there--but it may be you will not be able to interest the
   children--your memory will begin to fail. Bt even then you can go on
   praising the Lord! And you will.

   I have known old people almost forget their own names and forget their
   own children, but I have known them still remember their Lord and
   Master! I have heard of one who lay dying and his friends tried to make
   him remember certain things, but he shook his head. At last one said,
   "Do you remember the Lord Jesus?" Then the mind came into full play,
   the eyes brightened and the old man eloquently praised his Savior! Our
   last gasp shall be given to the praise of the Lord!

   When once we have passed through the iron gate and forded the dividing
   river, then we will begin to praise God in a manner more satisfactory
   than we can reach at present. After a nobler sort we will sing and
   adore. What soaring we will attempt upon the eagle wings of love! What
   plunges we will take into the crystal stream of praise! I think, for a
   while, when we first behold the Throne of God, we shall do no more than
   cast our crowns at the feet of Him that loved us and then bow down
   under a weight of speechless praise. We shall be overwhelmed with
   wonder and thankfulness! When we rise to our feet, again, we will join
   in the strain of our Brothers and Sisters redeemed by blood and only
   drop out of the song when again we feel overpowered with joyful
   adoration and are constrained, again, in holy silence to shrink to
   nothing before the infinite, unchanging God of Love.

   Oh, to be there! To be there soon! We may be much nearer than we think.
   I cannot tell what I shall do, but I know this, I want no other Heaven
   than to praise God perfectly and eternally! Is it not so with you? A
   heart full of praise is Heaven in the bud! Perfect praise is Heaven
   full-blown. Let us close this discourse by asking Grace from God that,
   if we have been deficient in praise, we may now mend our ways and put
   on the garments of holy adoration. This day and onward, may our
   watchword be, "Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!"
     __________________________________________________________________

Who Found It Out?

   (No. 1903)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JUNE 6, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And there were four leprous men at the entrance of the gate and they
   said to one another, Why are we sitting here until we die? If we say,
   We will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we
   shall die there. And if we sithere, we die also. Now therefore, come,
   let us surrender to the army of the Syrians. If they keep us alive, we
   shall live, and if they kill us, we shall only die. And they rose at
   twilight, to go to the camp of the Syrians: and when they had come to
   the outskirts of the Syrian camp, to their surprise, no one was there.
   For the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of
   chariots, and a noise of horses even the noise of a great host: and
   they said to one another, Look the king of Israel has hired against us
   the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon
   us. Therefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their
   tents, and their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and
   fled for their lives." 2 Kings 7:3-7.

   THE story of four leprous men inserted in the Book of the Kings of
   Israel--is it not amazing? No, it is not amazing for the Bible. If you
   were to take out of the Scriptures all the stories that have to do with
   poor afflicted men and women, what a very small book the Bible would
   become, especially if together with the stories, you removed all the
   Psalms of the sorrowful, all the promises for the distressed and all
   the passages which belong to the children of grief! This Book, indeed,
   for the most part is made up of the annals of the poor and despised!
   Think for a minute what space is occupied with the life of the man who
   was separated from his brothers, sold for a slave and put in prison in
   Egypt! What a large part of the Bible is occupied by the writings of
   one who was a babe exposed on the Nile and afterwards kept a flock for
   40 years in the wilderness! We could not part with the account of the
   man who lost all his property and children in one day--and sat among
   the ashes, covered with sore boils. We could not spare the story of the
   two widows who came together empty-handed from the land of Moab, one of
   whom went to glean in the fields of Boaz. Nor the history of that woman
   of a sorrowful spirit and her little boy, around whom the hope of
   Israel gathered in the dark days of Eli's feeble rule.

   Page after page of Holy Writ is enriched with the experience of that
   youth who was taken from tending the flock to become the champion of
   his country and was afterwards hunted like a partridge upon the
   mountain by the envious king. We could not give up the history of the
   Prophet of sorrow, nor of the fugitive who was cast into the sea, nor
   even the minor incidents of the widow of Sarepta and her barrel of
   meal--and the Prophet's widow whose creditor was about to seize her
   children for her husband's debts. Nor do lepers fall behind. We have
   two stories of lepers close together-- Naaman the Syrian and the four
   in our text at Samaria's gate. They were wisely put forth from Israel,
   but they were not put forth from Israel's God!

   It is clear enough that the poor and the needy are not only observed by
   our great King, but the pen of the Holy Spirit has been much occupied
   in recording their affairs. You that are poor and needy, you that are
   sick and sorrowful, you whose lives are spent in mourning, listen to
   this discourse and may the Lord comfort your hearts! On a future day,
   when the great books of history which, as yet, are only known to the
   recording angel, shall be read of all men, your story will appear and
   maybe it will be as memorable as that of Hannah or Joseph--and God will
   get as much Glory out of what He has done for you as from any of the
   deeds of His love recorded in the Inspired pages. Remember that the New
   Testament runs in the same strain. Under the economy of Grace, our Lord
   Jesus Christ is seen living among fishermen and peasants--and calling
   the poor to be His disciples! "God has chosen the weak things of the
   world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the
   world, and things which are despised, has God chosen; yes, and things
   which are not, to bring to nothing things that are." It is worthwhile
   to be among the poor, the despised and the sad, to have your record on
   high and to magnify the condescension of the Lord! It is in the hope
   that some disconsolate ones may be cheered that I speak at this time.
   Oh, that some leprous ones may go forth today and make a grand
   discovery! I desire to preach, praying in the Holy Spirit that the Holy
   Spirit may bless the word and move many to rise out of their despair
   and say, "Why are we sitting here until we die?"

   I. First, I call your attention to A GREAT WORK OF GOD WHICH WAS
   ENTIRELY UNKNOWN. The city of Samaria had been shut up for some time by
   the Syrian army. Famine had fallen upon the people and driven them to
   horrible straits. One can hardly bear to read of mothers devouring
   their own babies through stress of hunger. God sent His servant Elisha
   to tell them that the next day there should be a superabundance of food
   in the gates of Samaria, but the message was received with open
   ridicule. No sooner was the promise given than the Lord began to carry
   it out. It is the way with Him, to be true to His Word. However great
   the promise, it is as sure as it is great! And so, before the sun went
   down, the Lord had caused Israel's enemies to flee and had opened
   magazines of food for hungry Samaria. Without human aid Jehovah had
   accomplished His promise and much more!

   The siege was raised from around Samaria. Armed men had stood in their
   places and kept the way so that none could go in or out--but they were
   all gone--not one of them is left! The troopers had fled on foot and
   left their steeds tethered in rows! Captains and common soldiers had,
   alike, taken to their heels in hot haste, flying helter-skelter, like
   frightened sheep. No host threatened the city--it sat on its hill in
   the twilight, lonely and free. Yet in the city of Samaria they thought
   themselves cooped up and set their warders on the wall because of fear
   in the night. Everybody who went to bed that night felt that he was
   still in that horrible den where grim death seemed actually present in
   the skeleton forms of the hunger-bitten. They were as free as the harts
   of the wilderness had they known it, but their ignorance held them in
   vile durance.

   The Lord had also defeated all their enemies. They had run for their
   lives! They had fled because of a noise in their ears as of horses and
   of chariots. He that could first get across the Jordan and place that
   stream between him and his supposed pursuers was the happiest man.
   Without aid from Hittite or Ethiopian, the God of Israel had driven the
   whole host of Syria like chaff before the wind! Israel had not, now,
   this side of the Jordan, a single foe to attack her! And yet she knew
   not that the Lord's right hand and His holy arm had gotten Him the
   victory. They set guards to protect them from a foe which was no longer
   present and the sentinels paced up and down the walls and spoke to each
   other in the hoarse voice of starving men, guarding the walls against
   an imaginary foe! O Samaria, had you known the gift of God, your silent
   streets would have rung with shouts of joy! Your children, instead of
   cowering down in hunger upon wretched pallets, would have kindled
   torches and lit up the night as they hastened to feast upon the plenty
   which their enemies had bequeathed them! God works and man perceives it
   not--therefore is man unhappy and God is not praised as He should be.

   God had provided plenty for them. The wretched Samaritans drew the
   hunger-belt more closely about them and each man hoped that he might
   sleep for many an hour and forget his bitter pangs. Yet within a
   stone's throw there was more fine flour and barley than they could
   possibly consume! They were starving in the midst of plenty! They were
   pining when they might have been feasting! They believed not God and
   looked not for relief.

   Was not that a strange thing? A city besieged, and not besieged? A city
   girt with enemies, as they thought, and yet not an enemy left? A city
   starving and yet near to a feast? See, dear Friends, what unbelief can
   do? They had been promised plenty right speedily by God's own Prophet,
   but they did not believe the promise, nor look for its fulfillment. Had
   they been upon the watch, they might have seen the unusual movement in
   the Syrian camp and noticed the absolute stillness which succeeded it.

   I know a sad parallel to this. The Lord Jesus Christ has come into the
   world and has put away the sin of His people and yet many of them are
   complaining that their sin can never be put away! The Lord Jesus Christ
   has routed all the enemies of His people and yet they are afraid of
   innumerable evils! None is left to harm them, but they do not remember
   that the Lord reigns! They are afraid of this and afraid of that--and
   yet in one tremendous battle the Champion of the Cross has routed all
   their foes! They are no longer shut up as prisoners. The Lord has
   brought them liberty, but they are not aware of it by reason of their
   unbelief! The Word of God has revealed all this very plainly and the
   ministers of Christ proclaim it from day to day--but through unbelief
   they are still sorrowful, desponding and despairing--in bondage and

   woe. They will not believe and, therefore, they cannot he happy. How
   sad is this unbelief which renders even the Truth of God, itself,
   untrue to us and darkens our sun at midday! Our unbelief is our worst
   enemy!

   It is said that drowning men catch at straws--would you not have
   thought that famishing men might have caught at the word of Elisha? I
   grant you the promise did seem too great to be true--that lord who
   scoffed at it was not the only one who judged it to be impossible of
   fulfillment--and yet when men are brought so very low, they are apt to
   catch at any hope. How hardened was the unbelief which refused
   Jehovah's Word! Out of the whole population of Samaria, there was not
   one who had such faith in Elisha's promise as to drop over the wall
   from a window and go out to see whether the Lord was fulfilling His
   Word! It was solemnly promised; it was grievously needed and yet not a
   soul believed it! Another dreary night is closing in, Samaria is in her
   pangs and yet, did she know it, her citizens might dance for joy! I do
   not know whether I have given you any idea of the scene which rises so
   vividly before me, but it seems to me to be a very amazing sight--a
   multitude in the last stage of starvation, perishing with hunger,
   absolutely dropping dead as they tried to pace the streets--and yet
   food within sight and reach! They believed themselves to be prisoners,
   yet no birds could be more free! They regarded themselves as surrounded
   by deadly enemies, yet never was the land more clear of invaders!

   Even thus are we constantly seeing the Lord's elect and redeemed ones
   counting themselves rejected and fearing that they shall perish! I see
   those for whom Christ has shed His blood still refusing to rest in His
   finished work and rejoice in His glorious victory! Still do I see those
   for whom there is laid up a crown of life that fades not away and who
   are inheritors of all Covenant blessings, wringing their hands in the
   destitution of unbelief and pining away in wretched fear where there
   should be no fear! Their soul refuses to be comforted and yet all
   comfort is theirs. Alas, the case is common!

   II. When you have realized the picture of the city abiding in sorrow
   though its deliverance had already come, I want, in the second place,
   to remark upon a VERY SINGULAR BAND OF DISCOVERERS. A choice group of
   four at last found out what the Lord had done, proved it for themselves
   and made it known to their fellow townsmen. Is it not remarkable that
   these discoverers were lepers? These were the first to discover that
   Jehovah had gotten the victory, scattered the armies of Syria and
   brought help to His people. These poor diseased beings were compelled
   to live in shanties outside the city gate and to keep themselves apart
   from all others. Fed from day to day with food passed over the wall, so
   long as there was any to pass over, they rotted away in horrible
   loathsomeness. What a wretched sight! I will not ask you to step into
   their hut. There are four living skeletons and what flesh remains on
   them is foul with the hideous marks of leprosy. Their bodies are
   corrupting in life! They move about, poor sick things as they are, more
   than half dead. They have had no food sent to them of late and they
   must not go for relief. No man cares for them. The best thing that
   could possibly happen to them would be to die and yet are a clinging to
   life. They were outcasts, off casts. Israel had thrust them outside her
   gates. Their own friends and families were obliged to be separated from
   them.

   These were the discoverers of what God had done! It is a wonderful
   thing that those who are most conscious of sin, most despised of men
   and least likely to be favored, are often those upon whom Jehovah has
   fixed the eyes of His electing love. The chariot of His Grace passes by
   the towers of haughty kings, but it stops at the hovel of poverty--even
   at the prison of despair! The Lord looks on the chief of sinners and
   says, "Here will I display My Grace. Here shall the wonders of My love
   be seen." Lepers are not the only ones whom men cast out, nor are they
   the only persons whom God full often stoops to bless. Some who feel
   loathsome, vile and self-abhorred may be before me now, dreaming that
   it is impossible for God to bless them--yet these are the characters
   whom He delights to save! Ah, Grace--you are known to dwell in most
   unlikely places! You would have supposed that, surely, the king would
   have gone forth to see, or that yonder great lord who had ridiculed the
   Prophet might have relented and gone forth to observe!

   But no, there are last that shall be first and the Lord, in His
   Providence and Grace, chose lepers to be the discoverers of His
   marvelous miracle! Even thus the keenest observers of Grace are those
   who have the deepest sense of sin. I always like to address myself to
   the most hopeless grade of experience--to those who are most desponding
   and despairing--for these are the people who will welcome Free Grace,
   since they feel their need of it. Talk of charity to the rich and they
   will spurn you. Talk of it to the destitute and they will welcome you!
   Speak of Free Grace and dying love to self-righteous persons and they
   are deaf to you. But those who are guilty and know it, welcome the
   promise of free pardon! I have to tell this morning of pure, rich,
   free, undeserved favor which God displays to the guiltiest of the
   guilty! Those who are, in their own esteem, at the lowest ebb are
   always the first to understand the wonders of Grace!

   These men could not hope for a welcome from the Syrians. Poor objects
   that they were, they would be hated as Israelites and also abhorred as
   lepers--yet they went--and in that camp they found all that they needed
   and much more than they expected. Am I not speaking to some who are
   saying, "For me, to go to Christ would be all in vain. I can suppose
   His blessing my brother, or my friend, but He never will receive one so
   altogether unworthy as I am"? That was my imagination once. I believed
   in the salvation of everybody except myself. It seemed to me as if a
   special plague and a peculiar curse had lighted upon my nature and
   withered my heart. It was not so, as I soon proved when once I went to
   Jesus. But how could I expect to be accepted? I, who had sinned against
   light and knowledge, and spurned the Grace of God when it came to me so
   lovingly? I speak to those of you who feel that you have no right to
   mercy--you are the very men who may come boldly for it, since it is not
   of right, but altogether of favor! You that have no claim to the mercy
   of God are the very people to come to Him through Jesus Christ, for
   where there is the least of anything that is good and meritorious,
   there, there is the most room for generous gifts and gracious pardons!
   Remember, the Lord Jesus did not come to sell salvation--He asks
   neither money nor price--but He came Himself as the Gift of God and His
   own free gift is eternal life! Joseph Hart says rightly--

   "Who rightly would his alms dispose Must give them to the poor."

   Are you poor? Then the Lord has an alms for you! If you feel that you
   are the last person that deserves to be received, you shall be received
   at once--the deeper your sense of your unworthiness, the better! Even
   if you lament that you have not a proper sense of need, this only
   proves your deeper poverty and shows that you are without claim of any
   kind. You are neither able to plead Law nor Gospel in your favor and
   must cast yourself on Sovereign Grace. Do so and live! O poor Soul! I
   wish I could take you by the hand and go with you, again, to my dear
   Lord as I went to Him at first. I went to Him in the most despairing
   fashion. You have heard the story of the English king who was angry
   with the citizens of Calais and declared that he would hang six of
   them. They came to him with ropes about their necks, submitting to
   their doom. That is the way in which I came to Jesus. I accepted my
   punishment, pleaded guilty and begged for pardon! Put your rope on your
   neck! Confess that you deserve to die and come to Jesus! Put no honeyed
   words into your mouth! Turn out that nonsense of self-righteousness
   from your heart and cry, "Save me, Lord, or I perish!" If thus you
   plead you shall never perish. You are the kind of man for whom Christ
   died--the sort of man whom He never did spurn and never will spurn
   while the world stands!

   Another thing to be noticed about these discoverers of the Lord's work
   is that they were a people who dared not have joined themselves to
   God's people. They were not allowed inside the city walls--their
   wretched hospital was outside the gate. They were recognized in some
   sort of way as belonging to the congregation of Israel, for their place
   was near the city gates, but still, Israel would have none of
   them--they must not enter one of her houses to take a meal. Some of you
   have been attending the Tabernacle for years, I know, but you dare not
   join the Church. You would not venture to Baptism, or to the Lord's
   Supper because you feel so unworthy. You hang on to us, after a
   sort--you would not like to quite give up all connection with the
   people of God--but yet you would not dare to say that you belong to
   them! In your secret hearts, your bitter cry is that of the leper,
   "Unclean, unclean, unclean!" Before God you cast ashes on your head and
   cover your lips and sometimes wish that you had never been born. But
   still you cannot leave the gate of the Lord's people, nor cease
   altogether from their company.

   These poor creatures Israel would not acknowledge and yet they were the
   first to find out what the Lord had done for His people! How often does
   it happen that those who are rejected of men are accepted of God! Did I
   hear one ask-- "Do you really mean it?" I do mean it! I mean that some
   of you who deem that you are destined to be lost and yet cannot give up
   hearing the Gospel, are sure to find out the Gospel! I hear you say,
   "The Gospel is not for me and yet I must hear it. I can never give up
   my Bible though I only read my own condemnation in its pages." You are
   the sort of people to whom the Word of Salvation is sent--and you are
   the most likely persons to discover what a Christ there is, what a
   salvation there is, what a deliverance there is in the Grace of God!
   You are the men that shall yet tell to the king's household the
   victories of eternal love and assure those dull, cold Israelites inside
   the walls that, after all, there is bread enough and to spare--and
   treasure to be had if they will but come out and have it!

   To describe these discoverers yet more fully, they were men who, at
   last, were driven to give themselves up. They said, "We will fall unto
   the Syrians and if they kill us, we shall only die." Blessed is that
   man who has given himself up,

   not to the Syrians, but to the Lord! As long as we can do something, we
   keep on doing that something to our ruin. But when it is all over with
   us and we can do no more, then man's extremity is God's opportunity.
   The man who struggles as he sinks is hard to be rescued, but when the
   drowning man has gone down twice and is just going down for the third
   time--then is the opportunity for the strong swimmer to come in and
   grasp him firmly--and swim with him to shore. You that are going down a
   third time, you lost ones, listen to this, "The Son of Man is come to
   save that which was lost." "Jesus Christ came into the world to save
   sinners; of whom I am chief." O you self-righteous people, how can you
   talk about being saved? What saving do you need? You are as full of
   good works as you can be and your pride shines on your brows--how can
   you be saved? They that shall be saved by Jesus are those that are, in
   themselves, lost, ruined and undone. Until you know your ruin and
   confess your sin, it is not likely you will ever accept a Savior! While
   you feel that you can save yourselves, you will attempt it! But when
   you can do no more, then you will fall into the arms of your Savior and
   a blessed fall that will be!

   These discoverers I would liken to Columbus, four times repeated, for
   they found out a new world for Samaria! These four lepers went to the
   Syrian camp and saw for themselves! Lepers as they were--they came,
   they saw, they conquered! I think I can see them in the dim twilight,
   stealing along until they come to the first tent, expecting to be
   challenged by a picket and wondering that they are not. They hear no
   sound of human voice. The horses and mules were heard to stamp and draw
   their chains up and down, but their riders were gone and no noise of
   human foot was heard. "There are no men about," cries one of them, "nor
   signs of men. Let us go into this tent." They step in. A supper was
   ready. He who had spread that table will never taste it again. The
   hungry men needed no persuasion, but immediately began to carve for
   themselves. They took possession of the spoils of war left on the
   field. After they had feasted, they said, "To whom does this gold and
   silver belong? The prey belongs to us, for our enemies have left the
   treasure behind them." They took as many of the valuables as they could
   carry, then went into another tent--still no living soul was seen.
   Where lately a host had rioted, not a soldier remained! There was no
   sound of revelry that night, nor tramp of guard, nor talk around the
   fire. The lepers tasted more of the forsaken dainties, drained other
   goblets and took more gold and silver. "There is more than we shall
   know what to do with," they said. So they dug a hole and banked their
   gains after the Oriental fashion. Who can conceive the delirious joy of
   those four lepers in the midst of such abundance?

   Do you see what these men did? First, they went and saw for
   themselves--and then they took possession for themselves. The whole
   four of them did not own one penny, before, and now they are rich
   beyond a miser's dream! They have enjoyed the feast and they are filled
   to the full. They are fully qualified to go and tell the starving city
   of their discovery because they are clear that they have made no
   mistake. They have satisfied their own hunger, gratified their own
   desire and tasted and handled for themselves--and so they can speak as
   men who know and are sure.

   Dear Friends, he knows the Grace of God best, who, in all his leprosy
   and defilement, in all his hunger, faintness and weariness has come to
   Christ and fed on the Bread of Heaven and drank the Water of Life--and
   taken the blessings of the Covenant--and made himself rich with hidden
   treasure! Such a man will speak convincingly because he will bear a
   personal witness. This man has no doubts upon the vital points, for
   Christ is his life--he does not argue, but testifies! He is not a
   special pleader, but a witness! The leper, fed and enriched, stands
   outside the city gate and calls to the porter and wakes him up at the
   dead of night, for he has news worth telling. The experienced Believer
   speaks with the accent of conviction and in it imitates his Master who
   spoke with authority! "Why," says the porter, "I used to speak to you
   over the city wall! Are you the leper to whom I said that there was no
   more food for you? I have thrown you nothing for a week and thought you
   were dead--are you the man?"

   He answers, "I am! I do not need your wretched rations now! I am filled
   and where I have fed there is enough for you all. Come out and feast
   yourselves." "I do not know you," says the porter. All four join in
   saying, "No, you would not know us, we are new men since we have been
   to the camp. Believe the story and tell it to all in the city, for it
   is true! There is enough and to spare if they will but come out and
   have it." The Lord made a good choice when he selected these lepers to
   be discoverers of His great work. He does wisely when He takes those
   who are saddest and fills their mouths with laughter and their tongues
   with singing, for these will command attention! These poor wretches
   could not have made up so amazing a story, nor feigned such
   joy--sorrowing castaways could not have invented the story of Free
   Grace! It must be true! Oh, that men would believe it!

   How much I wish that through my poor words some gleam of hope would
   fall upon weary and heavy-laden souls to whom this sermon come. You
   say, "Where are they?" I do not know. I know that such persons do come
   under my ministry in extraordinary numbers. I shall know that they are
   here before next Sunday, for I shall hear from some of them--"I thank
   God I was there on Sunday morning. It just suited me--I was diseased
   with sin, my soul was starving and dying-- but I went to Jesus as I was
   and I discovered what I never dreamed could be true! He has done for me
   exceeding abundantly, above all that I asked or even thought."

   III. We have come this far by the Lord's help. I now wish to spend a
   minute or two in noticing HOW THEY CAME TO MAKE THIS DISCOVERY. These
   four lepers, how did they come to find out the flight of Syria? First,
   I suppose, they made the discovery rather than anybody else because the
   famine was sorest with them. You see they were lepers outside the gate.
   In good times they received a daily portion from the town, but you may
   be pretty sure that the townsmen did not deny themselves on their
   account! If anybody has to go short, it will probably be those who are
   dependent upon charity. Nobody in the East is excessively eager to feed
   lepers in times of famine. Probably the Samaritans thought and even
   said, "They are best dead--they are no good to anybody. They are
   suffering and they cannot earn anything, let them die." Besides, when
   the supplies within the city were exhausted, you could hardly blame the
   citizens if they sent nothing to the lepers, for those who were,
   themselves, without food had nothing to give.

   Yet the people within the walls could do something or other to palliate
   their hunger--they could even resort to horrible cannibalism--but these
   four lepers were cut off from such desperate resources. They had nobody
   to kill and eat and they must, therefore, die. Then it was that they
   woke up. Truly, necessity is the mother of invention and the mother of
   that blessed invention which finds the Lord Jesus Christ and His
   finished salvation is the awful necessity of a perishing soul! Let but
   some men feel the burden of sin and they will never rest till they come
   to Jesus. John Bunyan says that he once thought harshly of Christ, but
   at last he came to such a pitch of misery that he felt he must come to
   Jesus, anyway, and he says that he verily believed that if the Lord
   Jesus had stood before him with a drawn sword in His hand, he would
   have rushed upon the point of His sword rather than stay away from Him.

   I understand that right well. I would to God that some of you were
   reduced to so great a necessity that you were driven to the only One
   who can help you. Oh, that you were utterly bankrupt! Not a kind wish,
   you say? Yes, it is. Our complete emptiness constrains us to seek the
   Divine fullness. Look at the prodigal son--so long as he had anything
   left he did not go home to his Father--but when he had spent all his
   substance and had become so hungry that he envied the very hogs he fed,
   then he said, "I will arise, and go to my Father." Spiritual necessity
   is that which nerves the soul with courage to cast itself upon
   Sovereign Grace in Jesus Christ!

   These lepers were driven to go to make the discovery because they felt
   that they could not be any worse than they were. They said, "If we sit
   here, we shall die; and if the Syrians kill us, we shall only die."
   That feeling has often driven souls to Christ--

   "I can but perish if I go. I am resolved to try

   For if I stay away,

   I know I must forever die."

   They could but die and they were sure to die if they sat where they
   were. Poor Soul, are you within reach of my voice? Is your case
   desperate? Well, then, try faith! You cannot be any worse and you may
   be better. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. If He should reject you,
   you cannot be any worse, but then, He cannot reject you, for He says,
   "Him that comes to Me, I will in no wise cast out." I would pray for
   mercy if I were you! Suppose you are not heard--you cannot be the worse
   for praying. I would cast myself on Jesus if I were you! You could not
   be the worse for doing so. Every day I say to myself--

   "Though my eye of faith is dim,

   I'll hold on Jesus, sink or swim." I cannot be blamed for trusting to
   One who has saved so many! O my Hearer, there is no risk in the matter!
   You must be infinitely better for coming to the appointed Savior! Come
   and try Him! Come at this moment!

   Again, these people saw that there was no reason why they should not
   go, for they said, one to the other--"Why are we sitting here until we
   die?" They could not find a justification for inaction. They could not
   say, "We sit here because the king commands us to stay where we are."
   You cannot say, my dear Hearer, that you remain ungodly and unbelieving

   because the Lord bids you do so. Far from it! He bids you forsake your
   way and your thoughts and turn unto Him and live! He promises that He
   will receive you and, therefore, He cries, "Turn you, turn you, why
   will you die?" The lepers could not say that they sat there because
   they were chained, or locked in, and so were compelled to starve in
   their hut. They could move to the Syrian camp and this was their one
   liberty. You, also, are not compelled to be as you are. Is there any
   reason why you should not pray? Is there any barrier to your trusting
   the Lord except in your own heart? You are not compelled to remain
   ungodly, thoughtless, prayerless, faithless. You are not compelled to
   be lost! There is no compulsion put upon you to force you away from
   Jesus and eternal life! Oh, that you would pluck up heart and say, "Why
   should we sit here until we die?" I hope there is no deadly despair
   upon you yet--certainly there should not be. These men did not feel
   that it was certain that they would die if they went to the Syrian
   camp. They had a little hope and on that hope they acted like sensible
   men.

   You remember how the people of Nineveh humbled themselves before God
   with nothing to encourage them but, "Who can tell?" Jonah said, "Forty
   days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" And they could get no more
   comfort than the question, "Who can tell if God will turn and repent
   and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?" Oh, poor
   troubled Heart, who can tell? There may be mercy for you and not a
   little mercy, either. The full, rich, eternal mercy of the Lord may be
   enjoyed by you before the sun goes down! That head of yours will yet
   wear the starry crown! About your naked loins there shall yet be girt
   the fair linen of Christ's righteousness! Do not believe the devil if
   he says you must die. You need not die! Have confidence and venture,
   now, to Christ and you shall find relief. I speak what I know and know
   what I speak!

   These lepers went to the camp of the Syrians because they were shut up
   to that one course--"If we say, we will enter into the city, then the
   famine is in the city and we shall die there. And if we sit here, we
   die also." Only one road was open. I am always glad when I am in that
   condition. If many courses are open to me, I may make a mistake. But
   when I see only one road, I know which way to go. It is a blessed thing
   to be shut up to faith in Christ--to be compelled to look to Grace,
   alone. I spoke to a friend this week who is sorely sick and I said,
   "You are resting in Christ, my Brother." He replied, "I have nothing
   else to rest in." I said, "Your hope is in the atoning Sacrifice of
   Christ," and he answered, "What other hope could I have?" While we have
   50 ways of salvation, we shall be lost. But when we see that "other
   foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, even Jesus Christ
   the Righteous," then we shall build upon it and be safe!

   These lepers were not the men to theorize. They were in such a plight
   that they must come to prompt action. Many ladies and gentlemen treat
   religion as a science and, therefore, they never know its real powers.
   Many professors and learned doctors speculate upon theology as if it
   were part of a liberal education, but by no means a practical matter.
   People who have no sin to wash away and no great spiritual trouble to
   bear, play at religion--but those who are ready to perish look on
   matters in another light! We are not chemists analyzing the Bread of
   Life--we are fainting men and women who feed on it with eagerness! Our
   resolve is--

   "I'll go to Jesus, though my sin

   Has, like a mountain, rose.

   I know His courts, I'll enter in,

   Whatever may oppose.

   Perhaps He wiil admit my plea,

   Perhaps will hear my prayer.

   But if I perish, I will pray

   And perish only there."

   These lepers discovered what the Lord had done because they did not
   give themselves up to dreams and guesses, but came to downright matters
   of fact. May God drive every unconverted sinner into a corner and so
   compel him to yield to Divine Grace! May He bring you to act in
   earnest! May He drive you by the extreme necessities of your case to
   seek and to find, to search and to discover!

   IV. I ask your patience for a minute while I say, in the fourth
   place--MAY NOT SOME SAD HEARTS IMITATE THOSE LEPERS and make the same
   discovery? "I am afraid to believe in Christ," says one, "for my sins,
   my many sins, prevent me." Look at the lepers and see how much better
   the Lord was to them than their fears. It is twilight and they steal
   into the camp, trembling. One cries, "Softly there, Simeon! Your heavy
   tread will bring the guard upon us." Eleazar gently whispers to the
   other, "Make no noise! If they sleep, let us not awaken them." They
   might tread as heavily

   as they pleased and talk as loudly as they wished, for there was no man
   there! Do you know it? If you believe in the Lord Jesus, your sins,
   which are many, are all forgiven--there is no sin left to accuse you!
   You are afraid they will ruin you? They have ceased to be! The depths
   have covered them! There is not one of them left! "The blood of Jesus
   Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin." Your sins were numbered on
   the scapegoat's head of old. Jesus bore your sins in His own body on
   the Cross. If you come to Christ, confessing and believing, no sin
   shall destroy you, for it is blotted out!

   Perhaps these men feared when they were going into the tent--"A Syrian
   will meet us at the tent door and cry, 'Back, what business have you
   here? Lepers, be gone! Back to your dens and die.'" They entered into
   tent after tent-- nobody forbade them--they had the entry of every
   pavilion! They were also possessors of all they saw. When I came to
   Christ, I could not believe that I might take the promises, but I did,
   and nobody said to me, no! I have gone on appropriating promises ever
   since--exceedingly great and precious promises--and nobody has said to
   me, no. I find I can make myself most free in Christ's house and, the
   more free I am, the better He is pleased! His rule is--ask what you
   will and it shall be done unto you! The Lord gives us full liberty to
   come into his secret place, even to His Throne of Grace! Oh, that some
   poor heart would come at this moment! Instead of being repulsed, you
   shall find a hearty welcome, even into the most holy places!

   Perhaps the leper felt some little question when he saw a golden cup,
   or a silver flagon, or a well-fashioned cruet. What have lepers to do
   with golden cups? But he overcame his scruples. No law could hinder his
   sharing the leavings of a runaway enemy! Nobody was there to stop him
   and the valuables were set before him--and, therefore, he took what was
   provided for him. The lepers grew more and more bold till they carried
   off as much of the booty as they were able to hide away. I take up my
   parable and, without scruple, invite you to deal thus with salvation!
   When I came to Jesus, I hardly dared to appropriate a promise--it
   looked like stealing! I did not, could not believe that I had a right
   to any of the good things provided for the Lord's people! But I took
   Gospel leave and enjoyed them. I find it written, "No good thing will
   be withheld from them that walk uprightly" and, therefore, I feel that
   nothing is withheld from me. I venture to take what Grace has put in my
   way!

   I take possession of everything that I can find in Christ! I have never
   yet found either conscience, or the Word of God, or the Lord, Himself,
   upbraid me for appropriating the precious things laid up in the
   Covenant for Believers! Therefore I grow bolder and yet more bold! One
   of these days I, who am the least of all saints, expect to stand among
   the bright ones near the Throne of God and sing, "Hallelujah to God and
   the Lamb." I do not think that I shall be ashamed to stand there. I am
   ashamed of myself for 10,000 reasons, but I shall not be ashamed at the
   Lord's coming--

   "Bold shall I stand in that great day." You poor lepers, you poor lost
   and ruined ones, come to my Lord Jesus! Believe it, the whole land is
   before you--the land that flows with milk and honey is for you! This
   world is yours and worlds to come. Christ is yours! Yes, God, Himself
   is yours! Everything is to be had for nothing. Heaven and all its joys
   are to be had for believing! God make you the discoverers, this day, of
   His wondrous Grace and to Him shall be praise forever and ever! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Personal Pentecost and the Glorious Hope

   (No. 1904)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JUNE 13, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And hope makes us not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad
   in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us." Romans 5:5.

   PENTECOST is repeated in the heart of every Believer. Let me give you a
   little bit of historical analogy to illustrate the text. The Lord's
   disciples were made to sorrow at His Cross. Sore was the tribulation
   which came upon them as they thought upon His death and His burial in
   Joseph's sepulcher. But after a little patience and experience, their
   hope revived, for their Lord rose from the dead and they beheld Him
   ascending into Heaven. Their hopes were bright concerning their Lord
   who had gone into Glory and had left them a promise to come again and
   to make them takers of His victory. After that hope had been begotten
   in them, they were, in due time, made partakers of the Holy Spirit,
   whose Divine influence was shed abroad upon them so that they were
   filled with His power. Then were they made bold. They were not ashamed
   of their hope, but proclaimed it by the preaching of Peter and the rest
   of them. The Holy Spirit had visited them and, therefore, they
   fearlessly proclaimed to the world the Lord Jesus, their hope of Glory.

   Truly, history repeats itself. The history of our Lord is the
   foreshadowing of the experience of all His people! That which happens
   to the First-Born befalls, in measure, to all the Brethren. We have
   before us in our text an admirable example. First comes our
   tribulation, our agony, our cross-bearing. Out of our patience and
   experience there arises, in due season, a blessed hope--we are
   quickened by our Lord's resurrection life and come forth from our
   sorrow! He raises us up from the grave of our woe. Then comes the
   Divine visitation of the Holy Spirit and we enjoy our Pentecost--"The
   love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is
   given unto us." I trust we know what this means and are now enjoying
   it. Consequent upon that visitation, our hope becomes clear and
   assured--and we are led to make a full outspoken testimony concerning
   our hope and that blessed One who is the Substance of it. I hope that
   many of us have already proved that we are not ashamed and that others
   of you will yet do so. Our God has visited us in mercy and endowed us
   with the Holy Spirit who is His choice gift to His children. The Holy
   Spirit dwelling in us has caused us to know and feel the love of God
   and now we cannot but speak and tell others of what the Lord has made
   known to us! Thus, on a small scale, have we rehearsed a portion of
   early Church history in our own personal story. You shall find that not
   only in this case, but in all cases, the life of the Believer is in
   miniature the life of Christ! He who originally said, "Let Us make man
   in Our image," still, in the new creation, follows the model of Christ
   in the new-making of chosen men!

   Now let me give you a little passage of experimental mystery. You have
   it here spread before you in a little map of the inner
   life--"Tribulation works patience; and patience, experience; and
   experience, hope: and hope makes not ashamed; because the love of God
   is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto
   us." This passage can only be fully understood by those people of God
   who have had it written in capital letters on their own hearts.
   "Tribulation works patience," says the Apostle. Naturally it is not so.
   Tribulation works impatience and impatience misses the fruit of
   experience and sours into hopelessness! Ask many who have buried a dear
   child, or have lost their wealth, or have suffered pain of body and
   they will tell you that the natural result of affliction is to produce
   irritation against Providence, rebellion against God, questioning,
   unbelief, petulance and all sorts of evils!

   But what a wonderful alteration takes place when the heart is renewed
   by the Holy Spirit! Then, but not till then, tribulation works
   patience! He that is never troubled cannot exercise patience. Angels
   cannot personally exhibit patience since they are not capable of
   suffering. It is necessary to the possession and exercise of patience
   that we should be tried-- and a great degree of patience can only come
   by a great degree of trial. You have heard of the patience of Job--did
   he

   learn it among his flocks, or with his camels, or with his children
   when they were feasting? No, verily, he learned it when he sat among
   the ashes and scraped himself with a potsherd--and his heart was heavy
   because of the death of his children. Patience is a pearl which is only
   found in the deep seas of affliction and only Divine Grace can find it
   there, bring it to the surface and adorn the neck of faith with it!

   It comes to pass that this patience works in us experience, that is, to
   say, the more we endure, the more we test the faithfulness of God, the
   more we prove His love and the more we perceive His wisdom. He that has
   never endured may believe in the sustaining power of Grace, but he has
   never had experience of it. You must put to sea to know the skill of
   the Divine Pilot and you must be buffeted with tempest before you can
   know His power over winds and waves. How can we see Jesus in His full
   power unless there is a storm for Him to turn into a calm? Our patience
   works in us an experimental acquaintance with the truth, the
   faithfulness, the love and the power of our God. We bow in patience and
   then we rise in happy experience of heavenly support! What better
   wealth can a man have than to be rich in experience? Experience
   teaches. This is the real High School for God's children. I scarcely
   think we learn anything thoroughly without the rod of affliction.
   Certainly we know best that which has been a matter of personal
   experience. We need that Truth of God should be burned into us with the
   hot iron of affliction before we know it effectively--after that, no
   man may trouble us, for our heart bears the brand of the Lord Jesus!
   Thus patience works experience.

   It is rather amazing that it should then be said, "and experience works
   hope"--not amazing in the sense of being questionable, for there is no
   hope so bright as that of the man who knows, by experience, the
   faithfulness and love of God. But does it not seem singular that this
   heavy tribulation, this grievous affliction, this painful chastisement
   should, nevertheless, bring forth for us this bright particular light,
   this morning star of hope, this herald of the everlasting day of Glory?
   Brothers and Sisters, how wonderfully does Divine alchemy fetch fine
   gold out of metal which we thought to be worthless! The Lord, in His
   Grace, spreads a couch for His own upon the threshing floor of
   tribulation and there, like Boaz, we take our rest! He sets to music
   the roar of the floods of trouble. Out of the foam of the sea of sorrow
   He causes to arise the bright spirit of "hope that makes not ashamed."

   This passage from which we have taken our text is a choice extract from
   the inner life of a spiritual man! It is a fragment of the Believer's
   riddle--let him read it that has understanding.

   Before I plunge into my subject, let me point out to you that this text
   is none other than the House of God and the gate of Heaven. Behold a
   Temple for the worship of the Divine Trinity in my text. Read the fifth
   and sixth verses together--"The love of God (the Father) is shed abroad
   in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us. For when we
   were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."
   Behold the blessed Three in One! It needs the Trinity to make a
   Christian! It needs the Trinity to cheer a Christian! It needs the
   Trinity to complete a Christian! It needs the Trinity to create in a
   Christian the hope of Glory! I always like these passages which bring
   us so near to the Trinity. Let us pause a while and adore--"Glory be
   unto the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in
   the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end! Amen." It
   is most sweet to be called upon to offer special worship unto the one
   God in the Trinity of His Divine Persons and to feel your heart readily
   inclined thereto, as we do at this hour. By faith we bow with the hosts
   of the redeemed before the all-glorious Throne of God and worship Him
   that lives forever. How heartily may we do this when we think of the
   unity of the Sacred Three in our salvation! We have Divine Love
   bestowed by the Father, made manifest in the death of the Son and shed
   abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit! Oh, to feel, at this moment,
   communion with the Triune God! Let us bow before the sacred majesty of
   Jehovah and then, by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, let us enter the
   Temple of our text!

   The text runs thus: "Hope makes not ashamed, because the love of God is
   shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us."
   The Apostle had worked up the subject till he came to the hope of
   Glory. When he had reached that height, he could not help saying
   something concerning it. Turning away from his main subject, as is
   often his custom, he makes a diversion and gives us a few glowing
   sentences upon the Believer's hope.

   Our first head will be the confidence of our hope--the hope makes not
   ashamed. Secondly, the reason of this confidence, which I hope we are
   enjoying, today, for we are so confident about our hope that we shall
   never be disappointed in it because the love of God is shed abroad in
   our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us. Thirdly, we shall
   have a word or two to say upon the result of this confidence of hope,
   since, for this cause we bear testimony to the world and declare that
   we are not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.

   I. First then, consider THE CONFIDENCE OF OUR HOPE. We are not ashamed
   of our hope. Some persons have no hope, or only one of which they might
   justly be ashamed. Ask many who deny the Scriptures, what is their hope
   for the future. "I shall die like a dog," says one. "When I am dead
   that's the end of me." If I had such a wretched hope as that, I
   certainly would not go about the world proclaiming it! I would not
   think of gathering a large congregation like this and saying to you,
   "Brothers and Sisters, rejoice with me, for we are all to die like cats
   and dogs." It would never strike me as being a matter to be gloried in.
   The Agnostic knows nothing and, therefore, I suppose he hopes nothing.
   Here, also, I do not see much to stir enthusiasm. If I had no more hope
   than that, I would be ashamed.

   The Romanist's best hope when he dies is that he may come right in the
   end, but that, in the meantime, he will have to undergo the purging
   fires of "purgatory." I do not know much about that place, for I cannot
   find mention of it in Holy Scripture--but those who know it well,
   because they invented it, and keep its keys--describe it as a dreary
   region to which even great bishops and cardinals must go! I have
   seen,personally seen, invitations to the faithful to pray for the
   repose of the soul of a late eminent cardinal--and if such is the lot
   of the princes of the church of Rome, where must ordinary people go?
   There is no great excellence in this hope. I do not think I should call
   you all together in order to say to you, "Rejoice with me, for when we
   die we shall all go to 'purgatory.'" You would fail to see the special
   ground of rejoicing. I do not think I would say much about it and when
   anybody questioned me about it, I would endeavor to evade the point and
   declare that it was a deep mystery which had better be left to the
   clergy!

   But we are not ashamed of our hope, we Christian people who believe
   that those Believers who are absent from the body are present with the
   Lord! We look for a city which has foundations, whose Builder and Maker
   is God! We are not ashamed to hope for Glory, immortality and eternal
   life!

   We are not ashamed of the object of our hope. We do not believe in
   gross carnal delights as making up our Heaven. We do not believe in a
   Muslim paradise of sensual delights, or we might very well be ashamed
   of our hope! Whatever imagery we may use, we intend, thereby, pure,
   holy, spiritual and refined happiness such as the False Prophet would
   not have regarded as a sufficient bait for his followers. Our hope is
   this--that our Lord will come a second time and all His holy angels
   with Him. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the
   kingdom of their Father! We believe that if we fall asleep before that
   time, we shall sleep in Jesus and shall be blessed with Him. "Today
   shall you be with Me in Paradise," is not for the thief, only, but for
   all of us who have trusted our souls with the crucified Savior. At His
   coming we expect a glorious resurrection. When He shall descend from
   Heaven with a shout, with the trumpet of the archangel and the voice of
   God, then shall our souls be restored to our bodies and our complete
   manhood shall live with Christ! We believe and are sure, that from that
   day we shall be forever with Him. He will give us to be partakers of
   His Throne, of His crown and of His Heaven--and that forever and ever!

   The more we talk about the promised bliss, the more we feel that we
   could not be ashamed of the hope of Glory! The ultimate reward of
   faith, the ultimate reward of a life of righteousness, is such that we
   joy and rejoice in prospect of it. Our glorious hope contains, within
   it, purity and perfection, freedom from all sin and the possession of
   every virtue. Our hope is that we shall be like our perfect Lord and
   shall be with Jesus where He is, that we may behold His Glory. Our hope
   is fulfilled in that promise, "Because I live, you shall live, also."
   We shall not merely exist, but live, which is another and a higher
   matter. Our life shall be the life of God in our spirits forever and
   ever! We are not ashamed of this hope! We press forward to the
   attaining of it!

   Furthermore, we are not ashamed of the ground of our hope. Our hope
   rests upon the solemn promises of God which He has made to us by His
   Prophets and Apostles--and confirmed in the Person and work of His dear
   Son. Inasmuch as Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead, we that are
   one with Him by faith, are sure that we shall rise again from the dead
   and live with Him. The fact of Christ's Resurrection is the assurance
   of our resurrection! And His entrance into Glory is the pledge of our
   glorification because we are made one with Him by the purpose and Grace
   of God. As we fell in Adam by virtue of our being in him, so we rise
   and reign with Jesus because we are in Him. God is not the God of the
   dead, but of the living--yet is He the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of
   Jacob and, therefore, these men are yet alive! Even thus do we believe
   concerning all who die in the faith that they have not ceased to be,
   but they all live unto Him. Our hope is founded not upon reasoning,
   which, possibly, may dimly prove the immortality of the soul and the
   future reward of the righteous, but upon God's Revelation which states
   it clearly and plainly and leaves no room for question. If this Book is
   a lie, our hope must be given up. But inasmuch as we have not followed
   cunningly devised fables, but have re-

   ceived the testimony of faithful eyewitnesses of our Lord's
   Resurrection and Ascension, we believe the Holy Record and are not
   ashamed of our hope! What God has promised is sure--and what God has
   done fully confirms the same and, therefore, we have no fear.

   And, Brothers and Sisters, we are not ashamed of our personal
   appropriation of this hope. Somebody may sneeringly say to us, "You
   expect to be in Glory, do you?" Yes, we do and we are not ashamed to
   acknowledge the soft impeachment, for our confidence is well grounded.
   Our expectation is not based upon any proud claim of personal merit,
   but upon the promise of a faithful God! He has said, "He that believes
   in Him has everlasting life." We do believe in Him and, therefore, we
   know that we have eternal life! He has declared in His Word that, "whom
   He justified, them He also glori-fied"--and we are justified by faith,
   therefore we shall be glorified! Our hope is not based on mere feeling,
   but on the fact that God has promised everlasting life to them that
   believe in His Son, Jesus. We have heard our Lord pray, "Father, I will
   that they, also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am; that
   they may behold My Glory." We believe that the Father gave us to Jesus
   because we have been led to put our trust in Him and faith is the sure
   sign and token of Divine election. Therefore, being Christ's, we expect
   to be with Him where He is. Reading in the Word of the Lord the words,
   "that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
   life," we hold on to that promise and know that we have everlasting
   life! This seems to us to be a strictly logical argument. Unless it is
   a mistake and God has not said that the Believer shall live forever,
   then we are under no delusion in expecting so to live. God's Word is
   the most sure thing that can be and we are not ashamed to hold on to
   any claim which truthfully arises out of it! We dare believe that God
   will keep His Word to us and to all other Believers.

   Brethren, we are not ashamed as to the absolute certainty that our hope
   will be realized. We believe that if, indeed, we are justified by faith
   and have peace with God, we have a hope of Glory which will not fail us
   in the end, nor on the way to the end. We do not expect to be deserted
   and to be left to fall from Grace, for, "He has said, I will never
   leave you nor forsake you." We do not expect to be left to ourselves,
   which would mean our sore and certain ruin, but we expect that He who
   has begun a good work in us will perfect it unto the day of Christ--we
   are certain that He who has worked this hope in us will justify that
   hope by fulfilling it in due time. He will preserve us through long
   life if we are to live long; will maintain a living hope in us when we
   come to die and will remember, even, our dust and ashes when these are
   hidden in the tomb. "Who shall separate us from the love of God which
   is in Christ Jesus our Lord?" It is written, "He that believes and is
   baptized shall be saved." And so it shall be. He shall not perish from
   the way, nor in the way. Has He not said, "I will put My fear in their
   hearts, that they shall not depart from Me?" He keeps the feet of His
   saints. "I give unto My sheep," He says, "eternal life and they shall
   never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand." Never
   shall we be deceived in our trust in Jesus! No man shall say, "I
   trusted the Lord Christ to keep me, but He has not kept me. I rested in
   Jesus to preserve me in spiritual life, but He has not preserved me."
   Never! We shall not be ashamed of our hope!

   II. As I have introduced to you that confidence which makes
   Believers--especially tried and experienced Believers-- full of hope
   which makes us not ashamed, my second objective is to dwell upon THE
   REASON OF THIS CONFIDENCE. Why is it that men who possess the good hope
   are so far from being ashamed of it that they rejoice in it?

   My answer, is first, because that hope has for one of its main supports
   the love of God . I expect, one day, to sit among the angels and to
   behold the face of my Best-Beloved, but I do not expect this because of
   anything in me, or anything which may ever be done by me, but simply
   because of the infinite love of God! I trust not to my love of God, but
   to God's Love to me! We trust Him because He loves us. We are sure that
   He will fulfill our hope because He is too loving to fail us. It is
   from the love of God that all our hopes begin and it is upon the love
   of God that all our hopes depend! If it were not for the Father's love,
   there had never been a Covenant of Grace. If it were not for His
   infinite love, no atoning Sacrifice had been provided. If it were not
   for His active love, no Holy Spirit would have quickened and renewed
   us. If it were not for His unchanging love, all that is good in us
   would soon pass away. If it were not for love almighty, love immutable,
   love unbounded, we would never hope to see the face of the King in His
   beauty in the land that is very far off. He loves us and, therefore, He
   leads us, feeds us and always keeps us. Do not your hearts confess
   this? If that love could be suspended for a moment--if its power were,
   for an instant, to cease, where would we be? We fall back upon the love
   of God as the final reason of our hope in Him.

   Observe, dear Brothers and Sisters, the actual cause of our confidence
   is that the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy
   Spirit. Let me try and explain what this means. The Holy Spirit is in
   the heart of every Believer and He is occupied in many gracious acts.
   Among other things, He sheds abroad the love of God in the heart in
   which He resides. The figure is taken from a box of precious perfume
   being poured out in a chamber. There lies the slumbering scent within
   the alabaster box--it is a very choice thing, but no one has yet
   perceived its odor. The love of God brought within the soul is that
   rare fragrance, but till it is shed abroad, it is not enjoyed. Now the
   Holy Spirit takes that box, opens it and the sweet savor of Divine Love
   streams forth and fills all the capacity of the Believer. This love
   penetrates, permeates, enters and occupies the entire being. A
   delightful perfume streams through the entire room when the odor of
   roses is poured out and even so, when the love of God is thought upon
   by the devout heart and the Holy Spirit helps its meditations, the
   theme fills the mind, the memory, the imagination, the reason and the
   affections! It is an engrossing subject and is not to be confined to
   any one faculty any more than you could keep the aroma of spices within
   a certain narrow space.

   Moreover, as perfume gives delight to the nostrils, so the love of God,
   when shed abroad in the power of the Holy Spirit, imparts a singular
   sweetness to our emotions. All the garments of the Lord of Love smell
   of myrrh, aloes and cassia. Where can such sweetness be as in the love
   of God ? That the eternal and the infinite One should really love men
   and love them at such a rate as He has done, is a Truth of God at once
   surprising and gladsome! It is a root from which springs the lily of
   perfect joy. This is an ivory palace wherein every dweller is made
   glad. You may meditate upon that love till you are ravished and carried
   away by it--and your soul, before you are aware, becomes like the
   chariots of Amminadib!

   Yet again, wherever perfume comes, it not only spreads itself abroad
   and gives delight to all who are in the place, but it abides there.
   Take the ointment away if you will, but the sweet odor remains for many
   an hour in the room which was once filled with it. Some scent appears
   to abide forever. You went to your drawer the other day and there was a
   delicious flavor of lavender, yet there had been no lavender there
   since last summer--fragrance lingers! A few drops of the true oil will
   perfume a wide space and remain long after the vase from which it was
   poured has been taken away. The love of God, when it comes into the
   heart and is shed abroad by the Holy Spirit, who is the great Master of
   the art of diffusing love, abides in the heart world without end! All
   other things may cease, but love abides. For a moment we may seem to
   forget the love of God amidst the business of the world, but no sooner
   is the pressure removed than we return unto our rest. The sweet perfume
   of Divine Love overcomes the rankness of the odor of sin and never
   quits the heart that has once known its exceeding deliciousness.

   If I change the figure, I may say that the love of God is shed abroad
   in the heart by the Holy Spirit like one of yonder rain clouds, black
   with exceeding blessing, which pours forth a shower of innumerable
   silver drops, fertilizing every place on which they fall, making the
   drooping herbs to lift up their heads and rejoice in the Heaven-sent
   revival! After a while, from that spot where the rain fell, there rises
   a gentle steam which ascends to Heaven and forms fresh clouds--thus is
   the love of God poured upon our heart and shed abroad in our nature
   till our spirit drinks it in and its new life is made to put forth its
   flowers of joy and fruits of holiness and, by-and-by, grateful praise
   ascends like the incense which in the Temple smoked upon Jehovah's
   altar. Love is shed abroad in us and it works upon our heart to love in
   return.

   To leave the figures--the shedding abroad of the love of God in the
   heart by the Holy Spirit means this--He imparts to us an intense
   appreciation and sense of that love. We have heard of it, believed in
   it and meditated upon it and, at last, we are overpowered by its
   greatness! "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten
   Son." We cannot measure such love! We become affected by it. We are
   filled with wonder and admiration. Its greatness, its singularity, its
   specialty, its infinity--all these amaze us! It is shed abroad in our
   hearts. Then there comes an appropriation of it. We cry, "He loved me
   and gave Himself for me." We begin to feel that God's love was not only
   love to men in general, but love to ourselves in particular and we are
   now fairly carried off our feet! In a belief of this special love to us
   we are ready to dance for joy. Faith perceives that it is even so and
   then we praise the Lord upon the high-sounding cymbals.

   Then follows, as a matter of course, that return of love which the
   human heart must feel--we love Him because He first loved us. We
   doubted His love once, but we cannot doubt it now. If we were asked
   three times, "Do you love Me?" we would answer humbly, but most
   emphatically, "Lord, You know all things, you know that I love You. I
   could not live without loving You. I would rather a thousand times that
   I had never been born than be without love to You and, though I do not
   love You as I ought, and my heart craves after a far greater love, yet
   I do love You in deed and in truth.

   You know that I do and I should be false to my own consciousness if I
   denied it." This is to have the love of God shed abroad in the heart by
   the Holy Spirit which is given to us--to know it, enjoy it, appropriate
   it, rejoice in it--and come under its Divine influence. May this bundle
   of myrrh never be removed from the chamber of my soul!

   But I want you to notice the special sweetness which struck our Apostle
   as being so amazingly noteworthy. He goes on to tell us what most
   affected him. He says, "When we were yet without strength, in due time
   Christ died for the ungodly." That is the first point to be dwelt
   upon--that God should give His Son to die for the ungodly. That God
   should love those who love Him, that God should love His renewed people
   who are striving after holiness is, indeed, delightful. But the most
   overpowering thought of all is that He loved us when there was nothing
   good in us whatever! He loved us from before the foundation of the
   world! Regarding us as being fallen and lost, His love resolved to send
   His Son to die for us! Jesus came not because we were good, but because
   we were evil! He gave Himself, not for our righteousness, but for our
   sins! The moving cause of love in God was not excellence in the
   creature then existing or foreseen to exist, but simply the good
   pleasure of the God of Love! Love was born of God, Himself. It was so
   great in the heart of God that--

   "He saw us ruined in the Fall Yet loved us notwithstanding all." He
   loved us when we hated Him! He loved us when we opposed Him, when we
   cursed Him, when we persecuted His people and blasphemed His ways.
   Marvelous fact! Oh, that the Holy Spirit would bring home that Truth of
   God to our hearts and make us feel its energy! I cannot put the thought
   fitly before you, much less shed it abroad within you, but the Holy
   Spirit can do it--and then how charmed you will be, how humbled and yet
   how full of praise to the Most High

   God!

   The Apostle is not content with bringing that point before us--he would
   not have us forget that Christ died for us. Brothers and Sisters, that
   Christ should love us in Heaven was a great thing. That He should then
   come down to earth and be born in Bethlehem was a greater thing. That
   He should live a life of obedience for our sakes was a wonderful thing.
   But that He should die--this is the climax of Divine Love's
   sacrifice--the summit of the Alp of love! Some sights in the world
   astonish us once or twice and then grow commonplace, but the Cross of
   Christ grows upon us. The more we know of it, the more it surpasses
   knowledge! To a saint who has been saved 2,000 years, the sacrifice of
   Calvary is even more a marvel than when first he saw it! That God,
   Himself, should take our nature and that in that nature He should die a
   death like that of a felon upon a gallows to save us, who were His
   enemies, is a thing which could not be believed if it had been told us
   on less authority than the Divine! It is altogether miraculous! And if
   you let it take possession of your soul until it is shed abroad in your
   heart by the Holy Spirit, you will feel that there is nothing worth
   knowing, believing, or admiring when compared with this! Nothing can
   ever rival in interest the Cross of Christ. Let us study what books we
   may, the knowledge of a crucified Savior will still remain the most
   sublime of all the sciences.

   Furthermore, the Apostle then goes on to say that the Lord must always
   love us, now that we are reconciled. He puts it thus--If God loved us
   when we were enemies, He will surely continue to love us, now that we
   are friends. If Jesus died for us when we were rebels, He will refuse
   us nothing, now that He has reconciled us. If He reconciled us by His
   death, surely He can and will save us by His life. If He died to
   reconcile enemies, surely He will preserve the reconciled. Do you see
   the whole argument? It is very full of reasons for the upholding of our
   hope of Glory and causing us not to be ashamed of it. When the great
   God makes us feel the exceeding greatness of His love, we banish all
   doubt and dread. We infer from the Character of His love as seen in the
   past that He cannot possibly cast us away in the future! What? Die for
   us and then leave us? What? Pour out His heart's blood for our
   redemption and yet permit us to be lost? Will He manifest Himself to us
   as He does not to the world, robed in the crimson of His own Atonement
   through death, and then will He, after all, say to us, "Depart, you
   cursed"? Impossible! He changes not! Our hope has for the keystone of
   its arch the unchanging love of Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today
   and forever! The Holy Spirit has so shed abroad the love of God in
   Christ Jesus in our hearts that we feel quite sure that no one can
   separate us from it and, so long as we are not divided from it, our
   hope of Glory is sure as the Throne of the Eternal!

   Once more--the Apostle reminds us in the 11th verse that, "we have now
   received the atonement." We already feel that we are at one with God.
   Through the Sacrifice of the Lord Jesus we are at peace with God. We
   love Him--our quarrel with Him is ended--we delight in Him, we long to
   glorify Him. Now this delightful sense of reconciliation is a
   satisfactory assurance of Grace and Glory. The hope of Glory burns in
   the golden lamp of a heart reconciled to God by Jesus

   Christ. Inasmuch as we are now in perfect accord with God, longing only
   to be and to do just what He would have us to be and to do, we have the
   beginnings of Heaven within us, the dawn of the perfect day! Grace is
   Glory in the bud. Agreement with God is the seed-corn of perfect
   holiness and perfect happiness. If we are under the dominion of
   holiness. If there is no wish in our soul but what we would take back
   if we knew it to be contrary to the mind of our holy Lord, then are we
   assured that He has accepted us and that we have His life in us and
   shall finally come to His Glory. He that has brought His enemies to be
   His hearty friends will not permit this gracious work to be undone, or
   His holy purpose to fail! In our present delight in God we have the
   earnest of our endless joy in Him and, therefore, we are not ashamed of
   our hope.

   One word more on this point--note well that the Apostle not only
   mentions the love of God and its being shed abroad in our hearts, but
   he mentions the Divine Person by whom this has been done. The shedding
   abroad of God's love in the heart has been worked by the Holy Spirit
   who has been given to us. Only by the Holy Spirit could this have been
   done. Would you ever have been charmed with the love of God through the
   influence of the devil? Would you ever have been overpowered and filled
   with excessive joy in the love of God through the power of your own
   fallen human nature? You judge! They that have felt the love of God
   shed abroad in their heart can say without a doubt, "This is the finger
   of God; the Holy Spirit has worked this in me." Nothing short of the
   Holy Spirit can effect it. "Thank God," says one, "I sat under an
   earnest ministry!" So you might and yet have never felt the love of God
   within your heart! We can shed that love abroad by preaching, but we
   cannot shed it abroad in the heart. A higher influence than that of
   human orator must deal with the inner nature!

   Perhaps you were alone in your chamber, or walking by the roadside when
   the sweet savor of Divine love stole into your soul. Oh the love of
   God! The amazing, immeasurable, incomprehensible love of the Father!
   Oh, to feel this till our very souls are inflamed with it and our
   unloving nature is all on fire with love to the great Lover of the
   souls of men! Who can do this but the Holy Spirit? And how come we to
   have the Holy Spirit but by the free gift of God, whose gifts and
   calling "are without repentance"? God does not give and take--His gifts
   are ours forever. If the Holy Spirit has been given to you, is He not
   the pledge of God's love? Does not the New Testament describe Him as
   the earnest of the inheritance? Is not an earnest the security for all
   the rest? Does the Holy Spirit set His seal to a document which, after
   all, is so faulty that it will not effect its purpose? Never! If the
   Holy Spirit dwells in you, He is the guarantee of everlasting joy.
   Where Grace is given by His Divine indwelling, Glory must follow it.
   The Holy Spirit, when He comes into the soul, comes that there He may
   take up His dwelling place--and there He will abide till we shall be
   caught up to the higher realms, to behold our Lord's face forever!

   III. Lastly, let us hint at THE RESULT OF THIS CONFIDENT HOPE. Let the
   context instruct us.

   First, this confident hope breeds inward joy. The man that knows that
   his hope of Glory will never fail him because of the great love of God,
   of which he has tasted, that man will hear music at midnight! The
   mountains and the hills will break forth before him into singing
   wherever he goes! Especially in times of tribulation he will be found
   "rejoicing in hope of the Glory of God." His most profound comfort will
   often be enjoyed in his deepest affliction because then the love of God
   will especially be revealed in his heart by the Holy Spirit, whose name
   is, "the Comforter." Then he will perceive that the rod is dipped in
   mercy, that his losses are sent in fatherly love and that his aches and
   pains are all measured out with gracious design. In our affliction, God
   is doing nothing to us which we should not wish for ourselves if we
   were as wise and loving as God is. O Friends! You do not need gold to
   make you glad! You do not even need health to make you glad--only get
   to know and feel Divine love and the fountains of delight are unsealed
   to you--you are introduced to the banquets of happiness!

   This brings with it the Grace of holy boldness in the avowal of our
   hope. Christian people do not often enough show worldlings the joy of
   their hope. We do not wear our best liveries, nor say enough of the joy
   of being in the Lord's service, nor speak enough of the wages which our
   Lord will pay at the end of the day. We are as silent as if we were
   ashamed of our hope! We even go mourning, although we have reason to be
   the happiest men on God's earth. I fear we have not enough experience
   of Divine love shed abroad in our hearts. If the perfume were within,
   it would be perceived by those who are around us. You pass a factory of
   perfume and at once perceive that sweetness steals abroad. Let us make
   worldlings know the fragrance of our joyous hope--especially let us
   tell those who seem most likely to laugh at us--for we have learned by
   experience that some of these are most likely to be impressed. Often
   has a new convert written to a

   worldly friend to tell him of his great change and of his new joy--and
   that worldly friend has put the letter aside with a sneer or a jest.
   But after a while he has thought it over and he has said to himself,
   "There may be something in it. I am a stranger to this joy of which my
   friend speaks and I certainly need all the joy I can get, for I am dull
   enough." Let me tell you that all worldlings are not such fools as some
   would take them for--they are aware of an unrest within their bosoms
   and they hunger after something better than this vain world can give
   them! So that it frequently happens that as soon as they learn where
   the good is, they accept it.

   Even if they do not hunger, I do not know any better way of making a
   man long for food than yourself to eat. The looker-on feels his mouth
   water. All of a sudden his appetite arrives. In the parable of the
   prodigal son, the servants were ordered to bring forth the best robe
   and put it on him and to put a ring on his hand and shoes on his
   feet--but the father did not tell them to take the son and make him
   eat! What he said was, "Let us eat and be merry." He knew that at the
   sight of others feasting, his hungry son would eat. When you who belong
   to the Divine family, eat and drink in happy fellowship and are merry
   with the Lord in feasting upon love Divine, the poor hungry brother
   will desire to join you and he will be encouraged to do so.

   Come, then, you that have a hope of Glory, let all men see that you are
   not ashamed of it! Act as decoys to others-- let the sweet notes of
   your happy life charm them to Jesus! May the Lord cause you to spread
   abroad what He has shed abroad and may that which perfumes your heart
   also perfume your house, your business, your conversation and your
   whole life! May we so enjoy true godliness that we may never bring
   shame upon it, nor feel shame concerning it!
     __________________________________________________________________

Healing and Pardon

   (No. 1905)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JUNE 20, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick: the people that dwell in
   it shall be forgiven their iniquity." Isaiah 33:24.

   This whole chapter was a gracious message from God to a people who were
   in extremis. They were made to drink the foulest dregs of sorrow
   through the invasion of the Assyrians. The highways were waste, the
   wayfarer ceased. The earth mourned and languished. Lebanon was ashamed
   and hewn down. Sharon was like a wilderness and Bashan and Carmel shook
   off their fruits. Then did God arise. When the worst had come to the
   worst, He laid bare His arm and brought deliverance for His people! Is
   not this a general rule with God? Is it not a Truth of God fraught with
   comfort to any of you whose day has darkened down into a seven-fold
   midnight? When nothing else is left you, God remains and God appears!
   When all your own strength fails you, your strength shall be to sit
   still while God arises and becomes your arm every morning, your
   salvation in the time of trouble!

   I would encourage all who are in spiritual distress to gather hope from
   this chapter, since it is addressed to Zion in her sore affliction. If
   it is really so, that the joys and blessings which are described in the
   passage before us come to a people who are driven to the last
   extremity, why should not such blessings come to you? We have often
   noted how the Lord delights to look upon the poor and needy and comes
   with succor to those who are in distress. It is the way of the Lord to
   look in pity upon those who are cast down. Lift up your heart to Him
   and cry unto Him out of the depth! Let your prayer rise to His Throne
   out of the low dungeon. Expect that He will be very pitiful and will
   have compassion upon you in your misery. Jerusalem was on the brink of
   destruction when the Lord answered the prayer of Hezekiah and smote the
   vast host of Assyria. The peril of Jerusalem serves as a dark
   background to bring out the brightness of my text. The city might have
   been destroyed by pestilence through its sins, but the Lord says, "The
   inhabitant shall not say, I am sick: the people that dwell in it shall
   be forgiven their iniquity."

   The great result of God's gracious dealings with His afflicted people
   is that they glorify His holy name. Observe how in this chapter God is
   spoken of as being "exalted, for He dwells on high." He is called, "the
   glorious Lord." Truly our Lord never appears more glorious than in the
   eyes of those who are brought low and humbled in their own esteem.
   Their distresses, out of which they are graciously delivered, call upon
   them to exalt their Savior! They hear a voice saying, "Oh that men
   would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to
   the children of men! For He has broken the gates of brass and cut the
   bars of iron in sunder." Our God gets little praise in this fair world
   which is a masterpiece of His skill, for man refuses to adore. Creation
   ought to make our voices ring out perpetual Psalms, for it is full of
   wonders! Providence ought, also, to keep us always making music upon an
   instrument of 10 strings, but, alas, we yield our praises to inferior
   workers. We are always backward and slow in the praises of the Lord.

   Will a man rob God? Yet we rob Him of His Glory. And so He brings us
   into straits, that He may display the majesty of His Grace and the
   infinity of His power in rescuing us. Then are we moved to astonishment
   and adoration! Then we burst forth into a song as we abundantly utter
   the memory of His great goodness! At sight of His amazing love, we
   magnify the Lord and ask others to magnify Him with us, that we may
   exalt His name together. This is as it should be--let it be so now. Oh,
   you that have tasted of the Lord's rich Grace in the hour of trouble,
   praise Him at this good hour! Let the hallelujahs of your soul go up to
   Him in the courts of the Lord's House. If you cannot speak out your
   praise, let it wait for God in Zion and unto Him let the vow be
   performed. Let your expressive silence mean the praise which you cannot

   sound forth with your tongue. The Holy Spirit who makes intercession in
   us with groans that cannot be uttered will also put into us praises
   inexpressible by words!

   As we saw in the reading of this chapter, the Prophet seems to take
   wing as he proceeds. He rises from note to note, as if, like David, he
   said, "Selah"--lift up the strain! He makes each note more high, more
   sweet, more loud than those which preceded it, for he sings unto Him
   that does great things for His people. The climax is in this
   verse--"The people that dwell in it shall be forgiven their iniquity."
   One of the highest notes of praise is in the 103rd Psalm--"Bless the
   Lord, O my Soul; who has forgiven all your iniquities, who heals all
   your diseases." Our text is another form of that verse--"The inhabitant
   shall not say, I am sick: the people that dwell in it shall be forgiven
   their iniquity." Healing and forgiveness are placed in happy
   conjunction and both bestowed on the Lord's people when they looked not
   for them.

   I shall speak upon our text thus, if the Holy Spirit will help me.
   First, there is such a thing as present forgiveness-- "The people that
   dwell in it shall be forgiven their iniquity." Secondly, with this
   forgiveness there comes the removal of the consequences of sin--"The
   inhabitant shall not say, I am sick." And, thirdly, this makes a
   remarkable change in the language of the favored people--"The
   inhabitant shall not say, I am sick." They shall be so greatly blessed
   that their language shall lose its complaining tone! They shall no
   longer sigh and lament. They shall now have other things to talk about
   than their own infirmities and sufferings. "The inhabitant shall not
   say, I am sick, the people that dwell in it shall be forgiven their
   iniquity."

   I. First, then, Beloved, I introduce to you a topic upon which I am
   sure you have no question, but still, it may do you good to be
   confirmed in the acknowledged Truth of God. THERE IS SUCH A THING AS
   THE PRESENT FORGIVENESS OF SIN. "The people that dwell in it shall be
   forgiven their iniquity."

   There must be a present conscious enjoyable pardon of sin, otherwise
   there would be no joy in the world for thoughtful minds. To the
   thoughtless and careless, there might be a flash in the pan, a noisy
   mirth as the crackling of thorns under a pot, but to the penitent, to
   the serious, to the careful, where could there be a spark of joy if sin
   were unforgiven? When we once begin to feel what sin is, to discern its
   true nature and to understand the just punishment which must follow
   upon it, we cannot rest under its condemnation. Though God should give
   us dainties from day to day, clothe us in scarlet and fine linen and
   set us among the princes of the earth, we would be restless--we would
   be wretched as long as sin preyed upon our heart. Sin--this casts
   darkness upon the sun, eclipsing its meridian light. Sin is the blast
   which withers all the flowers of life. Sin is the gall of bitterness--a
   drop of it would turn an ocean of pleasure into wormwood! Sin would
   again blight the Garden, could it be restored. Yes, it would turn
   Heaven into Hell could it enter there! Sin is a burden which an
   awakened conscience cannot bear. It crushes the spirit into the dust
   and threatens further to bear it down, even to the lowest Hell.

   But when sin is pardoned, then our hymn which we have just now been
   singing leaps joyfully to our lips--

   "Now, oh joy! My sins are pardoned." Is not this a necessary ingredient
   in that overflowing cup which the Lord puts to the lips of His redeemed
   ones? "Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God
   through Jesus Christ our Lord." But without that justification there
   can be no peace and no enjoyment of life. Believers are spoken of as a
   blessed people who joy in God--they are bid to always rejoice! The
   Apostle says, "Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice."
   Such rejoicing would be impossible if sin were not pardoned and,
   therefore, we conclude that sin may be pardoned, that it may be
   pardoned now and that we may know it! If forgiveness is essential to a
   state of mind which we are exhorted to exhibit, then forgiveness may be
   enjoyed at this present hour!

   Further, dear Brothers and Sisters, there must be forgiveness of sin,
   otherwise the main motive and fountain of love would be dried up.
   Forgiveness begets gratitude, gratitude creates love and love brings
   forth holiness. She that washed the Savior's feet with tears and wiped
   them with the hairs of her head--would she have done it if she had not
   loved much because she felt that much had been forgiven her? The motive
   power of action to a believing man lies hard by the realization that
   God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven his iniquities. When I see my
   Lord, His own Self, bearing my sins in His own body on the Cross and
   blotting out my faults forever by His death, then my spirit glows with
   love, my eyes stream with tears, my heart dedicates itself wholly to
   Jesus and my life begins to show the effect of my inward emotion!

   Sin forgiven leads to sin forsaken. Is it not so? Doubt whether you are
   forgiven and what can you do? Can you preach a Gospel which has not
   brought you pardon? Can you go into the Sunday school to try and bring
   little children

   to a Christ who has not forgiven you your sins? But understand that
   through the one great Sacrifice your iniquities are forever pardoned
   and then you must love the great Sacrifice and you must praise the Lord
   who gave Him to die for your sins! Is not this the song of the
   perfected--"Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His
   own blood, unto Him be Glory forever and ever"? There must be a
   consciousness of forgiveness, or our lives will be limp, weak,
   purposeless.

   It must be so, that sin can be pardoned and that we can know it,
   otherwise we would be always in bondage through fear of death. In what
   jeopardy would we stand every hour, since we might at once sink into
   Hell! The prospect of death-- how terrible would it be to us if sin
   still accused us unto God! Many of us now contemplate the approach of
   death with a calm, quiet patience of hope. As our years advance, we are
   not distressed with the thought that the time of our departure daily
   draws nearer. This world is not our rest and we do not desire to always
   live! We anticipate the hour when we

   shall--

   "Our body with our charge lay down,

   And cease at once to work and live." But how could this be if we
   enjoyed no sense of pardoned sin? It has been my intense delight to be
   with many members of this Church in the hour of their departure and I
   have invariably found them rejoicing in hope! I have sometimes heard
   them sing and I have joined in their holy hymns. More often I have
   heard their steady calm acknowledgement of their joy in the prospect of
   being "forever with the Lord." But how could this have been if sin had
   not been pardoned? Is not this true which we sing--

   "If sin is pardoned, I'm secure, Death has no sting beside! The law
   gives sin its damning power; But Christ, my Ransom, died"?

   "The sting of death is sin" and you cannot take away the sting of death
   if sin is not taken away! There could be no looking forward with
   expectancy if there were no acceptance in Christ! It would be
   impossible to be in a strait, as Paul was, when he said, "For I am in a
   strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ,
   which is far better." To be willing to be offered up and joyfully to
   say, "The time of my departure is at hand," would be utterly impossible
   if Believers did not know and, know of a certainty, that their sins are
   all forgiven! Once we cried, "Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow!"
   We were not in error in that prayer and now, that we have been washed
   and have heard our Master say, "You are clean every whit," we are not
   deluded! "We have joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we
   have received the atonement." We say at this hour, "O Lord, I will
   praise You! Though You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away
   and You comforted me." Has not the Lord declared, "I, even I, am He
   that blots out your transgressions for My own sake and will not
   remember your sins"? Yes, great Lord, it is even so! "There is
   forgiveness with You that You may be feared." There is a city whose
   inhabitants are forgiven their iniquities! Blessed be the Lord who
   passes by the trespasses of His people!

   Once more--there must be forgiveness, for otherwise the whole system of
   Grace would be a dead letter and its glorious privileges would be mere
   shells without a kernel. Where would be salvation, itself, without
   pardon? How could we be saved from our sins if not forgiven? What
   glorious Gospel could there be if sin could not be cancelled? We read
   of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, "to as many as received Him, to them
   gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on
   His name." But how can we be sons under condemnation? How shall I
   reckon myself to be a beloved child if my Father is still my Judge and
   holds over me the sword of Justice? "Your sins which are many are
   forgiven you," is necessary before the spirit of adoption can enter, to
   make us cry, "Abba, Father!" There is certainly no possibility of
   acceptance or justification while sin is unforgiven! I have already
   shown you that there is no motive to seek sanctification if we are
   hopelessly condemned for sin. What is even the gift of Christ, Himself,
   if He does not put away our sin? The whole of the blessings of the
   Gospel seem to me to have lost their charm unless, first of all, there
   is cleansing from all iniquity.

   Let us now bend our thoughts to a consideration of this great blessing
   as it is treated of in this chapter. It is plainly promised in the
   text, "The people that dwell in it shall be forgiven their iniquity."
   Nor is this a lone word--the same is often declared. I will not occupy
   your time by quoting the many passages of Scripture in which the pardon
   of sin is expressly promised. Is it not in the Covenant, "I will
   forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more"? "He
   that believes is justified from all things from which he could not be
   justified by the Law of Moses." Pardon is a promised

   blessing. It is God's prerogative to forgive and He delights to
   exercise it. He says expressly, "I will pardon them whom I reserve." He
   has pardoned, He does pardon, He will pardon. So stands the Covenant of
   Love!

   If we wish to obtain this free pardon, it will be granted in answer to
   prayer. Read the second verse, "O Lord, be gracious unto us." This is
   short, but full. There is sound doctrine in that cry. "The people that
   dwell in it shall be forgiven their iniquity" is a suitable answer to
   that petition. If you want pardon of Him who is waiting to be gracious,
   seek it! It is to be had without money and without price by the man who
   will stretch out his empty hand to take it. It is all of Grace. If you
   will have it, God is ready to grant it in answer to your humble cry.
   "Where sin abounded, Grace does much more abound." The Lord Jesus is
   exalted on high "to give repentance and remission of sins." "If we
   confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." Go
   to your knees and see if the Lord will not be gracious to you!

   Pardon is given in connection with the exaltation of God. Read the
   fifth verse--"The Lord is exalted." He does not grant this forgiveness
   until we begin to recognize that He is a great God and a Savior. We
   must see that He is great in justice and we must bow in penitence and
   honor that justice! And then we must get some thought of the greatness
   of His love in giving His Son to die that He might justly forgive us.
   The greatness of our Lord's compassion in passing by iniquity,
   transgression and sin must be confessed or we shall never find pardon.
   Friend, you will never get mercy for your great sin from a little God!
   He must be a great God to you, or you will never receive the great
   mercy you need. You must learn to say of Him, "Who is a God like unto
   You, that pardons iniquity and passes by transgression?" Low thoughts
   of God create doubts of pardon and doubt holds us in bondage under sin.
   But high thoughts of God beget hope in the soul and hope leads to
   confidence--and confidence brings assurance of forgiveness.

   God grants pardon when men are humbled. See the seventh verse--"Their
   valiant ones shall cry without: the ambassadors of peace shall weep
   bitterly." Crying and weeping are good preparations for pardon. In the
   dust of self-abasement is the place for hope. Jeremiah says of the
   afflicted, "He puts his mouth in the dust; if so there may be hope."
   God never pardons the proud--He knows them "afar off," and has enough
   of them at a distance. With the humble and contrite He dwells,
   delighting to hear them honor His Law by bemoaning their breaches of
   it. When you say, "God be merciful to me a sinner," though you dare not
   lift up your eyes to Heaven, the eyes of Heaven look down on you. You
   shall go to your house justified if, in God's Grace, you have confessed
   yourself to be condemned. God also grants this pardon when the heart is
   searched. Read the 14th verse--"The sinners in Zion are afraid;
   fearfulness has surprised the hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with
   the devouring fire?" When we begin to examine ourselves, to fear
   because of sin and to turn from all hypocrisy, then the Lord will
   accept us. There must be a laying aside of all insincerity, a dealing
   with God in truth, before the gracious God can put away our iniquity.
   Sincerity is indispensable to mercy. How can the Lord be other than a
   devouring fire to hypocrites?

   God will also pardon us when He is acknowledged to be our Ruler and
   Lord. Look at the 22nd verse--"The Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our
   Lawgiver, the Lord is our King." Will you have God to reign over you?
   If so, He will forgive you, but if you will continue to rebel, His
   wrath shall abide upon you. How can you receive the kiss of love if you
   do not give the kiss of allegiance? "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry."
   Accept His rule and He will accept your prayer. We must love His Law or
   we cannot be discharged from its curse. Be willing to obey and He is
   ready to forgive.

   He will also forgive us when we put our trust in Him. Read the last
   clause of the 22nd verse--"He will save us." Faith must look for
   salvation only from the Lord and then salvation will come to it. Oh,
   how I wish that some poor heart here present would cry this morning,
   "He will save me! I will take Him to be my King and my Lawgiver, and I
   will believe for myself that He will have me!" It is that touch of
   personal faith which brings peace to the soul. If you will not trust
   God, neither shall you have peace. But if you will come now, just as
   you are, and believe that He is able to forgive you and trust Him to do
   so, then you shall have this promise verified in your experience--"The
   people that dwell in it shall be forgiven their iniquity."

   Is not this a large promise? One might descant upon it by the week
   together and, indeed, one might rejoice in it to all eternity! I leave
   it to your quiet musings. If the Prophet says, "Your heart shall
   meditate terror," viewing it as past and gone, how much more may you
   muse on mercy, world without end, viewing it as forever your own?

   II. Now, with extreme brevity, I want, in the second place, to say that
   WHEN SIN IS PARDONED, THE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN ARE ALSO REMOVED. Sin had
   made these people sick as Isaiah says in his first chapter--"The whole
   head is sick, and the whole heart faint." But when iniquity is
   forgiven, then, "the inhabitant shall not say, I am

   sick." Special chastisement is usually removed when any peculiar sin is
   forgiven. God, under a former age, very manifestly visited sin with
   chastisement in this life and when He forgave it, He removed the weight
   of His hand from the offender. Read the history of Israel and see a
   host of instances. There are still instances in which personal
   chastisement does follow personal sin in this life, especially among
   Believers and especially among Believers in Church fellowship. We read
   of the Corinthians, when they misbehaved themselves, "For this cause
   some are sickly among you, and many sleep." Within the chosen family
   there are chastisements unknown to the outside world. But when we go
   with our confession and find pardon of the Lord, the temporal
   chastisement is usually removed, or else it is so changed in its
   purpose as to become quite another thing. Oftentimes, also, great
   sinners who have, by their gross misconduct, brought themselves into
   grievous trouble, have found no way of escape from it till their evil
   ways have been forsaken. The valley of Achor has been their door of
   hope. Where they have bewailed their fault, they have received
   deliverance. When the root of bitterness is taken away, the evil which
   grows out of it has also been removed. When Nineveh repented, its
   threatened destruction was averted.

   But, further, when I speak of the consequences of sin being taken away,
   this is very apparent in respect of certain sins. A man being a drunk
   brings himself to poverty--he asks forgiveness for the drunkenness and
   he ceases from it. By honest industry his abject poverty is soon ended.
   Within a few weeks you see a difference in the very aspect of the man.
   Oftentimes when, by some sin of impurity, a sinner weakens his body and
   injures his health, his cure is much helped by his repenting and
   forsaking his uncleanness. It may not be so with some great
   transgressions, for they may leave scars which cannot be healed in this
   life, but true repentance will turn even these into a means of
   humiliation and make them serve as safeguards against any return to
   folly. When sins are frankly confessed and forsaken, then the gracious
   message comes-- "The Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die."

   Further, in the case of Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, if some of
   the temporal results of sin do not cease, yet it is only in appearance
   that they remain, or rather they remain for other purposes, benign and
   useful--not as wrathful inflictions. If by past sin one has brought
   himself into a state of sickness, or poverty, or depression, these may
   leave their traces upon him, but from the day in which he finds pardon,
   these will not be punishments inflicted by a Judge, but chastisements
   lovingly appointed by a Father. A father may chasten his child very
   severely, but this is not the same as pain inflicted by the sentence of
   a judge. It is one thing for a parent to shut his child in a room
   because he has done wrong, but it is quite another thing for a
   magistrate to send him to prison for a crime! The act may seem the
   same, but the feeling of the authority commanding the chastisement is
   very different. Believers do not escape the sorrows of this life, but
   then, no sorrow that comes to a Christian is sent as a penal
   infliction. It is not sent as a vindication of Law, but as a tender
   parental discipline. Vast is the difference between the chastisement of
   love and the infliction of justice. To the forgiven man, "all things
   work together for good," yes, even those things which naturally follow
   upon the sin which is now forgiven. The curse is turned into a
   blessing! The poison acts as a medicine! That which kills the
   impenitent helps the cure of a Believer!

   Yes, look at death itself. Do Christians die as a punishment for sin?
   God forbid! God lays no punishment on those who have accepted Jesus as
   their Substitute, for He has borne the whole of their punishment and it
   is not possible that God should exact punishment twice--first at the
   hands of their Surety--and then again at their own. Death is no
   punishment to the Believer--it is the gate of endless joy! It is not
   death to die, now that Jesus has died, yes, rather, has risen and gone
   into Glory on our behalf! We thank God that the bitterness of death is
   past. Death itself is mentioned in the list of our possessions--"All
   things are yours, whether life or death." Maybe we shall not die at
   all, for our Lord may come all of a sudden and if He comes while we are
   alive and remain we shall not sleep, though we shall all be changed in
   a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. Rest
   assured, Believer, that since God has forgiven your sins, He has dried
   up the well of bitterness and you shall drink no more of it. Or, if it
   seems to come to your lips, it shall be so changed in its character
   that it shall be a healing draught!

   Believe, once more, that all the eternal penal consequences are gone
   from the forgiven man. For him there can be no condemnation at the Day
   of Judgement! For him there can be no, "Depart, you cursed!" For him
   there is no blackness of darkness forever! For him no worm that dies
   not, no fire that never can be quenched! In Christ Jesus he stands
   before God as if he had never sinned! Yes, he wears the perfect
   righteousness of Christ and, arrayed in that precious robe, he can face
   the terrors of the last tremendous day without alarm! "Who shall lay
   anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God

   that justifies. Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died, yes,
   rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who
   also makes intercession for us." Sin gone, the root of all evil is
   gone! "Comfort you, comfort you My people, says your God. Speak you
   comfortably to Jerusalem and cry unto her, that her warfare is
   accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she has received of
   the Lord's hand double for all her sins."

   III. The specialty of what I want to say lies in my last point--that
   THE LORD EVEN CHANGES THE TONE OF

   HIS PEOPLE'S SPEECH. "The inhabitant shall not say, I am sick." That is
   the point! Why shall they not say, "I am sick"?

   First, they have no need to say it when the Lord comes and dwells with
   them, for the Sun of Righteousness has risen upon them with healing in
   His wings. When Jesus healed the sick of the palsy, He said to him,
   "Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you." Pardon and healing
   were one! Spiritually the pardoned one shall not need to say, "I am
   sick," because his soul diseases then receive a healing medicine.

   All spiritual disease receives its deathblow when sin is forgiven. Sin
   is crucified by the same Cross which brings Atonement. You may have to
   struggle with it, for the corruption of the flesh still remains, but
   "sin shall not have dominion over you; for you are not under the Law,
   but under Grace." The Lord's name, to the forgiven one, is
   Jehovah-Rophi--"The Lord Who Heals You." Albeit, you may feel full of
   distempers, any one of which might be fatal to you if left alone, yet
   in the reception of pardon, there comes to you a new life which will
   conquer all those distempers. "Whoever is born of God, sins not." The
   new nature sins not. John says, "Whoever is born of God does not commit
   sin," that is to say he cannot sin as others do--it is not the rule and
   drift of his life. There is a change worked in the Believer of the most
   wonderful kind, as it is written, "A new heart, also, will I give them,
   and a right spirit will I put within them. I will put My fear in their
   heart, and they shall not depart from Me." Now though we can say that
   the old nature is sick and sick to death, so that the sooner it is
   utterly destroyed the better, yet speaking of ourselves as renewed by
   the Holy Spirit we delight in the Law of God after the inward man. God
   has made us to be holy in our desires and aspirations--and has renewed
   the image of His own perfect Self within us, so that we have no longer
   need to say, "I am sick."

   Here, also, is a very wonderful point in the passage before us
   concerning danger averted, for you know that when a city is besieged,
   one of the most certain consequences in old times was the plague. The
   inhabitants could not get out to receive fresh air. They were denied
   necessary provisions and so they became faint and ready to be preyed
   upon by pestilence. Yet the Lord promised that when He worked
   deliverance for the cooped up inhabitants of Jerusalem they should not
   say, as other besieged citizens do, "I am sick." I will take up my
   parable and show the spiritual parallel to this. God will avert the
   pestilence of sin from pardoned men. They shall be preserved from those
   moral pests which slay their thousands. You were once the victim of
   every fever of sin, but now your sin is forgiven. You pass unharmed
   through the temptations which surround you. God will preserve the true
   Believer from the malaria of corruption which is in the world through
   lust. He shall be "kept by the power of God through faith unto
   salvation." You shall not be obliged to say, "I am sick," because
   others are so, for the Lord shall keep you from the pestilence that
   walks in darkness, even from insidious and deceitful errors and sins.
   Remember that marvelous promise, "The Lord shall preserve you from all
   evil: He shall preserve your soul." The Lord shall preserve your going
   out and your coming in. In answer to your morning prayer, "Lead us not
   into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One," you shall be
   preserved in purity and uprightness and from all the devices of the
   devil, for "that Evil One touches you not."

   Here, again, is another point. The inhabitant could not say, "I am
   sick," and yet the Assyrians died in a single night. They laid
   themselves down to slumber in their tents, expecting speedily to divide
   the spoil--

   "But the angel of death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in
   the face of the foe as he passed. And the eyes of the sleepers waxed
   deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved and forever grew
   still." The Lord, in this case, put a difference between His people and
   their enemies. Multitudes died outside, but inside the city, where you
   might have expected things to be much worse, the inhabitant did not
   say, "I am sick." Today we live in an age when sin abounds--a moral
   pestilence is slaying its thousands. I dare not describe what is going
   on in the camp beyond, into which we have no desire to enter, but the
   Lord is a wall of fire around His people! If your sin is forgiven, the
   plague of deadly sin shall not come near your dwelling! Even to the end
   shall the Lord watch over you, so that, preserved in

   moral sanity, you shall not have need to say, "I am sick." On the
   contrary, you shall sing, "He restores my soul: He leads me in the
   paths of righteousness for His name's sake."

   Next, they shall have no thought of saying, "I am sick." He that feels
   the joy of pardoned sin forgets all his pains and griefs. In my own
   body I know what it is to be vexed with sore pains and yet to feel such
   rest of heart that I have felt no desire to complain. When we rejoice
   in Divine love we make small account of our bodily condition! If deaf,
   blind, or otherwise full of infirmities of the flesh, we make small
   reckoning of the whole when we know the joy of pardoned sin. The
   inhabitant shall not say, "I am sick," because he says, "I am
   forgiven." The Lord gives to His people, at times, such peace and joy
   in believing that though they are poor, they do not say, "I am poor,"
   but sing, "I am forgiven, I am forgiven!" A Brother had grievously
   offended and had been put out from Church fellowship for his sin. He so
   behaved that his pastor thought of him with pain and was glad to avoid
   an interview with him, for it only produced a sad attempt at
   self-justification. At length the Lord brought him to a better mind. He
   sought his pastor and said, with tears, "Will you shake hands with me?"
   The pastor replied, "Right gladly. I rejoice to feel that the past is
   all forgiven. How are you?" The repentant one made this reply, "I am
   quite well, now that you restore me to your esteem." The poor man was
   extremely ill, but the joy of being once more in his old place in his
   friend's thoughts made him refuse to say, "I am sick." The news of
   victory has made lame men leap. How much more shall it be so when the
   Lord Jesus manifests His power to save and the Holy Spirit assures the
   heart of blood-bought pardon? Then, indeed, "The inhabitant shall not
   say, I am

   sick."

   Many a child of God, when weary, has renewed his strength at the
   remembrance of pardoning mercy. Though almost spent, the assured
   Believer has gone on preaching, or visiting the sick, or conducting his
   Bible class, because he has felt under such obligations to his Lord
   that he could go on till he dropped. When a torrent of joy streams
   through the soul, it bears it right over all hindrances caused by
   weakness or weariness. Since Jesus has saved us, we ask no discharge
   from His service because we are sick--our love to Him acts as a tonic
   and strengthens us. We keep our name on the muster-roll, take our place
   in the ranks and feel that till we die we will not ask to be excused so
   long as we can creep out at our Master's call!

   I find some read this sentence in the past tense--"The inhabitant shall
   not say, I have been sick." The joy of pardon makes us ignore the
   sorrow of the past. "You shall not remember the reproach of your
   widowhood any more." Since their enemies were all gone, the citizens of
   Jerusalem rejoiced in their safety and said nothing about what they had
   suffered. Many of the sick left their couches, crowded the battlements
   and looked out with pleasure towards the quarter where the foe had
   been. The Assyrian power was broken--the great king had fled! The men
   of Jerusalem forgot they had been half-starved and that the plague had
   been among them. The inhabitant did not say, "I am sick." Their misery
   was swallowed up in victory. Glory be to God for such mercy as this!
   When God changes our estate from condemnation to acceptance, then is
   our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with singing because "the
   Lord has done great things for us, of which we are glad."

   Again, these people did not say they were sick since they had a motive
   for not saying so. You remember a late sermon upon the four lepers who
   went out and divided the spoil? [Sermon #1908, Who Found It Out?] They
   did not say, "We are lepers"--that was forgotten and they entered tents
   as if they had been in health. They went into one pavilion and ate and
   drank. And then they went into another. Men free from leprosy could not
   have made themselves more at home! They took away gold and silver and
   hid it, though they were lepers. So, when the Lord pardons our sin,
   there is a prey to be taken--riches of Grace are at our disposal.
   Notice the verse that comes before the text, "The lame take the prey."
   Doubtless, this was literally true--numbers of persons in Jerusalem
   were scarcely able to get about, for some had rheumatism and others had
   broken bones, so that they could hardly limp along the public way. But
   when it was announced that the rich camp of the Assyrians was to be
   spoiled, the lame made a shift to be there! Old women quite decrepit
   and men who had long kept their beds suddenly rose to activity and none
   of them said, "I am sick." They had a motive for getting well,
   directly, for great wealth was to be had by the gatherer! From a
   pardoning God there are such mercies and such blessings to be received
   that we who have little faith and are weak in heart, suddenly find our
   spirits revive and we gather our share of Divine gifts! A sense of
   pardon strengthens the weak hands and confirms the feeble knees and we
   become mighty to lay hold upon the benefits of the Covenant!

   The inhabitant did not say, "I am sick," for the time was come for
   glorifying the God of Israel! Everybody was shouting, "Hallelujah!" up
   and down the streets of Jerusalem--who could say, "I am sick"? Children
   were singing and young men and maidens were dancing because Judah was
   free from her foe! And even the sick folk merged their sighs and groans
   in songs and Psalms. Jehovah had triumphed! His people were free and it
   seemed to be with the people of Jerusalem as it was with Israel in
   Egypt--"there was not one feeble person in all their tribes." When the
   Lord pardons our sin, the weakest, the feeblest, the most despondent,
   the most despairing among us will not say, "We are sick," but our soul
   shall magnify the Lord! Pardon impels us to duty and stimulates us to
   praise! We no longer mourn and murmur, but we sing because the might of
   the enemy has melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

   Yet once again, and I have done. Pardoned people shall not say they are
   sick, for by a little anticipation they shall declare the very
   contrary. In a little time--how little a time none of us can tell--we
   shall be where the inhabitant shall never be sick again! The Lord has
   begun to heal us and the healing virtue which His Grace has infused
   into us will work us health and cure till we shall be without spot or
   wrinkle, or any such thing! His salvation will also perfectly heal our
   bodies. Today the body is dead because of sin, though the spirit is
   life because of righteousness. The regeneration of the body takes place
   at the Resurrection and when we shall rise again, it will be in the
   image of the Lord Jesus! It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power!
   We shall not rise with dim eyes, dull ears, deformed limbs, or feeble
   frames. Having eaten the leaves of the Tree of Life, we shall be healed
   of all that ailed us here below! We are on our way to eternal health!
   We have the life within us which is to be perfect forever and ever!

   Why should we, then, say, "I am sick"? If a man could be quite sure
   that he would be in perfect health, tomorrow, he would say little about
   the sickness of an hour. A blind man who will see, tomorrow, hardly
   numbers himself with the blind! Before another Sabbath comes round,
   some of you may be with the angels, yes, before tomorrow's sun shall
   rise you may be where they "need no candle, neither light of the sun."
   Happy men to be so nearly well--so nearly Home! Happy beings who shall
   so soon be--

   "Far from a world of grief and sin, With God eternally shut in!"

   Then shall you realize the fullest meaning of these words, "The
   inhabitant shall not say, I am sick: the people that dwell in it shall
   be forgiven their iniquity."

   Who comes this way? Who comes this way? Welcome, Brothers and Sisters,
   to pardon and healing through our Lord Jesus. Who is going the other
   way? Let such a sad wanderer consider his way, retrace his steps and
   seek his God who, in Christ Jesus, can heal him! O you who are now sick
   unto death, ask to be forgiven and healing will come from the pardoning
   hand. God bless you! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                          How To Become Fishers of Men

   A Sermon

   (No. 1906)

   Delivered by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [7]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "And Jesus saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of
   men."--Matthew 4:19.

   WHEN CHRIST CALLS US by his grace we ought not only to remember what we
   are, but we ought also to think of what he can make us. It is, "Follow
   me, and I will make you." We should repent of what we have been, but
   rejoice in what we may be. It is not "Follow me, because of what you
   are already." It is not "Follow me, because you may make something of
   yourselves;" but, "Follow me, because of what I will make you." Verily,
   I might say of each one of us as soon as we are converted, "It doth not
   yet appear what we shall be." It did not seem a likely thing that lowly
   fishermen would develop into apostles; that men so handy with the net
   would be quite as much at home in preaching sermons and in instructing
   converts. One would have said, "How can these things be? You cannot
   make founders of churches out of peasants of Galilee." That is exactly
   what Christ did; and when we are brought low in the sight of God by a
   sense of our own unworthiness, we may feel encouraged to follow Jesus
   because of what he can make us. What said the woman of a sorrowful
   spirit when she lifted up her song? "He raiseth up the poor out of the
   dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among
   princes." We cannot tell what God may make of us in the new creation,
   since it would have been quite impossible to have foretold what he made
   of chaos in the old creation. Who could have imagined all the beautiful
   things that came forth from darkness and disorder by that one fiat,
   "Let there be light?" And who can tell what lovely displays of
   everything that is divinely fair I lay yet appear in a man's formerly
   dark life, when God's grace has said to him, "Let there be light?" O
   you who see in yourselves at present nothing that is desirable, come
   you and follow Christ for the sake of what he can make out of you. Do
   you not hear his sweet voice calling to you, and saying, "Follow me,
   and I will make you fishers of men?"

   Note, next, that we are not made all that we shall be, nor all that we
   ought to desire to be, when we are ourselves fished for and caught.
   This is what the grace of God does for us at first; but it is not all.
   We are like the fishes, making sin to be our element; and the good Lord
   comes, and with the gospel net he takes us, and he delivers us from the
   life and love of sin. But he has not wrought for us all that he can do,
   nor all that we should wish him to do, when he has done this; for it is
   another and a higher miracle to make us who were fish to become
   fishers--to make the saved ones saviours--to make the convert into a
   converter--the receiver of the gospel into an imparter of that same
   gospel to other people. I think I may say to every person whom I am
   addressing--If you are saved yourself, the work is but half done until
   you are employed to bring others to Christ. You are as yet but half
   formed in the image of your Lord. You have not attained to the full
   development of the Christ-life in you unless you have commenced in some
   feeble way to tell to others of the grace of God: and I trust that you
   will find no rest to the sole of your foot till you have been the means
   of leading many to that blessed Savior who is your confidence and your
   hope. His word is--Follow me, not merely that you may be saved, nor
   even that you may be sanctified; but, "Follow me, and I will make you
   fishers of men." Be following Christ with that intent and aim; and fear
   that you are not perfectly following him unless in some degree he is
   making use of you to be fishers of men. The fact is, that every one of
   us must take to the business of a mancatcher. If Christ has caught us,
   we must catch others. If we have been apprehended of him, we must be
   his constables, to apprehend rebels for him. Let us ask him to give us
   grace to go a-fishing, and so to cast our nets that we may take a great
   multitude of fishes. Oh that the Holy Ghost may raise up from among us
   some master-fishers, who shall sail their boats in many a sea, and
   surround great shoals of fish!

   My teaching at this time will be very simple, but I hope it will be
   eminently practical; for my longing is that not one of you that love
   the Lord may be backward in his service. What says the Song of Solomon
   concerning certain sheep that come up from the washing? It says, "Every
   one beareth twins, and none is barren among them." May that be so with
   all the members of this church, and all the Christian people that hear
   or read this sermon! The fact is, the day is very dark. The heavens are
   lowering with heavy thunder-clouds. Men little dream of what tempests
   may soon shake this city, and the whole social fabric of this land,
   even to a general breaking up of society. So dark may the night become
   that the stars may seem to fall like blighted fruit from the tree. The
   times are evil. Now, if never before, every glow-worm must show its
   spark. You with the tiniest farthing candle must take it from under the
   bushel, and set it on a candlestick. There is need of you all. Lot was
   a poor creature. He was a very, very wretched kind of believer; but
   still, he might have been a great blessing to Sodom had he but pleaded
   for it as he should have done. And poor, poor Christians, as I fear
   many are, one begins to value every truly converted soul in these evil
   days, and to pray that each one may glorify the Lord. I pray that every
   righteous man, vexed as he is with the conversation of the wicked, may
   be more importunate in prayer than he has ever been, and return unto
   his God, and get more spiritual life, that he may be a blessing to the
   perishing people around him. I address you, therefore, at this time
   first of all upon this thought. Oh that the Spirit of God may make each
   one of you feel his personal responsibility!

   Here is for believers in Christ, in order to their usefulness,
   something for them to do. "Follow me." But, secondly, here is something
   to be done by their great Lord and Master: "Follow me, and I will make
   you fishers of men." You will not grow into fishers of yourselves, but
   this is what Jesus will do for you if you will but follow him. And
   then, lastly, here is a good illustration, used according to our great
   Master's wont; for scarcely without a parable did he speak unto the
   people. He presents us with an illustration of what Christian men
   should be--fishers of men. We may get some useful hints out of it, and
   I pray the Holy Spirit to bless them to us.

   I. First, then, I will take it for granted that every believer here
   wants to be useful. If he does not, I take leave to question whether he
   can be a true believer in Christ. Well, then, if you want to be really
   useful, here is SOMETHING FOR YOU TO DO TO THAT END: "Follow me, and I
   will make you fishers of men."

   What is the way to become an efficient preacher? "Young man," says one,
   "go to college." "Young man," says Christ, "follow me, and I will make
   you a fisher of men." How is a person to be useful? "Attend a
   training-class," says one. Quite right; but there is a surer answer
   than that--Follow Jesus, and he will make you fishers of men. The great
   training-school for Christian workers has Christ at its head; and he is
   at its head, not only as a tutor, but as a leader: we are not only to
   learn of him in study, but to follow him in action. "Follow me, and I
   will make you fishers of men." The direction is very distinct and
   plain, and I believe that it is exclusive, so that no man can become a
   fisherman by any other process. This process may appear to be very
   simple; but assuredly it is most efficient. The Lord Jesus Christ, who
   knew all about fishing for men, was himself the Dictator of the rule,
   "Follow me, if you want to be fishers of men. If you would be useful,
   keep in my track."

   I understand this, first, in this sense: be separate unto Christ. These
   men were to leave their pursuits; they were to leave their companions;
   they were, in fact, to quit the world, that their one business might
   be, in their Master's name, to be fishers of men. We are not all called
   to leave our daily business, or to quit our families. That might be
   rather running away from the fishery than working at it in God's name.
   But we are called most distinctly to come out from among the ungodly,
   and to be separate, and not to touch the unclean thing. We cannot be
   fishers of men if we remain among men in the same element with them.
   Fish will not be fishers. The sinner will not convert the sinner. The
   ungodly man will not convert the ungodly man; and, what is more to the
   point, the worldly Christian will not convert the world. If you are of
   the world, no doubt the world will love its own; but you cannot save
   the world. If you are dark, and belong to the kingdom of darkness, you
   cannot remove the darkness. If you march with the armies of the wicked
   one, you cannot defeat them. I believe that one reason why the church
   of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is
   because the world has so much influence over the church. Nowadays we
   hear Nonconformists pleading that they may do this and they may do
   that--things which their Puritan forefathers would rather have died at
   the stake than have tolerated. They plead that they may live like
   worldlings, and my sad answer to them, when they crave for this
   liberty, is, "Do it if you dare. It may not do you much hurt, for you
   are so bad already. Your cravings show how rotten your hearts are. If
   you have a hungering after such dog's meat, go, dogs, and eat the
   garbage. Worldly amusements are fit food for mere pretenders and
   hypocrites. If you were God's children you would loathe the very
   thought of the world's evil joys, and your question would not be, 'How
   far may we be like the world?' but your one cry would be, 'How far can
   we get away from the world? How much can we come out from it?'" Your
   temptation would be rather to become sternly severe, and
   ultra-Puritanical in your separation from sin, in such a time as this,
   than to ask, "How can I make myself like other men, and act as they
   do?" Brethren, the use of the church in the world is that it should be
   like salt in the midst of putrefaction; but if the salt has lost its
   savor, what is the good of it? If it were possible for salt itself to
   putrefy, it could but be an increase and a heightening of the general
   putridity. The worst day the world ever saw was when the sons of God
   were joined with the daughters of men. Then came the flood; for the
   only barrier against a flood of vengeance on this world is the
   separation of the saint from the sinner. Your duty as a Christian is to
   stand fast in your own place and stand out for God, hating even the
   garment spotted by the flesh, resolving like one of old that, let
   others do as they will, as for you and your house, you will serve the
   Lord.

   Come, ye children of God, you must stand out with your Lord outside the
   camp. Jesus calls to you to-day, and says, "Follow me." Was Jesus found
   at the theater? Did he frequent the sports of the racecourse? Was Jesus
   seen, think you, in any of the amusements of the Herodian court? Not
   he. He was "holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners." In
   one sense no one mixed with sinners so completely as he did when, like
   a physician, he went among them healing his patients; but in another
   sense there was a gulf fixed between the men of the world and the
   Savior which he never essayed to cross, and which they could not cross
   to defile him. The first lesson which the church has to learn is this:
   Follow Jesus into the separated state, and he will make you fishers of
   men. Unless you take up your cross and protest against an ungodly
   world, you cannot hope that the holy Jesus will make you fishers of
   men.

   A second meaning of our text is very obviously this: abide with Christ,
   and then you will be made fishers of men. These disciples whom Christ
   called were to come and live with him. They were every day to be
   associated with him. They were to hear him teach publicly the
   everlasting gospel, and in addition they were to receive choice
   explanations in private of the word which he had spoken. They were to
   be his body-servants and his familiar friends. They were to see his
   miracles and hear his prayers; and, better still, they were to be with
   himself, and become one with him in his holy labor. It was given to
   them to sit at the table with him, and even to have their feet washed
   by him. Many of them fulfilled that word, "Where thou dwellest I will
   dwell:" they were with him in his afflictions and persecutions. They
   witnessed his secret agonies; they saw his many tears; they marked the
   passion and the compassion of his soul, and thus, after their measure,
   they caught his spirit, and so they learned to be fishers of men.

   At Jesus' feet we must learn the art and mystery of soul-winning to
   live with Christ is the best education for usefulness. It is a great
   boon to any man to be associated with a Christian minister whose heart
   is on fire. The best training for a young man is that which the Vaudois
   pastors were wont to give, when each old man had a young man with him
   who walked with him whenever he went up the mountainside to preach, and
   lived in the house with him, and marked his prayers and saw his daily
   piety. This was a fine instruction. Was it not? But it will not compare
   with that of the apostles who lived with Jesus himself, and were his
   daily companions. Matchless was the training of the twelve. No wonder
   that they became what they were with such a heavenly tutor to saturate
   them with his own spirit! And now to-day his bodily presence is not
   among us; but his spiritual power is perhaps more fully known to us
   than it was to those apostles in those two or three years of the Lord's
   corporeal presence. There be some of us to whom he is intimately near.
   We know more about him than we do about our dearest earthly friend. We
   have never been able quite to read our friend's heart in all its
   twistings and windings, but we know the heart of the Well Beloved. We
   have leaned our head upon his bosom, and have enjoyed fellowship with
   him such as we could not have with any of our own kith and kin. This is
   the surest method of learning how to do good. Live with Jesus, follow
   Jesus, and he will make you fishers of men. See how he does the work,
   and so learn how to do it yourself. A Christian man should be bound
   apprentice to Jesus to learn the trade of a Savior. We can never save
   men by offering a redemption, for we have none to present; but we can
   learn how to save men by warning them to flee from the wrath to come,
   and setting before them the one great effectual remedy. See how Jesus
   saves, and you will learn how the thing is done: there is no learning
   it anyhow else. Live in fellowship with Christ, and there shall be
   about you an air and a manner as of one who has been made in heart and
   mind apt to teach, and wise to win souls.

   A third meaning, however, must be given to this "Follow me," and it is
   this: "Obey me, and then you shall know what to do to save men." We
   must not talk about our fellowship with Christ, or our being separated
   from the world unto him, unless we make him our Master and Lord in
   everything. Some public teachers are not true at all points to their
   convictions, and how can they look for a blessing? A Christian man
   anxious to be useful, ought to be very particular as to every point of
   obedience to his Master. I have no doubt whatever that God blesses our
   churches even when they are very faulty, for his mercy endureth for
   ever. When there is a measure of error in the teaching, and a measure
   of mistake in the practice, he may still vouchsafe to use the ministry,
   for he is very gracious. But a large measure of blessing must
   necessarily be withheld from all teaching which is knowingly or
   glaringly faulty. God can set his seal upon the truth that is in it,
   but he cannot set his seal upon the error that is in it. Out of
   mistakes about Christian ordinances and other things, especially errors
   in heart and spirit, there may come evils which we never looked for.
   Such evils may even now be telling upon the present age, and may work
   worse mischief upon future generations. If we desire as fishers of men
   to be largely used of God we must copy our Lord Jesus in everything,
   and obey him in every point. Failure in obedience may lead to failure
   in success. Each one of us, if he would wish to see his child saved, or
   his Sunday-school class blessed, or his congregation converted, must
   take care that, bearing the vessels of the Lord, he is himself clean.
   Anything we do that grieves the Spirit of God must take away from us
   some part of our power for good. The Lord is very gracious and pitiful;
   but yet he is a jealous God. He is sometimes sternly jealous towards
   his people who are living in neglects of known duty, or in associations
   which are not clean in his sight. He will wither their work, weaken
   their strength, and humble them until at last they say, "My Lord, I
   will take thy way after all. I will do what thou biddest me to do, for
   else thou wilt not accept me." The Lord said to his disciples, "Go ye
   into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature: he that
   believeth and is baptized shall be saved;" and he promised them that
   signs should follow, and so they did follow them, and so they will. But
   we must get back to apostolic practice and to apostolic teaching: we
   must lay aside the commandments of men and the whimseys of our own
   brains, and we must do what Christ tells us, as Christ tells us, and
   because Christ tells us. Definitely and distinctly, we must take the
   place of servants; and if we will not do that, we cannot expect our
   Lord to work with us and by us. Let us be determined that, as true as
   the needle is to the pole, so true will we be, as far as our light
   goes, to the command of our Lord and Master. Jesus says--"Follow me,
   and I will make you fishers of men." By this teaching he seems to
   say--"Go beyond me, or fall back behind me, and you may cast the net;
   but it shall be night with you, and that night you shall take nothing.
   When you shall do as I bid you, you shall cast your net on the right
   side of the ship, and you shall find."

   Again, I think that there is a great lesson in my text to those who
   preach their own thoughts instead of preaching the thoughts of Christ.
   These disciples were to follow Christ that they might listen to him,
   hear what he had to say, drink in his teaching, and then go and teach
   what he had taught them. Their Lord says, "What I tell you in darkness,
   speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the
   housetops." If they will be faithful reporters of Christ's message, he
   will make them "fishers of men." But you know the boastful method
   nowadays is this: "I am not going to preach this old, old gospel, this
   musty Puritan doctrine. I will sit down in my study, and burn the
   midnight oil, and invent a new theory; then I will come out with my
   brand-new thought, and blaze away with it." Many are not following
   Christ, but following themselves, and of them the Lord may well say,
   "Thou shalt see whose word shall stand, mine or theirs." Others are
   wickedly prudent, and judge that certain truths which are evidently
   God's word had better be kept back. You must not be rough, but must
   prophesy smooth things. To talk about the punishment of sin, to speak
   of eternal punishment, why, these are unfashionable doctrines. It may
   be that they are taught in the Word of God, but they do not suit the
   genius of the age. We must pare them down. Brothers in Christ, I will
   have no share in this. Will you? O my soul, come not thou into their
   secret! Certain things not taught in the Bible our enlightened age has
   discovered. Evolution may be clean contrary to the teaching of Genesis,
   but that does not matter. We are not going to be believers of
   Scripture, but original thinkers. This is the vain-glorious ambition of
   the period. Mark you, in proportion as the modern theology is preached
   the vice of this generation increases. To a great degree I attribute
   the looseness of the age to the laxity of the doctrine preached by its
   teachers. From the pulpit they have taught the people that sin is a
   trifle. From the pulpit these traitors to God and to his Christ have
   taught the people that there is no hell to be feared. A little, little
   hell, perhaps, there may be; but just punishment for sin is made
   nothing of. The precious atoning sacrifice of Christ has been derided
   and misrepresented by those who were pledged to preach it. They have
   given the people the name of the gospel, but the gospel itself has
   evaporated in their hands. From hundreds of pulpits the gospel is as
   clean gone as the dodo from its old haunts; and still the preachers
   take the position and name of Christ's ministers. Well, and what comes
   of it? Why, their congregations grow thinner and thinner; and so it
   must be. Jesus says, "Follow me, I will make you fishers of men;" but
   if you go in your own way, with your own net, you will make nothing of
   it, and the Lord promises you no help in it. The Lord's directions make
   himself our leader and example. It is, "Follow me, follow me. Preach my
   gospel. Preach what I preached. Teach what I taught, and keep to that."
   With that blessed servility which becomes one whose ambition it is to
   be a copyist, and never to be an original, copy Christ even in jots and
   tittles. Do this, and he will make you fishers of men; but if you do
   not do this, you shall fish in vain.

   I close this head of discourse by saying that we shall not be fishers
   of men unless we follow Christ in one other respect; and that is, by
   endeavoring, in all points, to imitate his holiness. Holiness is the
   most real power that can be possessed by men or women. We may preach
   orthodoxy, but we must also live orthodoxy. God forbid that we should
   preach anything else; but it will be all in vain, unless there is a
   life at the back of the testimony. An unholy preacher may even render
   truth contemptible. In proportion as any of us draw back from a living
   and zealous sanctification we shall draw back from the place of power.
   Our power lies in this word, "Follow me." Be Jesus-like. In all things
   endeavor to think, and speak, and act as Jesus did, and he will make
   you fishers of men. This will require self-denial. We must daily take
   up the cross. This may require willingness to give up our
   reputation--readiness to be thought fools, idiots, and the like, as men
   are apt to call those who are keeping close to their Master. There must
   be the cheerful resigning of everything that looks like honor and
   personal glory, in order that we may be wholly Christ's, and glorify
   his name. We must live his life and be ready to die his death, if need
   be. O brothers, sisters, if we do this and follow Jesus, putting our
   feet into the footprints of his pierced feet, he will make us fishers
   of men. If it should so please him that we should even die without
   having gathered many souls to the cross, we shall speak from our
   graves. In some way or other the Lord will make a holy life to be an
   influential life. It is not possible that a life which can be described
   as a following of Christ should be an unsuccessful one in the sight of
   the Most High. "Follow me," and there is an "I will" such as God can
   never draw back from: "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

   Thus much on the first point. There is something for us to do: we are
   graciously called to follow Jesus. Holy Spirit, lead us to do it.

   II. But secondly, and briefly, there is SOMETHING FOR THE LORD TO DO.
   When his dear servants are following him, he says, "I will make you
   fishers of men;" and be it never forgotten that it is he that makes us
   follow him; so that if the following of him be the step to being made a
   fisher of men, yet this he gives us. 'Tis all of his Spirit. I have
   talked about catching his spirit, and abiding in him, and obeying him,
   and hearkening to him, and copying him; but none of these things are we
   capable of apart from his working them all in us. "From me is thy fruit
   found," is a text which we must not for a moment forget. So, then, if
   we do follow him, it is he that makes us follow him; and so he makes us
   fishers of men.

   But, further, if we follow Christ he will make us fishers of men by all
   our experience. I am sure that the man who is really consecrated to
   bless others will be helped in this by all that he feels, especially by
   his afflictions. I often feel very grateful to God that I have
   undergone fearful depression of spirits. I know the borders of despair,
   and the horrible brink of that gulf of darkness into which my feet have
   almost gone; but hundreds of times I have been able to give a helpful
   grip to brethren and sisters who have come into that same condition,
   which grip I could never have given if I had not known their deep
   despondency. So I believe that the darkest and most dreadful experience
   of a child of God will help him to be a fisher of men if he will but
   follow Christ. Keep close to your Lord and he will make every step a
   blessing to you. If God in providence should make you rich, he will fit
   you to speak to those ignorant and wicked rich who so much abound in
   this city, and so often are the cause of its worst sin. And if the Lord
   is pleased to let you be very poor you can go down and talk to those
   wicked and ignorant poor people who so often are the cause of sin in
   this city, and so greatly need the gospel. The winds of providence will
   waft you where you can fish for men. The wheels of providence are full
   of eyes, and all those eyes will look this way to help us to be winners
   of souls. You will often be surprised to find how God has been in a
   house that you visit: before you get there, his hand has been at work
   in its chambers. When you wish to speak to some particular individual,
   God's providence has been dealing with that individual to make him
   ready for just that word which you could say, but which nobody else but
   you could say. Oh, be you following Christ, and you will find that he
   will, by every experience through which you are passing, make you
   fishers of men.

   Further than that, if you will follow him he will make you fishers of
   men by distinct monitions in your own heart. There are many monitions
   from God's Spirit which are not noticed by Christians when they are in
   a callous condition; but when the heart is right with God and living in
   communion with God, we feel a sacred sensitiveness, so that we do not
   need the Lord to shout, but his faintest whisper is heard. Nay, he need
   not even whisper. "Thou shalt guide me with thine eye." Oh, how many
   mulish Christians there are who must be held in with kit and bridle,
   and receive a cut of the whip every now and then! But the Christian who
   follows his Lord shall be tenderly guided. I do not say that the Spirit
   of God will say to you, "Go and join yourself unto this chariot," or
   that you will hear a word in your ear; but yet in your soul, as
   distinctly as the Spirit said to Philip, "Go and join yourself to this
   chariot," you shall hear the Lord's will. As soon as you see an
   individual, the thought shall cross your mind, "Go and speak to that
   person." Every opportunity of usefulness shall be a call to you. If you
   are ready, the door shall open before you, and you shall hear a voice
   behind you saying, "This is the way; walk ye in it." If you have the
   grace to run in the right way you shall never be long without an
   intimation as to what the right way is. That right way shall lead you
   to river or sea, where you can cast your net, and be a fisher of men.

   Then, too, I believe that the Lord meant by this that he would give his
   followers the Holy Ghost. They were to follow him, and then, when they
   had seen him ascend into the holy place of the Most High, they were to
   tarry at Jerusalem for a little while, and the Spirit would come upon
   them and clothe them with a mysterious power. This word was spoken to
   Peter and Andrew; and you know how it was fulfilled to Peter. What a
   host of fish he brought to land the first time he cast the net in the
   power of the Holy Ghost! "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of
   men."

   Brethren, we have no conception of what God could do by this company of
   believers gathered in the Tabernacle to-night. If now we were to be
   filled with the Holy Ghost there are enough of us to evangelize London.
   There are enough here to be the means of the salvation of the world.
   God saveth not by many nor by few. Let us seek a benediction; and if we
   seek it let us hear this directing voice, "Follow me, and I will make
   you fishers of men." You men and women that sit before me, you are by
   the shore of a great sea of human life swarming with the souls of men.
   You live in the midst of millions; but if you will follow Jesus, and be
   faithful to him, and true to him, and do what he bids you, he will make
   you fishers of men. Do not say, "Who shall save this city?" The weakest
   shall be strong enough. Gideon's barley cake shall smite the tent, and
   make it lay along. Samson, with the jawbone, taken up from the earth
   where it was lying bleaching in the sun, shall smite the Philistines.
   Fear not, neither be dismayed. Let your responsibilities drive you
   closer to your Master. Let horror of prevailing sin make you look into
   his dear face who long ago wept over Jerusalem, and now weeps over
   London. Clasp him, and never let go your hold. By the strong and mighty
   impulses of the divine life within you, quickened and brought to
   maturity by the Spirit of God, learn this lesson from your Lord's own
   mouth: "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." You are not fit
   for it, but he will make you fit. You cannot do it of yourselves, but
   he will make you do it. You do not know how to spread nets and draw
   shoals of fish to shore, but he will teach you. Only follow him, and he
   will make you fishers of men.

   I wish that I could somehow say this as with a voice of thunder, that
   the whole church of God might hear it. I wish I could write it in stars
   athwart the sky, "Jesus saith, Follow me, and I will make you fishers
   of men." If you forget the precept, the promise shall never be yours.
   If you follow some other track, or imitate some other leader, you shall
   fish in vain. God grant us to believe fully that Jesus can do great
   things in us, and then do great things by us for the good of our
   fellows!

   III. The last point you might work out in full for yourselves in your
   private meditations with much profit. We have here A FIGURE FULL OF
   INSTRUCTION. I will give you but two or three thoughts which you can
   use. "I will make you fishers of men." You have been fishers of fish:
   if you follow me, I will make you fishers of men.

   A fisher is a person who is very dependent, and needs to be trustful.
   He cannot see the fish. One who fishes in the sea must go and cast in
   the net, as it were, at a peradventure. Fishing is an act of faith. I
   have often seen in the Mediterranean men go with their boats and
   enclose acres of sea with vast nets; and yet, when they have drawn the
   net to shore, they have not had as much result as I could put in my
   hand. A few wretched silvery nothings have made up the whole take. Yet
   they have gone again and cast the great net several times a day,
   hopefully expecting something to come of it. Nobody is so dependent
   upon God as the minister of God. Oh, this fishing from the Tabernacle
   pulpit! What a work of faith! I cannot tell that a soul will be brought
   to God by it. I cannot judge whether my sermon will be suitable to the
   persons who are here, except that I do believe that God will guide me
   in the casting of the net. I expect him to work salvation, and I depend
   upon him for it. I love this complete dependence, and if I could be
   offered a certain amount of preaching power, by which I could save
   sinners, which should be entirely at my own disposal, I would beg the
   Lord not to let me have it, for it is far more delightful to be
   entirely dependent upon him at all times. It is good to be a fool when
   Christ is made unto you wisdom. It is a blessed thing to be weak if
   Christ becomes more fully your strength. Go to work, you who would be
   fishers of men, and yet feel your insufficiency. You that have no
   strength, attempt this divine work. Your Master's strength will be seen
   when your own has all gone. A fisherman is a dependent person, he must
   look up for success every time he puts the net down; but still he is a
   trustful person, and therefore he casts in the net joyfully.

   A fisherman who gets his living by it is a diligent and persevering
   man. The fishers are up at dawn. At day-break our fishermen off the
   Doggerbank are fishing, and they continue fishing till late in the
   afternoon. As long as hands can work men will fish. May the Lord Jesus
   make us hard-working, persevering, unwearied fishers of men! "In the
   morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand; for
   thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that."

   The fisherman in his own craft is intelligent and watchful. It looks
   very easy, I dare say, to be a fisherman, but you would find that it
   was no child's play if you were to take a real part in it. There is an
   art in it, from the mending of the net right on to the pulling it to
   shore. How diligent the fisherman is to prevent the fish leaping out of
   the net! I heard a great noise one night in the sea, as if some huge
   drum were being beaten by a giant; and I looked out, and I saw that the
   fishermen of Mentone were beating the water to drive the fish into the
   net, or to keep them from leaping out when they had once encompassed
   them with it. Ah, yes! and you and I will often have to be watching the
   corners of the gospel net lest sinners who are almost caught should
   make their escape. They are very crafty, these fish, and they use this
   craftiness in endeavoring to avoid salvation. We shall have to be
   always at our business, and to exercise all our wits, and more than our
   own wits, if we are to be successful fishers of men.

   The fisherman is a very laborious person. It is not at all an easy
   calling. He does not sit in an armchair and catch fish. He has to go
   out in rough weathers. If he that regardeth the clouds will not sow, I
   am sure that he that regardeth the clouds will never fish. If we never
   do any work for Christ except when we feel up to the mark, we shall not
   do much. If we feel that we will not pray because we cannot pray, we
   shall never pray, and if we say, "I will not preach to-day because I do
   not feel that I could preach," we shall never preach any preaching that
   is worth the preaching. We must be always at it, until we wear
   ourselves out, throwing our whole soul into the work in all weathers,
   for Christ's sake.

   The fisherman is a daring man. He tempts the boisterous sea. A little
   brine in his face does not hurt him; he has been wet through a thousand
   times, it is nothing to him. He never expected when he became a
   deep-sea fisherman that he was going to sleep in the lap of ease. So
   the true minister of Christ who fishes for souls will never mind a
   little risk. He will be bound to do or say many a thing that is very
   unpopular; and some Christian people may even judge his utterances to
   be too severe. He must do and say that which is for the good of souls.
   It is not his to entertain a question as to what others will think of
   his doctrine, or of him; but in the name of the Almighty God he must
   feel, "If the sea roar and the fullness thereof, still at my Master's
   command I will let down the net."

   Now, in the last place, the man whom Christ makes a fisher of men is
   successful. "But," says one, "I have always heard that Christ's
   ministers are to be faithful, but that they cannot be sure of being
   successful." Yes, I have heard that saying, and one way I know it is
   true, but another way I have my doubts about it. He that is faithful
   is, in God's way and in God's judgment, successful, more or less. For
   instance, here is a brother who says that he is faithful. Of course, I
   must believe him, yet I never heard of a sinner being saved under him.
   Indeed, I should think that the safest place for a person to be in if
   he did not want to be saved would be under this gentleman's ministry,
   because he does not preach anything that is likely to arouse, impress,
   or convince anybody. This brother is "faithful:" so he says. Well, if
   any person in the world said to you, "I am a fisherman, but I have
   never caught anything," you would wonder how he could be called a
   fisherman. A farmer who never grew any wheat, or any other crop--is he
   a farmer? When Jesus Christ says, "Follow me, and I will make you
   fishers of men," he means that you shall really catch men--that you
   really shall save some; for he that never did get any fish is not a
   fisherman. He that never saved a sinner after years of work is not a
   minister of Christ. If the result of his life-work is nil, he made a
   mistake when he undertook it. Go thou with the fire of God in thy hand
   and fling it among the stubble, and the stubble will burn. Be thou sure
   of that. Go thou and scatter the good seed: it may not all fall in
   fruitful places, but some of it will. Be thou sure of that. Do but
   shine, and some eye or other will be lightened thereby. Thou must, thou
   shalt succeed. But remember this is the Lord's word--"Follow me, and I
   will make you fishers of men." Keep close to Jesus, and do as Jesus
   did, in his spirit, and he will make you fishers of men.

   Perhaps I speak to an attentive hearer who is not converted at all.
   Friend, I have the same thing to say to you. You also may follow
   Christ, and then he can use you, even you. I do not know but that he
   has brought you to this place that you may be saved, and that in after
   years he may make you speak for his name and glory. Remember how he
   called Saul of Tarsus, and made him the apostle of the Gentiles.
   Reclaimed poachers make the best gamekeepers; and saved sinners make
   the ablest preachers. Oh, that you would run away from your old master
   to-night, without giving him a minute's notice; for if you give him any
   notice, he will hold you. Hasten to Jesus, and say, "Here is a poor
   runaway slave! My Lord, I bear the fetters still upon my wrists. Wilt
   thou set me free, and make me thine own?" Remember, it is written, "Him
   that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." Never runaway slave came
   to Christ in the middle of the night without his taking him in; and he
   never gave one up to his old master. If Jesus make you free you shall
   be free indeed. Flee away to Jesus, then, on a sudden. May his good
   Spirit help you, and he will by-and-by make you a winner of others to
   his praise! God bless you. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Matt. 4 verse 12, &c.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--45, 12, 262.

   Just Published. Price One Shilling.

   AN EARNEST WORD WITH THOSE WHO ARE SEEKING SALVATION BY THE LORD JESUS
   CHRIST.

  BY C. H. SPURGEON.

   "Every word is weighted with precious truth, and truth so simply and
   convincingly put that none can fail to understand God's way of
   salvation. Powerful illustrations, apt and original similes, and the
   one affectionate desire to win for Christ and to Christ, make it a
   gospel treasury of priceless worth."--The Christian.

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                         "The Tender Mercy of Our God"

   A Sermon

   (No. 1907)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, June 27th, 1886, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [8]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of
   their sins through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring
   from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in
   darkness and in the shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of
   peace."--Luke 1:77-79.

   OBSERVE HOW ZACHARIAS, in this his joyful song, extolled the remission
   of sins, as one of the most extraordinary proofs of the tender mercy of
   our God. He had been dumb for a season, as a chastisement for his
   unbelief; and therefore he used his recovered speech to sing of
   pardoning mercy. No salvation is possible without forgiveness, and so
   Zacharias says, "To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the
   remission of their sins." The Lord could not forgive them on the ground
   of justice, and therefore he did so because of his tender mercy--the
   tender mercy of our God, who has made himself "our God" by the covenant
   of grace. He passes by the transgression of his people because he
   delighteth in mercy. At the very outset, I want any soul here that is
   burdened with sin to believe in the forgiveness of sins, and to believe
   in it because God is love, and has a great tenderness towards the work
   of his hands. He is so pitiful that he loves not to condemn the guilty,
   but looks with anxious care upon them to see how he can turn away his
   wrath and restore them to favor. For this reason alone there is
   remission of sins. Forgiveness comes not to us through any merit of
   ours, present or foreseen; but only through the tender mercy of our
   God, and the marvellous visit of love which came of it. If he be
   gracious enough to forgive our sins, it can be done; for every
   arrangement is already made to accomplish it. The Lord is gracious
   enough for this--for anything. Behold him in Christ Jesus, and there we
   see him as full of compassion. We sang just now, and sang most truly--

   "His heart is made of tenderness,

   His bowels melt with love."

   The main point of this morning's sermon will be to bring out into
   prominence those few words, "the tender mercy of our God." To me they
   gleam with kindly light: I see in them a soft radiance, as of those
   matchless pearls whereof the gates of heaven are made. There is an
   exceeding melody to my ear as well as to my heart in that word
   "tender." "Mercy" is music, and "tender mercy" is the most exquisite
   form of it, especially to a broken heart. To one who is despondent and
   despairing, this word is life from the dead. A great sinner, much
   bruised by the lashes of conscience, will bend his ear this way, and
   cry, "Let me hear again the dulcet sound of these words, tender mercy."
   If you think of this tenderness in connection with God, it will strike
   you with wonder, for an instant, that one so great should be so tender;
   for we are apt to impute to Omnipotence a crushing energy, which can
   scarcely take account of little, and feeble, and suffering things. Yet
   if we think again, the surprise will disappear, and we shall see, with
   a new wonder of admiration, that it must be so. He that is truly great
   among men is tender because he is great in heart as well as in brain
   and hand. The truly great spirit is always gentle; and because God is
   so infinitely great, he is, therefore, tender. We read of his
   gentleness and of his tenderness towards the children of men; and we
   see them displayed to their full in the gospel of our salvation. Very
   conspicuous is this "tender mercy of our God."

   Now, the original word is, "The mercy of the heart of our God." The
   evangelists, though they wrote in Greek, carried with them into that
   language the idioms of the Hebrew tongue; so that they do not use an
   adjective, as it would seem from our translation--"tender mercy;" but
   they say, mercy of the bowels, or of the inwards, or of the heart of
   God. "The mercy of the heart of God" is to be seen in the remission of
   sin, and in the visitation of his love when he comes to us as "the
   dayspring from on high." Great is the tenderness of divine mercy.

   But I call your attention to the original reading because it seems to
   me not only to mean tenderness, but much more. The mercy of the heart
   of God is, of course, the mercy of his great tenderness, the mercy of
   his infinite gentleness and consideration; but other thoughts also come
   forth from the expression, like bees from a hive. It means the mercy of
   God's very soul. The heart is the seat and center of life, and mercy is
   to God as his own life. "I have no pleasure in the death of him that
   dieth, saith the Lord God." God is love: not only is he loving, but he
   is love itself. Mercy is of the divine essence: there is no God apart
   from his heart, and mercy lies in the heart of God. He has bound up his
   mercy with his existence: as surely as God lives, he will grant
   remission of sins to those who turn unto him.

   Nor is this all--the mercy of God's heart means his hearty mercy, his
   cordial delight in mercy. Remission of sins is a business into which
   the Lord throws his heart. He forgives with an intensity of will, and
   readiness of soul. God made heaven and earth with his fingers, but he
   gave his Son with his heart in order that he might save sinners. The
   Eternal God has thrown his whole soul into the business of redeeming
   men. If you desire to see God most Godlike, it is in the pardon of sin,
   and the saving of men. If you desire to read the character of God
   written out in capital letters, you must study the visitation of his
   love in the person of his dear Son, and all the wonderful works of
   infinite grace which spring therefrom. It is a grand sight to behold
   God in earnest when he says, "Now will I arise." With awe we watch him
   as he lays bare his arm: but this full energy of power is best seen
   when his work is grace. When he stirs up his strength to come and save
   us, and brings the essence of his being into intense action to bless
   us, we are favored indeed. It is this watching to do us good, this
   eagerness to bless us, which is meant by the mercy of his heart. It is
   not only tenderness, but intensity, heartiness, eagerness, delight, and
   concentration of power. All this is to be seen in the dealing of God
   with guilty men when he visits them to grant them the remission of
   their sins.

   Just as the leader of our psalmody sometimes sounds his tuning-fork at
   the commencement of our song, so have I done in these opening remarks.
   "Tender mercy" is the key-note of my discourse, I want you to keep it
   still in your ears. Whatever else of melody there may come from the
   text, yet this is to be the chief note: the tender, hearty, intense
   mercy of God, which he has shown to us.

   I. In the first place, I invite you to observe that he shows this
   tender mercy in that HE DEIGNS TO VISIT US. "Through the tender mercy
   of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us."

   Observe that God has not merely pitied us from a distance, and sent us
   relief by way of the ladder which Jacob saw, but he hath himself
   visited us. It needs no studied language to preach from this text, the
   expressions themselves are full of holy thought. A visit from God, what
   must it be! "Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the
   son of man, that thou visitest him?" A visit from the Queen would be
   remembered by most of you all your lives: you would feel yourselves
   half ennobled. But a visit from God, what shall I say of it?--that he
   should stoop to leave his high abode, and the majesty wherein he
   reigns, to visit insignificant beings like ourselves? This Bible is a
   letter from him, and we prize it beyond the finest gold; but an actual
   visit from God himself, what shall we say of such a favor?

   In what ways has the Lord shown his tender mercy in deigning to visit
   us?

   I answer, first, God's great visit to us is the incarnation of our
   blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Many visits of God to men had
   been paid before that--read your Bibles, and see; but the most
   wonderful visit of all was when he came to tarry here, some thirty
   years and more, to work out our salvation. What but "tender mercy,"
   hearty mercy, intense mercy, could bring the great God to visit us so
   closely that he actually assumed our nature? Kings may visit their
   subjects, but they do not think of taking upon themselves their
   poverty, sickness, or sorrow: they could not if they would, and would
   not if they could; this were more than we could expect from them. But
   our divine Lord, when he came hither, came into our flesh. He veiled
   his Godhead in a robe of our inferior clay. O children! the Lord so
   visited you as to become a babe, and then a child, who dwelt with his
   parents, and was subject unto them, and grew in stature, as you must
   do. O working men! the Lord so visited you as to become the carpenter's
   son, and to know all about your toil, and your weariness, ay, even to
   hunger and faintness. O sons of men! Jesus Christ has visited you so as
   to be tempted in all points like as you are, though without sin. He
   really assumed our nature, and thus paid to us a very close visit. He
   took our sickness, and bare our infirmities. This was a kind of visit
   such as none could have thought of granting save the infinitely tender
   and merciful God. The man is our next kinsman, a brother born for
   adversity; in all our affliction he is afflicted; he is tenderness
   itself.

   Remember that he not only took our nature, but he dwelt among us in
   this world of sin and sorrow. This great Prince entered our abode--what
   if I call it this hut and hovel?--wherein our poor humanity finds its
   home for a season. This little planet of ours was made to burn with a
   superior light among its sister stars while the Creator sojourned here
   in human form. He trod the acres of Samaria, and traversed the hills of
   Judea. "He went about doing good." He mingled among men with scarcely
   any reservation; being through his purity separate from sinners as to
   his character, yet he was the visitor of all men. He was found eating
   bread with a Pharisee, which perhaps is a more wonderful thing than
   when he received sinners, and ate with them. A fallen woman was not too
   far gone for him to sit on the kerb of the well, and talk to her; nor
   were any of the poor and ignorant too mean for him to care for them. He
   was bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and his visit to us was
   therefore of the most intimate kind. He disdained no man's lowliness;
   he turned aside from no man's sin.

   But remember that he visited us not merely to look upon us, and to talk
   with us, and to teach us, and set us a high and divine example, which,
   as I have said, were incomparably gracious, if it went no further; but
   he so visited us that he went down into our condemnation, that he might
   deliver us from it. He was made a curse for us, as it is written,
   "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." He took our debts upon
   him that he might pay them, minting his own heart to create the
   coinage. He gave himself for us, which is more than if I said, "he gave
   his blood and his life;" his own self he gave. So did he visit us that
   he took away with him our ill, and left all good behind. He did not
   come into our nature, and yet keep himself reserved from all the
   consequences of our sin; nor come into our world, and yet maintain a
   status superior to the usual denizens of it; but he came to be a man
   among men, and to bear all that train of woes which had fallen upon
   human nature through its departure from the ways of God. Surely he hath
   borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows, because the Lord hath laid
   upon him the iniquity of us all. Our Lord so visited us as to become
   our surety and our ransom. This was a wonderful piece of tender mercy
   indeed. I feel at this moment as if I could not talk about it, for it
   excels all conception and speech. Even if I were not full of pain, the
   subject would master me. If for the first time you had heard of the
   visit of the Incarnate God to this world, you would be struck with a
   wonder which would last throughout all eternity, that God himself
   should really condescend to such a deed as this. This is the heart of
   the gospel--the incomparable fact of the incarnation of the Son of God,
   his dwelling upon the earth, and his presentation of himself as a
   sacrifice unto God. You need no flourish of words; do but hear the bare
   statement of the fact, and leap for joy because of it. Since God has
   visited us, not in form of vengeance, nor as a cherub with a flaming
   sword, but in the gentle person of that lowliest of the lowly, who
   said, "Suffer little children to come unto me," we are herein made to
   see the tender mercy of our God. Nothing could be more tender than the
   divine appearance of the Man of Sorrows.

   But I do not think we ought to insist upon this as the only visit of
   God's tender mercy, since the text is in the Revised Version rendered
   in the future: "The tender mercy of our God, whereby the dayspring from
   on high shall visit us." To this day we are visited of God in other
   respects, but with equal mercy. The proclamation of the gospel in a
   nation, or to any individual, is a visit of God's mercy. Whenever you
   come and hear the gospel, be you sure of this, whether you receive it
   or not, the kingdom of God has come nigh unto you. Even if you stop
   your ears, and will have none of it, yet God has visited you in tender
   mercy, in that by the gospel he tells you that there is a way of
   salvation, that there is a plan for the remission of sin. It is a
   monstrosity--what if I say a miracle?--of iniquity, that men having
   sinned, and God having done so much to work out a way of remission of
   those sins, men should refuse to accept God's pardoning love. Oh, my
   hearers, Why are you so besotted? Wherefore do you hate your own souls?
   Surely, the devils themselves would at the first have scarce believed
   it, that there could exist a race of creatures so hardened as to refuse
   the love which visits them in grace. This is what devils never did. Men
   sin not only against God, but against their own interest, when they
   turn aside from the wooings of disinterested goodness, and refuse
   salvation through him who loved us even to the death. That which God
   has so tenderly and heartily wrought out in the gift of his dear Son to
   die for us ought to be received with eagerness. Will not you receive
   it? My dear hearers, you shall not go out of this place this morning
   without knowing that God in great tender mercy hath visited you by the
   blessed fact of your having heard the good tidings of free grace. Jesus
   seeks you, will you not seek him?

   But, blessed be his name, he has visited some of us in a more
   remarkable manner still, for by the Holy Spirit he has entered into our
   hearts, and changed the current of our lives. He has turned our
   affections towards that which is right by enlightening our judgments.
   He has led us to the confession of sin, he has brought us to the
   acceptance of his mercy through the atoning blood; and so he has truly
   saved us. What a visit is this! This visit of the Holy Ghost, when he
   comes to dwell in us, is surpassingly condescending. I have often said
   that I never know which to admire most, the incarnation of the Son of
   God, or the indwelling of the Spirit of God. This last is a wonderful
   condescension, for the Holy Ghost does not take a pure body of his own,
   but he makes our bodies to be his temples; he dwells not only in one of
   these, but in tens of thousands; and that not only by the space of
   thirty years, but throughout the whole life of the believer. He
   dwelleth in us notwithstanding all our provocations and rebellions.
   Mark the word, not only with us, but in us, and that evermore. Oh, this
   tender mercy! Who can describe it? Sweet Spirit, gentle Spirit, how
   canst thou abide with me? O heavenly Dove, how canst thou find rest in
   such a soul as mine? Yet without thee we are undone, and therefore we
   adore the tender mercy which makes thee bear with us so long, and work
   in us so graciously till thou hast conformed us to the image of the
   Firstborn. We are melted by the love of the Spirit--the communion of
   the Holy Spirit, by which the Lord hath visited us.

   Often and often, since our first visitation by the Lord, I trust we
   have had special visits from him, bringing with them rapturous joys,
   singular deliverances, and countless blessings. "The love of God is
   shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."
   The Lord has visited us in the night: he has drawn nigh unto our
   spirit, and so he has preserved us. We have enjoyed near and dear
   communion with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. Have we not?
   This hath often happened when we have been in great trouble. When we
   were depressed in spirit, when we were burdened with unusual cares, or
   weeping over heart-breaking bereavements, the mercy of our God has made
   the dayspring from on high to visit us at just such times; and therein
   we have seen his tenderness. Our life is bright with these visits as
   the sky with stars. I cannot enlarge upon this charming theme, but I
   leave it to your thoughts, O you whose experience will be the best
   sermon on the text! The visits of God to his own children are proofs of
   the heartiness, the intensity, the tenderness of his mercy. Talk of it,
   ye who have had most enjoyment of such visits!

   II. I call your attention now to a second point. There is so much
   sea-room here that one scarce knows which way to steer. Secondly, he
   shows his tender mercy in that HE VISITS US AS THE DAYSPRING FROM ON
   HIGH. This means the dawning in the east, the rising of the sun at
   break of day. He does not come to us in Christ, or by his Spirit, as a
   tempest, as when he came from Paran, with ten thousand of his holy
   ones, in all the pomp of his fiery law; but he has visited us as
   smiling morn, which in gentle glory floods the world with joy.

   While this gospel visitation is thus apparently less in splendor than
   that of the law, yet it is not deficient in efficacy or in true glory.
   God has not visited us as a candle, which might suffice to cheer our
   darkness but could not change it into day. David rejoiced, saying, "The
   Lord will light my candle;" but in this we go far beyond him: we need
   no candle, for the Lord has visited us with the day-dawn.

   He has come, moreover, not as a blaze which will soon die down, but as
   a light which will last our day, yea, last for ever. After the long
   dark and cold night of our misery, the Lord cometh in the fittest and
   most effectual manner; neither as lightning, nor candle, nor flaming
   meteor, but as the sun which begins the day.

   The visitation of the Lord to us is as the dayspring, because it suits
   our eye. Observe how the eye is suited to the light, and the light to
   the eye, in the economy of nature; and it is even so in the realm of
   grace. Day, when it first breaks in the east, has not the blaze of
   burning noon about it; but it peeps forth as a grey light, which
   gradually increases to the perfect day. So did the Lord Jesus Christ
   come: dimly as it were, at first, at Bethlehem, but by-and-by he will
   appear in all the glory of the Father. So doth the Spirit of God come
   to us in gradual progress. There is sweet suitableness in the grace of
   God to the heart, and in the renewed heart to the grace of God. He hath
   abounded towards us in all wisdom and prudence. The revelation of God
   to each individual is made in form and manner tenderly agreeable to the
   condition and capacity of the favored one. I sometimes think the gospel
   was made exactly to meet my case. Do you not think the same of it
   yourselves? The morning light suits your eye as exactly as if there
   were no other creature to behold it; and so in divine tenderness the
   Lord has made his visits suitable to our sorrow, and even to our
   weakness. He shows us just so much of himself as to delight us without
   utterly overwhelming us with the excess of brightness. He might have
   come in the majesty of his grace to us at the first, as he does to us
   afterwards; but then we were not able to bear it, and so he forbore. We
   are now more ready to sup with him upon strong meat, and so he puts us
   upon men's fare; whereas before he gave us milk, which is more
   convenient for babes. All the visits of God to us are merciful, but in
   those of the dawn of grace we see tenderness as well as mercy.

   The visits of God are like the dayspring, because they end our
   darkness. The dayspring banishes the night. Without noise or effort, it
   removes the ebon blackness, and sows the earth with orient pearl. Night
   stretches her bat's wings, and is gone: she flies before the arrows of
   the advancing sun; and the coming of Jesus to us, when he does really
   come into our hearts, takes away the darkness of ignorance, sorrow,
   carelessness, fear, and despair. Our night is ended once for all when
   we behold God visiting us in Christ Jesus. Our day may cloud over, but
   night will not return. O, you that are in the blackest midnight, if you
   can but get a view of Christ, morning will have come to you! There is
   no light for you elsewhere, believe us in this; but if Jesus be seen by
   faith, you shall need no candles of human confidence, nor sparks of
   feelings and impressions: the beholding of Christ shall be the ending
   of all night for you. "They looked unto him, and were lightened: and
   their faces were not ashamed."

   I like to think of Christ as coming into the world as the morning
   light, because he comes with such a largeness of present
   blessing--blessing immeasurable, unlimited. Some are always for
   measuring out Christ: they can never do without estimates of how much,
   and how far. Truly our Lord comes to save his elect, that I do verily
   believe; but hence certain friends would allot so many beams of light
   to so many eyes, and limit the light by the number of those who rejoice
   in it. Not so, beloved, Jesus is the light of the world; he comes from
   on high to shed light over the whole universe, even as the sun goeth
   forth from one end of heaven to the other, and there is nothing hid
   from the heat thereof. He appears as the light which lighteneth every
   man that cometh into the world: there is no other light. Whosoever is
   willing to receive that light is free to do so: yea, he shines on blind
   eyes. This light comes even to those who hate it, and thus they are
   left without excuse: "the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness
   comprehended it not," and "this is the condemnation, that light is come
   into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their
   deeds were evil." When the Lord comes to men, his blessings are
   infinite. You might as well take your three feet rule, and begin to
   measure the length and breadth of the sunlight as measure the length
   and breadth of the tender mercy of our God in the revelation of our
   Lord Jesus Christ.

   When the Lord visits us, it is as the dayspring, because he brings us
   hope of greater glory yet to come. The first coming of Christ has not
   at once manifested everything; the dayspring is not the noon; but it is
   the sure guarantee of it; and so is the First Advent the pledge of the
   glory to be revealed. The sun never rises in error to set upon a
   sudden: he rises to complete his course, as the strong man cometh out
   of his chamber to fulfill his race. When we receive a visit from the
   Lord, it may be in the way of rebuke, or of feeble hope; but let us be
   patient, for the dawn shall grow with constant increase of light, and
   there is no fear of its dying down into the old sinful darkness.
   "Sacred, high, eternal noon" is the destiny of all those whose eyes
   have beheld the Christ, so as to rejoice in his light.

   Now all this seems to me to be a wonderful instance of the tenderness
   of divine mercy. Think you not so? This coming of the Lord, and of his
   light, so gradually, and yet so lavishly; so fittingly, and yet so
   effectually; does it not fill you with gratitude? Every little bird
   rejoices in the rising of the sun: God has made that great orb to rise
   so graciously that not even a sparrow trembles at it, but chirps with
   confidence its happy praises. Not even a little flower trembles because
   the great sun is about to flood the heavens, but God hath so made the
   sun to rise that every tiny cup of every flower that blooms opens to
   drink in the golden light, and is refreshed thereby. The coming of
   Christ is just such to us, even to the least and feeblest of us. It is
   not a stupendous blessing, crushing us by its enormous weight; it is
   not a mysterious revelation, confounding us by its profundity; but it
   is simplicity itself, gentleness itself; none the less, but all the
   more grand and sublime because it is so simple and so tender. Let us
   bless God this morning, then, that he visits us, and that when he
   visits us, it is as the dayspring from on high.

   III. Thirdly, there is another instance of great tenderness in this, in
   that THE LORD VISITS US IN OUR VERY LOWEST ESTATE. Permit me to read
   the text to you--"To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the
   remission of their sins," from which it appears that God comes to visit
   us when we are in our sins. If the plan of salvation were that we were
   to get out of our sins, and then God would come to us, it might be full
   of mercy, but it would not be tender mercy. Let it never be forgotten
   that "When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for
   the ungodly." "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we
   were yet sinners, Christ died for us." I feel always at home when I get
   upon this blessed topic of the visits of God to undeserving,
   ill-deserving, hell-deserving sinners. His saving visits spring from
   grace, pure grace, altogether unmixed with any merit or claim on our
   part. God comes to us as the morning, which does not wait for man, nor
   tarry for the sons of men. I cannot bear the spirit which I see
   spreading among us in reference to almsgiving. It should not be
   indiscriminate, but it should be bounteous. Many cry, "We shall give
   help only to the deserving." If God were to adopt that rule, where
   would you and I be? It has even been muttered in an undertone that,
   with regard to hospitals, no doubt they are used by persons who ought
   to provide for themselves, and so help to support struggling medical
   men. It may be so; but I like not the hard and niggardly spirit which
   suggests such criticisms. Talk not so; this is fit chatter for
   barbarians. Those who know the tender mercy of God will recollect that,
   when we ourselves had no good about us whatsoever, his tender mercy
   visited us, even as the sun ariseth upon the just and upon the unjust.
   He giveth with gladness to those who have no deservings of any kind. He
   will not mar the magnificence of his goodness by asking our pitiful
   pence of merit as a payment for it; but he giveth freely, according to
   the riches of his grace. As he makes his rain to water the fields of
   the miser and of the churl, as well as those of the kind and the
   generous, so doth he give his bounty to the worst of men. Let us learn
   this, and imitate it, for thus we shall know the tender mercy of God.
   To copy the divine example will be the surest method of coming to an
   understanding of it.

   Furthermore, our God visits us when we are in darkness; when we are in
   such darkness as to know nothing, see nothing, believe nothing, hope
   nothing; even then the Lord's mercy comes to us. Is not this
   tenderness? "Educate a man up to a certain point," says one, "and then
   we may hope that God's grace will visit him." Educate him by all means,
   but have hope that God may visit even those who have no education of
   any sort. "Follow the advance of civilization," cries one, "and do not
   risk your missionaries among barbarians." Not so; our marching orders
   are, "Preach the gospel to every creature." The gospel is to precede
   and produce civilization. To them that sit in darkness, the Lord is
   pleased to send the dayspring from on high. To send light where there
   is light is superfluous. Have we not a proverb about sending coals to
   Newcastle? God sendeth not grace to us because we have already
   something which may be viewed as prevenient and preparatory; but the
   prevenient and the preparatory are of his grace, and he comes in love
   to bring these with him, to those who as yet know nothing of his light
   and life. They are in the dark, and he creates their day.

   Did you notice that it is said "to those that sit in darkness?" This is
   more than being in the dark. The man who sits in darkness does so
   because he feels that his case is hopeless, and therefore he forbears
   all further action. A poor benighted traveler has wandered this way and
   that to find a track, but it is so dark that he cannot perceive his
   road; and so at last he embraces the rock for want of a shelter,
   crouching to the earth in despair. It is a part of the tender mercy of
   our God that he visits those who despond and are motionless in a dread
   inactivity. Those who have lost hope are lost indeed, and such the
   Savior has come to save.

   Then it is added, "and in the shadow of death." Did you ever feel that
   shadow? It has a horrible influence. Chill and cold, it freezes the
   marrow of the bones, and stops the genial current of life in the veins.
   Death stands over the man, and if his hand does not smite, yet his
   shadow darkens joy, and chills hope, benumbing the heart, and making
   life itself a mode of death. The shadow of death is confusion of mind,
   depression of spirit, dread of the unknown, horror at the past, and
   terror of the future. Are any of you at this time bowing down under the
   shadow of death? Has hell gaped wide, and opened her jaws for you? Have
   you in your despair made a league with death, and a covenant with hell?
   Thus saith the Lord, "Your covenant with death shall be disannulled,
   and your agreement with hell shall not stand;" for the Lord has come
   forth, and visited you in the person of his dear Son to deliver the
   captive, and save those who are appointed unto death. Knowing your
   guilt, the Lord visits you this morning, and bids you look up. "Behold
   the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." Look and
   live; look, and be delivered at once, even from the horrible
   deathshadow which now broods over you. I do delight to think of this
   tender mercy of God to those who are lost. There are lost that shall be
   found, and last that shall be first. You seem forgotten of God, left
   out of the register of hope, but yet to you has Jesus come--"to give
   light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death." Is not
   this tender mercy? If he had not come to shine on such I should never
   have been saved. A gospel for the cheerful would never have met my
   case; I wanted a gospel for the despairing. I know some here who must
   have perished if the gospel had only been suitable to those who are of
   good character, and have the beginnings of natural religion within
   them. Only a sinner's Savior would have suited some of you, or, indeed,
   any of us. As the good Samaritan did to the wounded man, "he came where
   he was," so did Jesus come to us in our ruin. The benefactor of the
   wounded did not stand and say to him, "Come here, and get on my beast,
   and he shall carry you to the inn." But he went to him when he was
   lying half dead, and therefore helpless; and he poured the oil and wine
   into his wounds while the poor wretch could not move an inch, nor stir
   hand or foot. He bound up his wounds, and then set him on his own
   beast, and took him to the inn. This is tender mercy; and in this
   fashion Jesus deals with us. He does everything for us from the very
   beginning. He is Alpha, even as he must be Omega. Does not this show
   the tender mercy of our God, that he does come to us in the darkness,
   and under the grim shadow of death, and there and then reveals his love
   to us?

   IV. Both time and strength fail me, so now I must finish with a fourth
   reflection from the text--Our God shows his tender mercy in that HE
   VISITS US WITH SUCH WONDERFUL AND JOYFUL RESULTS--"to give light to
   them that sit in darkness, to guide our feet into the way of peace."
   One sketch must suffice. Help me as I make an outline. Imagine a
   caravan in the desert, which has long lost its way, and is famishing.
   The sun has long gone down, and the darkness has caused every one's
   heart to droop. All around them is a waste of sand, and an Egyptian
   darkness. There they must remain and die unless they can find the
   track. They feel themselves to be in a fearful case, for, hungry and
   thirsty, their soul fainteth in them. They cannot even sleep for fear.
   Heavier and heavier the night comes down, and the damps are on the
   tents chilling the souls of the travelers. What is to be done? How they
   watch! Alas, no star comforts them! At last the watchmen cry, "The
   morning cometh." It breaks over the sea of sand, and, what is better,
   it reveals a heap which had been set up as a way-mark, and the
   travelers have found the track. The dayspring has saved them from swift
   destruction by discovering the way of peace.

   Our point is this, that when the Lord Jesus Christ visits us, he
   actually brings light to our darkness; really leads into the way, and
   makes that way a way of peace to us. Put all together, and remember
   what the Lord has done for you. You did not know the way once, and all
   the preaching in the world would not have made you know it, if Jesus
   had not by his Spirit visited you as the dayspring. When you did know
   the way, you could not reach it of yourself: you saw it as from a
   distance, and could not enter upon it, but when Jesus came near, he
   actually guided your feet into that way. He put your feet upon a rock,
   and established your goings. That way, good as it was, would have been
   to you a way of doubt, and fear, and hesitation, if the Lord had not so
   sweetly shone upon you that your road became a way of perfect peace.
   Peace in our text means prosperity, plenty, rest, joy. I ask you,
   friends, whether you have not found it so. Since the Lord has visited
   you, have you not gone forth with joy, and been led forth with peace?

   Well, now, the conclusion of all this is a practical matter. If the
   tender mercy of God has visited us, and done so much more for us than I
   can tell, or than you can hear, let us ourselves exhibit tender mercy
   in our dealings with our fellow-men. It is a wretched business for a
   man to call himself a Christian, and have a soul which never peeps out
   from between his own ribs. It is horrible to be living to be saved,
   living to get to heaven, living to enjoy religion, and yet never to
   live to bless others, and ease the misery of a moaning world. Do you
   not know that it is all nonsense to regard religion as a selfish
   spiritual trade by which we save our own souls? It is useless to hope
   for peace till you know how to love. Whence come wars and fightings but
   from a want of love? Unless your religion tears you away from yourself,
   and makes you live for something nobler than even your own spiritual
   good, you have not passed out of the darkness into the light of God.
   Only the way of unselfishness is the way of peace. I ask you,
   therefore, today to think very tenderly of all poor people. These are
   hard times; let those who have more than they actually want be ready
   always to relieve distress, which is very urgent just now.

   The call this morning is for liberal help to our hospitals. These are
   called in France "houses of God;" truly they are Godlike in their
   design. There is not a man here but may be in a hospital to-morrow. Do
   you reply that you are a wealthy man? Yet you may be run over in the
   street, or fall in a fit, and the hospital's door is open to you. It is
   not merely for the beggar, but for the noble, that this is a refuge.
   Many a time men of immense wealth have had to be carried to the
   hospital from injury inflicted by fire or water, accident, or sudden
   sickness. I appeal to your selfishness, and to your honor: pay your
   proportion towards a common protection.

   But I appeal to you on higher grounds. I forget just now how many
   thousands of cases of accident have gone into the hospital during the
   past year, but it is very surprising. They never ask who they are, or
   where they come from, but receive all the wounded. Every great accident
   involves a huge expense upon the hospital which is near the spot. This
   is not sufficiently thought of, or there would be special contributions
   on each sad occasion. Few consider how these noble institutions are
   supported. "Oh, the rich people give to them!" Alas, the rich people
   often forget them! "Oh, but these general collections will do the
   work!" No such thing! It is such a pitiful contribution which usually
   makes up a collection that the hospitals are little aided thereby.
   These institutions are left to run into debt, or spend their capital,
   or keep their beds empty. I could not too strongly put the case of
   hospitals just now. I have half wished that the Government would
   undertake them, only I am not sure that they would be so well conducted
   in that case as when they are left to private management by hearts that
   feel for men. Something must be done. We must give a great deal more;
   the collections ought to be at least twice as much in all our churches
   and chapels as they have ever been. If you were present when a man was
   run over, and you heard his bone break, you would put your hand into
   your pocket, or do anything else in your power to help him. I wish I
   could make you feel in the presence of such a calamity for a minute, so
   as to touch your hearts and your hands. Diseases are always abroad, and
   driving thousands to seek hospital help. I would like to take you down
   a ward, and cause you to listen to the stories told from half-a-dozen
   beds. What sickness! What poverty caused by sickness! What pains poor
   bodies are capable of enduring! Oh, come, let us help them! Let us give
   to the support of those who nurse them, and for the help of those who
   exercise their best skill for their relief. Who can withhold? By the
   tender mercy of our God, I charge you to give freely to this excellent
   cause. As the box goes round, remember that this is not the time for
   threepenny-pieces. You who are wealthy must write cheques or give
   notes, and you may send them to our treasurer if you prefer it. All
   must be generous for the sake of that tender mercy which is the
   dayspring of our hope and life.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Matthew 8:1-18.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--912, 328, 195.
     __________________________________________________________________

                           Washed to Greater Foulness

   A Sermon

   (No. 1908)

   Delivered by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [9]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean;
   yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor
   me."--Job 9:30, 31.

   I   FEEL certain that I am sent on a special errand at this time.
   Before my mind's eye I see a soul whose awful reflections are hurrying
   him to despair. He refuses counsel, and will not listen to direction,
   for dread has made him desperate. I would have a word in the ear of
   that worried and wearied one. See ye not the man? He has battled long
   against a dark temptation, but at last he is beaten. He feels that he
   can hold out no longer. He can scarcely take breath; the air grows hot
   and stifling around him, as he faces the question--what next?
   Accustomed as I am to look down on these crowded aisles and up at these
   closely-packed galleries, I feel a strange curiosity as I gaze into the
   mass; for I know that there is one man among all of you to whom I have
   a private message. I carry despatches from the King of kings to one who
   is grievously troubled, and is become as a woman forsaken and despised.
   My Lord and Master described himself in parable as leaving the
   ninety-and-nine to seek for one lost sheep: I must now copy his
   example. You will not grudge me for this service, I am sure. I quit the
   throng that I may find the bewildered one, and bring him safe and sound
   to the fold.

   Turning to my text, let me say, that as one is startled by a shriek, or
   saddened by a groan, so these sharp utterances of Job astonish us at
   first, and then awake our pity. How much are we troubled with brotherly
   compassion as we read the words,--"If I wash myself with snow water,
   and make my hands never so clean; yet shalt thou plunge me in the
   ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me!" The sense of misery
   couched in this passage baffles description. Yet this is but one of a
   series, in which sentence after sentence reveals a fresh chamber of
   horrors. The similitudes of grief are here piled up in heaps, with what
   an old author has spoken of as the "rhetoric of sorrow." Physical
   sufferings had produced a strain on Job's mind, and he sought relief by
   expressing his anguish. Like some solitary prisoner in the gloomy keep
   of an old castle, he graves on the walls pictures of the abject
   despondencies which haunt him. His afflictions are aggravated by vain
   efforts to alleviate them: he wounds his hand with the rough hammer and
   nail with which he is engraving his griefs. Of such tortures many of us
   have had a taste.

   From my experience, as a patient myself, smitten down with
   soul-sickness; and from my observation as a pastor, into whose ears the
   woes of awakened sinners are constantly poured, I have somewhat learned
   to understand the imagery of Job. The sufferer is in double straits.
   While he is tossed about by Satan, his friends are discharging their
   arrows at him, and the Almighty troubleth him. To help such a sufferer
   we must be careful to distinguish between the causes of his sorrow, and
   divide between his affliction itself and the further sorrows which he
   has brought upon himself by his unwise efforts to escape from it.

   Such, then, is the line of thought we will pursue. I shall make four
   divisions; three of them are to be found in the text, and the fourth
   will follow on, as an important consequence. First, we shall notice
   that a quickened soul becomes conscious of guilt; secondly, the soul
   that is quickened makes ineffectual attempts to rid itself of the stain
   of guilt; thirdly, to deter his people from self-righteousness it
   pleases God to plunge deeper into the mire those who attempt to cleanse
   themselves; the fourth point is, that only by severe training are men
   led to look alone to God for salvation,--it needs omnipotence to teach
   us that salvation is of the Lord.

   I. At the outset, then, we observe that QUICKENED SOULS ARE CONSCIOUS
   OF GUILT. They see it; they know it; they feel it; and they blush to
   find that they are without excuse for it. All men are sinners: to most
   men, however, sin appears to be a fashion or the times, a necessity of
   nature, a folly of youth, or an infirmity of age, which a slight
   apology will suffice to remove. You will scarcely meet with an
   Englishman who will not acknowledge that he is a sinner. Is it not the
   General Confession stereotyped in the book of Common Prayer? But it is
   one thing to call yourself a sinner, and quite another thing to feel
   it. I have heard of a lady who owned to her minister that she was a
   great sinner. He questioned her kindly as to which of the ten commands
   she had broken. Beginning with the first, he asked her, "Did you ever
   break this?" to which enquiry she indignantly answered, "No." In like
   manner he dealt with the second, and right through the whole ten. She
   professed in detail to have observed each one, and yet pretended to
   confess that she had broken them all. By such equivocations multitudes
   of men and women deceive themselves; and it is unhappily the custom of
   many a preacher to address his congregation as if they were all good
   people, and every one of them knew the Lord, from the least even to the
   greatest. This is pleasing to the flesh, and clattering to pride; but
   it is most pernicious. How many are being deceived by this want of
   marking a difference where a vital difference exists!

   Not till men are quickened by divine grace do they truly know that they
   are sinners. How is this? Some diseases are so insidious that the
   sufferers fancy that they are getting better, while in very truth they
   are hastening to the grave. After such manner does sin deceive the sons
   of men: they think they are saved when they are still unrenewed. How
   often have I seen a poor girl, whose pale face, sunken eyes, shadowy
   hand, and languid step have clearly betokened that she was on the brink
   of death, yet she mistook the flush of consumption for the ruddiness of
   health. Slowly she waned; but within a day of her departure she planned
   cheerful projects which proved that she looked for life. Consumption is
   not, however, so deceitful as sin. Where it has full power over the
   soul, "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked;
   who can know it?" If sin were not so deceitful it would not be half so
   destructive as it is.

   How is this, you ask again? Few give themselves the trouble to think
   about these matters at all. Ours is an age in which men's thoughts are
   keen upon politics and merchandize, practical science and economic
   inventions, financial schemes and Home Rule, and I know not what
   beside; but sound doctrine and sincere piety are out of vogue. Few
   people trouble themselves to think about their souls' everlasting
   welfare. Men die at the same rate as of yore, but the mortality is
   reckoned by a percentage; and as for the life hereafter it is ignored.
   Friend, have you ever dedicated ten minutes of your time to a
   consideration of your destiny? Days to your ledger; hours to your
   amusements; years to your commercial engagements; would it not be wise
   to reserve some moments for your soul's outlook beyond the grave? You
   have made your last will and testament for the world that is fading
   away, but you have laid up no treasure for the world to come. Is this
   consistent with your usual prudence? I should have good hope for some
   of you if I could make you sit for one hour alone, and think of nothing
   but your souls, your God, and the final judgment. Alas! alas! as the
   horse rusheth to the battle, so men rush to the heated competition of
   the hour. They cannot be persuaded to consider. Poor mortals! They
   concern themselves about everything that does not concern them, but
   they persistently neglect everything that is needful to their eternal
   well-being.

   How is this? we enquire once more. To natural ignorance we may
   attribute much of the ordinary indifference of men to their own
   sinfulness. They live in a benighted age. In vain you boast the
   enlightenment of this nineteenth century: the nineteenth century is not
   one whit more enlightened as to the depravity of human nature than the
   first century. Men are as ignorant of the plague of their own hearts
   to-day as they were when Paul addressed them. I know that almost every
   man you meet with talks as if he were qualified to set up for a doctor
   of divinity; but is not this the confidence of ignorance? "Vain man
   would be wise"--or read it, if you please, "vain man is void of
   understanding--though man be born like a wild ass's colt." Until God
   the Holy Ghost takes him in hand no spiritual light enters the man's
   soul. Preaching is an effective means of instructing the mind, arousing
   the conscience, and impressing the hearts of the people; and faithful
   preachers are scattered up and down the country within measurable reach
   of most of your homes. Why, then, is the doctrine of human sinfulness
   so little understood, and so seldom accepted as an undeniable fact?
   Many persons seem startled, and try to think that they misunderstand us
   when we say plainly that in the very best man in the world there is no
   virtue or grace that can be pleasing to God, unless he has been made a
   new creature in Christ Jesus. Let me put the truth before you as
   plainly as I can by speaking of your body in order to describe your
   soul. You probably imagine that your physical constitution is sound and
   healthy. I grant you all you ask on that score; yet you are but flesh
   and blood, like the rest of our mortal race, and therefore you are
   exposed to every disease which waylays your fellow creatures. Even so,
   your deceitful heart is capable of as desperate crimes as the vilest of
   sinners ever committed. The evil propensity lurks within, it needs only
   the contagion of society, or the temptation of Satan to bring it out.
   Does not this alarm you? It ought to do so.

   Hardly a glimmer of the humbling truth of our natural depravity dawns
   on the dull apprehension of the worldly-wise, though souls taught from
   above know it and are appalled by it. In divers ways the discovery
   comes to those whom the Lord ordains to save. Sometimes a preacher sent
   of God lets in the dreadful light. Many men, like the false prophet
   Mokanna, hide their deformity. You may remember the story. Mokanna wore
   a silver veil upon his forehead: should he ever remove it the
   brightness of his countenance would blind the astonished world. In
   truth a foul disease had cankered his brow. God's faithful servants are
   sent to tear off these veils, and expose men to themselves. This duty
   demands courage. Men veil black villainy with self-flattery! Like
   Jezebel, they paint their eyebrows, and tire their heads, till they
   think themselves beautiful. It is ours, like Jehu, to cry, "Throw her
   down." What have they to do with peace who are the servants of sin? How
   dare they pretend to comeliness whose hearts are not right with God?

   How comes it to pass, then, that the best of saints on earth are prone
   to account themselves the chief of sinners? Their sincerity is
   unquestionable. This discovery is due to the Holy Spirit. He it is who
   convinces men of sin. By his mysterious but most blessed agency on the
   hearts of men, a sense of utter ruin is wrought in the chosen, and this
   prepares them to accept the full redemption provided by the sacrifice
   of the Redeemer. We cannot explain to you the mystery of the Spirit's
   operation. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the
   sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it
   goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." But this we do
   know--the Holy Spirit withers all merely human hope and righteousness,
   and thus makes room for trust in the work of our Lord Jesus. Man by
   nature is blindly proud, and proudly blind. The moment the Spirit of
   God comes into a man, the scales fall from his eyes, and he sees
   himself in quite a different light. To each saved soul it seems a
   strange miracle. I have heard the story from simple lips full many a
   time. The new self talks of the old self with a kind of vacant
   wonderment. Yesterday our friend was on good terms with himself as a
   virtuous citizen, an honest trader, a sound churchman; in moral worth
   all that his neighbors could wish. To-day he is vile in his own sight:
   his hands are filthy, his heart is foul, his thoughts are loathsome. He
   perceives that he has been walking in a vain show, and therefore he
   writes himself down a hypocrite. No name too base by which to surname
   himself.

   Have I found you out, my friend? Wandering among the motley throng, I
   am in quest of a soul that seeks the mercy of the Lord. Am I not upon
   your track?

   Mayhap I am at this moment addressing a person who has been the subject
   of a mysterious gloom for which he sees no reason whatever. I am right
   happy to have found him, for I trust I have met with a recruit for the
   army of truth. But why, you may enquire, do I make such a remark? I
   will tell you in a moment. There is a vital connection between
   soul-distress and sound doctrine. Sovereign grace is dear to those who
   have groaned deeply because they see what grievous sinners they are.
   Witness Joseph Hart and John Newton, whose hymns you have often sung,
   or David Brainerd and Jonathan Edwards, whose biographies many of you
   have read. You seldom hear much of God's everlasting covenant in these
   modern times, for few men feel that thorough conviction of sin which
   comes directly from the teaching of the Holy Spirit. In the economy of
   redemption the effectual operation of the Spirit in enlightening the
   heart concerning its own sinfulness is sure evidence of the Father's
   personal love to his chosen people, and of the special atonement that
   the Son of God made for their transgressions.

   "Ne'er had ye felt the guilt of sin,

   Or sweets of pardoning love,

   Unless your worthless names had been

   Enrolled to life above."

   You may walk through a dark cellar without discerning by the eye that
   anything noisome is there concealed. Let the shutters be thrown open!
   Bid the light of day stream in! You soon perceive frogs upon the cold
   clammy pavement, filthy cobwebs hanging on the walls in long festoons,
   foul vermin creeping about everywhere. Startled, alarmed, horrified,
   who would not wish to flee away, and find a healthier atmosphere? The
   rays of the sun are, however, but a faint image of that light divine
   shed by the Holy Spirit, which penetrates the thickest shades of human
   folly and infatuation, and exposes the treachery of the inmost heart.
   Then the soul cries out in agony, "O wretched man that I am! who shall
   deliver me from the body of this death?" When brought to feel this, we
   think our doom is scaled, and everlasting destruction is close upon us.
   But it is not so. This is the way of hope. Through death to life every
   saved soul must pass. Ask us not to paint the sensations; nor blame us
   if we usually describe that experience which is most distinct. Sharp
   conviction, fainting heart, struggling hope, fear that haunts, terror
   that appalls,--an awful fight of fiercely strange emotions! This is the
   extreme measure of the life-change. In milder form, with one decisive
   pang the true heart is born again. The Slough of Despond lies across
   every pilgrim's pathway. The years or hours it takes to wade through it
   must be left an open question. Sudden death is an occasional fact, but
   more frequently the saints are peacefully welcomed to the realms above;
   so in the church on earth, sudden conversions happen, but as a rule men
   pass gradually into the kingdom of God. Between the sensual and the
   spiritual there is a great gulf, and it must be passed. Of the wind or
   weather in which you make the passage it is not for me to speak: the
   voyage may be long or short; but in some sort the gulf must be
   traversed. Conviction of sin is of the first importance: it cannot be
   dispensed with.

   You will say, "Why?" Well, we might suggest many reasons. It will make
   mercy the more precious, it will excite horror of sin in the
   future--burnt children dread the fire, it will teach you patience, for
   no future trial will be so severe as this; and it will tend to keep you
   persevering in holiness. But be the reasons what they may, be you sure
   of this, that no soul is saved without being made conscious of its own
   sinfulness.

   II. We pass on to notice that it often happens that AWAKENED SOULS USE
   MANY INEFFECTUAL MEANS TO OBTAIN CLEANSING. Job describes himself as
   washing in snow water, and making his hands never so clean. His
   expressions remind me of my own labor in vain. By how many experiments
   I tried to purify my own soul! Like all my fellows, I was always foiled
   in every attempt. See a squirrel in a cage; the poor thing is working
   away, trying to mount, yet he never rises one inch higher. In like case
   is the sinner who seeks to save himself by his own good works, or by
   any other means: he toils without result. It is astonishing what pains
   men will take in this useless drudgery. They prevent the dawn of day in
   their anxiety to attend matins or observe mass; they are austere in
   their fastings; they say prayers without stint and do penance to the
   full. We should be sorry to impugn their sincerity. With what exemplary
   zeal many in the Anglican Church go about to establish their own
   righteousness! They practice ceremonies, with a claim to catholicity
   which no Catholic will allow. Untiring is their diligence in one
   department or another of amateur office, they hope for a reward for
   doing what God never commanded. Without a Scriptural proof of being
   right in anything, they would fain be righteous overmuch in everything.
   The labor of the foolish in spinning a righteousness of their own, that
   is neither accredited by the divine law nor by the holy gospel is
   almost incredible: they would rather give their bodies to be buried and
   their goods to feed the poor, than submit to salvation by grace, though
   it is the only possible salvation.

   In seeking to obtain absolution of their sins, to establish a
   righteousness of their own, and to secure peace of mind, men tax their
   ingenuity to the utmost. Job talks of washing himself with snow water.
   The imagery is, no doubt, meant to be instructive. Why is snow water
   selected? The reason probably was, first, because it was hard to get.
   Far easier, generally, to procure water from the running brooks than
   from melted snow. Men set a high value on that which is difficult to
   procure. Whence comes it that the great majority of the so-called
   Christian world prefer worship conducted with gorgeous ritual and
   stately ceremonial? Is it not the rarity of the thing which creates a
   sense of value? Enter a Popish cathedral, and try, if you can, to
   understand the services. What are all these persons doing dressed in
   red and white, or those other persons in more sombre color?
   Manipulations, genuflexions, prostrations, waving of censers, and
   elevating of hosts--an array of symbolism which it took ages to
   conglomerate. What is the value of it all, unless it lies in its
   complications and expenses? Our Protestant friends have their milder
   predilections. Organs and orchestras serve them for snow water. In
   measured accents let me speak of music. For psalms and spiritual songs
   you all know I have an ardent passion. My spirit wings its way to the
   very portals of heaven in the words and tunes of our hymns. But for
   your instrumental melodies I have no mind, when you substitute mere
   sound for heartfelt prayer and praise. The obvious simplicity of the
   gospel is the only outward voucher I know of for its inward sincerity.
   Praise is none the better because of the difficulty of the music; say
   rather that the more simple and congregational it is the better by far.
   Forms of worship which are expensive and difficult are greatly affected
   by many, as snow water was thought in Job's day to be a bath for kings;
   but, after all, it is an idle fashion, likely to mislead.

   Besides, snow water enjoyed a reputation for purity. If you would have
   a natural filtered water gather the newly-fallen snow and melt it. The
   figure represents the religiousness which is of the most rigid
   kind--the cream of the cream. Specimens yet remain among us of piety
   more than possible to men, religiousness above the range of mortals;
   which piety is, however, not of God's grace, and consequently is a vain
   show. Though we should use the purest ceremonies, multiply the best of
   good works, and add thereto the costliest of gifts, yet we should be
   unable to make ourselves clean before God. You may wash yourself till
   you deny the existence of a spot, and yet you may be unclean. You may
   make rigid rules, and find much content in keeping them, and yet remain
   in nature's filthiness. With all your shrewdness you have but practiced
   a human device, and in refusing to trust in the Lord Jesus you have
   failed to observe a divine ordinance; and therefore you will fail.

   Once again, this snow water is probably extolled because it descends
   from the clouds of heaven, instead of bubbling up from the clods of
   earth. Religiousness which can color itself with an appearance of the
   supernatural is very taking with many. Some folks are fond of
   apostolical succession; it professes to come from heaven. No doubt the
   notion originated in cloudland. Others are fascinated by Popery. His
   holiness the Pope is accounted to be a great cistern, full of grace,
   which is distilled in streams, and runs through capacious pipes called
   cardinals, and then through smaller tubes, styled bishops. At length by
   the still smaller pipes of the priests it comes to the people. No
   pretext was ever more paltry than this, and yet many are deceived by
   it. There is no peace in it for thoughtful minds. For such your snow
   water has no solace, because they see no connection between outward
   acts and the purifying of the heart.

   Not all the outward forms on earth,

   Nor rites that God has given,

   Nor will of man, nor blood, nor birth,

   Can raise a soul to heaven."

   If I "make my hands never so clean," is an expression peculiarly racy
   in the original. The Hebrew word has an allusion to soap or nitre. Such
   was the ordinary and obvious method any one would take to whiten his
   hands when they were grimy. Tradition tells that certain stains of
   blood cleave to the floor. The idea is that human blood, shed in
   murder, can never be scrubbed or scraped off the boards. Thus is it
   most certainly with the dye of sin. The blood of souls is in thy
   skirts, is the terrible language of Jeremiah (2:34). When ye think that
   baptism can begin, that confirmation can further, and that other
   sacraments can complete your purification, ye are mere dupes of your
   own folly. "Though I wash myself in snow water, and make myself never
   so clean; yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes
   shall abhor me." There it stands, it is the testimony of one man, but
   yet it is true; the Almighty attests it, and all human experience
   affirms it. These worthless experiments to cleanse yourselves would be
   ended once for all if you would have regard to the great truth of the
   gospel: "Without shedding of blood there is no remission." "The blood
   of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." God alone can
   remove sin, and he does so by the blood of Jesus.

   III. But AS SURE AS EVER QUICKENED BOWLS TRY TO GET PURITY IN THE WRONG
   WAY, GOD WILL THRUST THEM DOWN INTO THE DITCH. This is a terrible
   predicament. I find, on looking at the passage closely, that it means
   "head over ears in the ditch." It is not merely some filthy puddle in
   which a man treads till he is splashed all over, it is a slough of
   despond into which he sinks. His eyes, his ears, and his mouth, are
   filled with pollution; and his very clothes are so foul that he utterly
   abhors himself. Old Master Caryl, a rare expositor of the Book of Job,
   says that the original can only be equalled in English by the
   expression--we would not touch such an one with a pair of tongs.

   Often it happens with those who try to get better by their own good
   works, that their conscience is awakened by the effort, and they are
   more conscious of sin than ever. If a chosen man strives to save
   himself from his sins by his own righteousness the Lord permits him to
   see his own heart and he ceases from all glorying. The word here
   rendered "ditch" is elsewhere translated "corruption." So in the
   sixteenth Psalm: "Neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see
   corruption." Language cannot paint abasement, reproach, or ignominy in
   stronger terms. "THOU shalt plunge me in the ditch." Is it not as
   though God himself would undertake the business of causing his people
   to know that by their vain ablutions they were making themselves yet
   more vile in his eyes? We read, in the second chapter of Jeremiah, of
   God's remonstrance with Judah: "Though thou wash thee with nitre, and
   take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, saith the
   Lord God. How canst thou say, I am not polluted?"

   May we not regard this as the discipline of our Heavenly Father's love,
   albeit when passing through the trial we do not perceive it to be so?
   Thus, in the apocalyptic epistle to the church at Laodicea,
   expostulation more severe or more tender it would be hard to
   imagine-"Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and
   have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and
   miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me
   gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment
   that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not
   appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see."
   Mark the gentle words, "I counsel thee," addressed to a people whose
   lukewarmness excited nausea! Then follows a sentence of encouragement
   so sweet and enchanting that it almost sounds like an apology for the
   fierceness of the former censure. "As many as I love, I rebuke and
   chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent." A revelation of wretched
   sinfulness ends in a declaration of love and a visit of grace; for the
   Lord goes on to say, "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock." Anyhow,
   the Lord will end the conceit which is the source of the lukewarmness:
   he cannot permit his chosen to remain in self-righteous pride; for that
   his soul hateth.

   Perhaps, my friend, the experience I am trying to describe will come to
   you through the preaching of the Word. This sermon may dishearten and
   distract you. Your hope was thriving like a plant. This sermon shrivels
   every leaf; and though, at the scent of water, the branch of
   self-righteousness will bud again, the next sermon you hear may wither
   even the stem of your confidence. If another sermon soon afterwards
   cuts it down to the very root, the ministry will be profitable to you;
   for the root of pride must be cut up. Believe me, this is mild
   treatment: I trust you may not be left to severer methods.

   Frequently our great Lord leaves a poor wayward soul to eat the fruits
   of its own ways, and this is the severest form of plunging in the
   ditch. While striving after righteousness in a wrong way, the man
   stumbles into the very sin against which he struggled. The young man,
   of whom I am now thinking, resolved, by the help of God, that he would
   be different henceforth from what he ever had been. His vows kept pace
   with his devotions. He started them at early morn--

   "And felt, good, easy man, full surely

   His goodness was a-ripening."

   To the shop he went, as was his wont; but his thoughts were no longer
   set on earthly things: he stood, as he supposed, on heavenly ground.
   Because he had taken snow-water and had washed his hands, he began to
   think that he was singularly clean. Towards evening a temptation
   suddenly crossed his path. At first he resisted, but it proved a feeble
   fight. The argument of another young man, that it was policy to yield,
   availed to break the covenant he had made with his own conscience. So
   he was led astray to a place of amusement, where the light of God's
   countenance never shines. The wretchedness of his reflections on the
   morrow could not easily be told. He felt that his feet were fast in the
   miry clay, and his garments foully soiled. His empty conceit might not
   have been dislodged from its secret lurking-place in his depraved
   nature without some such perilous downfall.

   Mayhap, there sits out yonder a good sister who has grown familiar with
   spiritual straits. Did you ever happen to hear of Mary Huntington, wife
   of William Huntington, S.S., the famous Calvinistic preacher? When he
   prayed for her, which he did with much affection, he confessed before
   God--"O Lord, I beseech thee, hear me on her behalf. Thou knowest how
   warmly attached she has ever been to MOSES, and what narrow and vain
   searches she has made in order to find out his grave, which thou, in
   infinite wisdom and mercy, hast thought fit to conceal." That prayer,
   which was published about a century ago, is worth preserving in your
   memory. For that "Mary," like many worthy housewives of these days, was
   rather fond of collecting the rags and relics of self. If it had been
   possible, she would have worn at least an apron of the linsey-woolsey
   of self-righteousness. The Lord will not have his handmaids thus
   arranged: they must be quit of self altogether.

   Our lives through various scenes are drawn and vexed with petty
   provocations. Paltry annoyances are the bane of our peace. Some of you,
   dear sisters, spend your years and your thoughts in a narrow circle,
   and I deeply sympathize with you therein. Without a wish to be great,
   or to enlarge your coast, you intensely desire to be good. To do your
   duty to the best of your ability, is your aim, and therein you are
   worthy of all honor. The lot of many of you is to pass much of your
   time in loneliness; your temptations are therefore peculiar. For many a
   quiet hour you have been busy with domestic employments, distracted by
   no acute anxiety, but cheered by much quiet meditation. At such seasons
   you are apt to get on good terms with yourselves. Presently the shades
   of evening begin to fall. Evening! of which Cowper sweetly sings:

   "Come, evening, once again, season of peace,

   Return, sweet evening, and continue long!"

   You are prepared to welcome home the husband, brother, son, who will
   look for his repast, and seek his well-earned repose. Possibly, my
   sisters, this is your season of temptation. His rough word, his
   needless complaint, his vacant look, when you pine for sympathy puts
   you about. A sense of injustice stings you. It may be very natural, but
   all the same it is very fatal to your sense of superior goodness. What
   more treacherous than one's temper? In a sudden gust of passion, you
   utter words of anger. How gladly would you recall them! but they are
   registered. Down into the ditch of despondency you sink. For days to
   come you feel that you cannot forgive yourself. Your rich mantle of
   righteousness after this tumble in the ditch looks mean enough to
   provoke your own ridicule.

   Thus do we, in our different spheres, fly from this to that, and from
   that to the other. Some hope to cleanse away sin by a supreme effort of
   self-denial, or of miraculous faith. Men dream of being clean without
   the blood of Jesus, they even boast of it, and yet their sin remaineth.
   The eye of the judgment may be deceived till we half think we are
   clean; but no sooner does the scale grow thin, or the light grow
   strong, than the conscience perceives its error and learns the lesson
   that no human endeavor can wash out the accursed spot. Let us not play
   at purification, nor vainly hope to satisfy conscience with that which
   renders no satisfaction to God.

   Persons of sensitive disposition, and sedentary habits, are prone to
   seek a righteousness of inward feeling. Let me describe these good
   folks to you. They aim at a righteousness that renounces every fault,
   and they cultivate such graces as are naturally lovely, watching from
   moment to moment their own feelings of joy or grief. Yet these be they
   who get to know, with the keenest anguish, the plague of their own
   hearts. How it happens is sufficiently clear. They try to live by their
   feelings and frames of mind; and what can be more deceitful than these
   sensations? Treacherous as the sea on which you sail so smoothly on
   sunny days, but which, at other times, wrecks your barque without
   mercy, your frames and feelings are not in the least to be depended on.
   One day you are all aglow, the flush of fervor is on your face, the
   next day you feel so dead and cold that prayer would freeze upon your
   lips. Your evidences are dark. You think you have none, and, seized
   with despondency, you lament that "there is no hope." Ah, me! the
   sin-sick soul, given to watch its own symptoms, is brought into
   perilous straits; trying one nostrum after another, sometimes feeling a
   little better, and anon feeling itself much worse. Oh, that it could
   turn from feeling to faith; and look steadily out of inward sensation
   to the work finished once for all by the Lord Jesus!

   Poor Job was smitten with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the
   crown of his head. No doubt he sent for the doctor--though we are not
   actually told that he did so. It is likely enough that snow water was
   prescribed to him for a relief. His hands may not have seemed very
   sightly when he used it; there may, at least, have been some connection
   between his physician's prescription and his poetry, when he said, "If
   I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean."
   Perfection in any one part of conduct would not secure cleanness for
   the rest. Washed hands would be a small matter if the boils remained
   over the rest of the body. This is another aspect of the same
   unsatisfactory expedient that I am wanting to point out to you. You are
   under bad treatment until you walk by faith in Jesus. Anything short of
   grace will prove a mere mockery of your malady. Asa, King of Judah, was
   diseased in his feet. He sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians.
   Asa never recovered; but the Lord restored Job to perfect, health. The
   gratuitous advice which the patriarch received in the time of his sore
   sickness was not worth his gratitude. Of his three friends, he said:
   "Ye are all physicians of no value." Then comes back the metaphor which
   I have repeated so often: "Yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and
   mine own clothes shall abhor me." After all is said and done by the
   wisest of men the poor sinner is worse off than when they undertook his
   case. All is vanity till God comes in.

   Let us not forget that the man who thus described his own case "was
   perfect and upright, one that feared God and eschewed evil." Such a
   case is a puzzle to those who are not enlightened by the Holy Spirit.
   Although Job was renowned for righteousness in his generation, a gleam
   from God's countenance exposed the faultiness of his soul. Does this
   prove him to have been a hypocrite? By no means. His friends supposed
   him to be so, though they had no ground whatever for the suspicion: it
   was their rough way of solving a hard problem. If the patriarch's
   integrity had not been so firm, if his refinement had not been so
   tender, if his piety towards God had not been so invariably accompanied
   by his pity for his brother men; if, in a word, his character had not
   been so complete, his trial and his deliverance could not have
   exhibited the extraordinary lesson which has interested and instructed
   every succeeding generation. He appears before us at first in the vigor
   of health, in the height of prosperity, and in the charm of good
   repute. But oh, the vanity of man! At a touch of God's finger, his
   flesh develops a festering mass of corruption; at a glance of God's
   eye, which searched him through and through, the total depravity of
   human nature at its best estate becomes apparent. "He abhors himself in
   dust and ashes." What next? Utter ruin? Nay, friend, it is full
   redemption.

   IV. By such severe training THE AWAKENED ONE IS LED TO LOOK ALONE TO
   GOD FOR SALVATION, and to find the salvation he looks for. This is my
   last point, and I have no time left to enlarge upon it. What I want is
   that the truth may flash across your mind in a moment. There sits the
   man who is menaced with despair because every effort to extricate
   himself from the tangled web of his own strange experience has left him
   worse than before. Did I attempt to comfort him he would repel my
   kindest expressions. And why? He knows that it is God who condemns him.
   In a British court of justice, when the judge sums up against the
   prisoner, small cheer can he get from the honeyed words of his counsel.
   But hark--"It is God that justifieth." Whom does he justify? The
   ungodly. He first condemns them in their own consciences; and then he
   justifies them according to his grace. If I receive the sentence of
   death in myself it is the earnest of deliverance in my Redeemer. My
   brother, has light beamed on your soul? I hope I have found you, and
   that the Lord has visited you with his salvation.

   I want you to notice a simple fact which seems to me to have escaped
   your observation. When the Almighty justified Job he commended him, and
   pronounced a high encomium on his conduct. Whatever mistakes he made
   about himself or his circumstances, in one matter he was clear as a
   bell; He has spoken right of me, saith the Lord. (Job 42:7.) Eliphaz
   and his friends transgressed in this respect. Hearken unto me, ye that
   follow after righteousness, ye that seek it in yourselves, you are all
   on the wrong track. You begin below with the whole duty of man, and try
   to work upward: you are sure to fail. You should begin up yonder, with
   the righteousness of God; and then you could work downward to
   righteousness of daily life. God give you knowledge of salvation by
   grace, to the glory of his own name, and to your own sanctification,
   for Christ's sake! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Job 9.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--556, 476, 602.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Seasonable Exhortation

   (No. 1909)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JULY 11, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober and hope to the end
   for the Grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus
   Christ." 1 Peter 1:13.

   To read the whole chapter is most helpful to the understanding of our
   text. If we have studied it carefully, we must have said to ourselves,
   "How full of their Lord were the minds of these holy writers!" Peter
   can scarcely write a verse without an allusion to the Lord Jesus
   Christ. He was not only, "Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ," but you
   can see that his heart was steeped and saturated in memories of his
   Master--he could hardly get through a sentence without some allusion to
   the death, the Resurrection, or the Second Coming of his beloved Lord.
   Oh that my ministry might always be of the same sort, dripping with the
   holy unction of the Savior's name! Brethren, may your conversations and
   your lives be full of the Lord Jesus Christ, that men may take
   knowledge of you--that you have been with Jesus and have learned of

   Him.

   A second thought will have occurred to you--How ardently these men
   expected the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ! Peter was continually
   speaking of it and so was his beloved Brother, Paul. They hoped that
   Christ might come while they were yet alive--they evidently looked upon
   His Advent as very near. They were not mistaken in this last belief. It
   is very near. A long time has passed, you say? I answer, By no manner
   of means! Two thousand years is not a long time in the count of God,
   nor in reference to so grand a business! If a thousand years is with
   God as one day, if the Lord does not come for the next 20,000 years, we
   shall not be truthfully able to say that He delays His coming, for with
   a history of which the chief fact is the death of Christ, there may
   well be due pause and ample time for working out its infinite problems.
   We are dealing with eternal things and what are ages? Let us patiently
   wait. "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise as some men count
   slackness." Let us persevere in the same belief which filled the minds
   of the early Believers-- that Jesus will come, that He may come at any
   time--and that He will surely come quickly! Brothers and Sisters,
   before the word which now proceeds from my lips shall have reached your
   ear the Lord may come in His Glory! Be you as men that look for His
   coming at any moment.

   It is equally noticeable that while Apostolic men looked for the coming
   of Christ, they looked for it with no idea of dread, but, on the
   contrary, with the utmost joy! In this chapter Peter sets forth the
   glorious Advent of our Lord as an event to be hoped for with eagerness.
   He speaks of "the Grace that is to be brought unto you at the
   revelation of Jesus Christ." It was to him, therefore, not a day of
   terror and of thunder and overwhelming confusion, but a day of the
   consummation of the work of Grace, a period in which Glory should crown
   the Grace received through the first manifestation of the Lord! It was
   all joy to the early Believers to think of the Lord's appearing. The
   falling stars, the darkened sun, the blood-red moon, the quivering
   earth, the skies rolled up like an outworn vesture--all these things
   had no horror for them since Jesus was, thus, coming. Though all
   creation should be on a blaze and the elements should melt with fervent
   heat, yet Jesus was coming and that was enough for them--the Bridegroom
   of their souls was on His way and this was rapture to their expectant
   spirits!

   Observe also, once more, how constantly they were urging this as a
   motive! Peter never holds it out as a mere matter of speculation, nor
   exclusively as a ground of comfort, but he is constantly using the
   Lord's glorious appearing as the grand motive for action, for holiness,
   for watchfulness! Our text is a case in point--"Therefore gird up the
   loins of your mind, be sober and hope to the end for the Grace that is
   to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." My Brothers
   and Sisters, let us not set aside a Truth of God which is evidently
   meant for our stimulus, our strength and our

   sanctification--but let us receive it into our hearts and pray that God
   may bless it to our practical profiting in all time to come.

   I intend to handle the text with special view to the present time. It
   seems to me that there never was a text more appropriate for any day
   than this one for the time now passing. It begins, as you notice, with
   girding up the loins of your mind. These are days of great looseness--I
   see great laxity of doctrinal belief--and gross carelessness in
   religious practice everywhere! Christian people are doing, today, what
   their forefathers would have loathed! Multitudes of professors are but
   very little different from worldlings. Men's religion seems to hang
   loosely about them, as if it did not fit them-- the wonder is that it
   does not drop off them! Men are so little braced up as to conscientious
   conviction and vigorous resolve that they easily go to pieces if
   assailed by error or temptation. The teaching necessary for today is
   this--"Gird up the loins of your mind," brace yourselves up! Pull
   yourselves together--be firm, compact, consistent, determined! Do not
   be like quicksilver which keeps on dissolving and running into
   fractions--do not fritter away life upon trifles, but live to purpose,
   with undivided heart and decided resolution.

   These are equally days in which it is necessary to say, "be sober." We
   are always having some new fad or another brought out to infatuate the
   unstable. Very good but very weak-minded people are apt to make
   marvelous discoveries and to cry them up as if they had found the
   philosopher's stone! In my short time I have heard, "Lo here!" and I
   have listened. And, "Lo there!" and I have listened--the call has come
   from a third, fourth, fifth, sixth quarter in quick succession and,
   after all, there was nothing worth a thought! The whole world was going
   to be enlightened by some new light which Peter and Paul never
   saw--something far superior to anything known by any of the saints or
   sages of the Church! But the grand illumination has not yet come. "Be
   sober," keep your feet; possess your souls; do not be carried away with
   every wind of doctrine! Do not be little babies, to believe everything
   that is told you, whether it is a ghost story or a fairy tale. Be
   sober--quit yourselves like men that have their wits about them. A very
   necessary word is this in times when everybody seems excited and some
   are so bewildered that they do not know their head from their heels!
   Crowds are prepared to follow any kind of foolery, whatever it may be,
   as long as it is advocated by clever men and is made to tickle their
   fancy. Do but shout loudly enough and many will answer! Do but set open
   the door and beckon and they will rush in, whatever the entertainment
   may be! Brothers and Sisters, "be sober," and judge for yourselves.

   Nor is the third exhortation at all unnecessary--"Hope to the end."
   Certain of us have to confess that the outlook appears to us very dark
   and dismal. Our surroundings seem full of fear and we are apt to grow
   despondent, if not almost despairing. Wisely, then, does bold Peter say
   to us, "Hope to the end." You who love the Truth of God, do not despair
   of its success! You who hold to the good old ways, do not dream that
   everybody will desert them! Do not give way to distrust as to the
   issues of the conflict. Be so hopeful as to be "calm mid the
   bewildering cry, confident of victory."

   Put these three exhortations into one--pull yourselves together, be
   steady, and be hopeful. There you have the practical run of the text. I
   desire earnestly that, by God's Spirit, we may carry it into practice
   from this day on and always.

   In asking your attention to the text, I notice, first, an
   argument--"Therefore." Secondly, an exhortation--"Gird up the loins of
   your mind; be sober, and hope to the end." And thirdly, an
   expectation--"hope to the end for the Grace that is to be brought unto
   you at the revelation of Jesus Christ."

   I. First, then, here is AN ARGUMENT, indicated by "therefore." True
   religion is not unreasonable--it is common sense set to heavenly music.
   Albeit that true religion may be above reason, it is never contrary to
   reason, but if we had the reason of God, our reason would teach us what
   His Holy Spirit has revealed. Pure religion is pure truth--God help us
   to be sure of this! Holiness is also a direct logical inference from
   Revelation. I like to notice the Epistles with their, "there-fores"
   and, "wherefores." If you read the First Epistle of Peter, you have in
   this verse, "therefore," and in the 18th verse, "forasmuch," and in the
   22nd verse, "seeing then." The second chapter begins with, "therefore."
   The sixth verse has its "wherefore;" the seventh its, "therefore," and
   the rest of the chapter is studded with the argumentative word, "for."
   Peter might seem to be too impetuous to be argumentative, but it is
   clear, to him, godliness was a matter of argument--he saw a distinct
   connection between the Doctrines of Grace and a holy life! Here in our
   text he says, "Therefore gird up the loins of your mind."

   Will you kindly follow me while I run over his argument? I shall have
   to give you only an outline of it. Here it is. He begins by saying,
   "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through
   sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood
   of Jesus Christ." See, Brothers and Sisters, you are elected to a very
   high

   privilege! You are chosen of God from before the foundation of the
   world, out of His free favor, that you should be a sanctified, obedient
   and cleansed people! Therefore, since God has chosen you to this, do
   not give way to the world, but gird up your loins to contend with it!
   Be not carried away with every novelty, be sober. Do not be downcast
   and dispirited, but bravely hope. Shall the elect of God be timorous?
   Shall those who are chosen of the Most High give way to despair? God
   forbid! There is an argument, then, in the first and second verses,
   forcibly supporting the precepts of the text. If we had time to
   elaborate it, we should see that it well behooves the elect of God to
   choose his service resolutely, to abide in it steadfastly and hope for
   its reward with supreme confidence.

   But next, Peter declares that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
   Christ has "begotten us again unto a lively hope by the Resurrection of
   Jesus Christ from the dead." O you begotten of God, see that you live
   as such! You are twice-born men! Live not the low life of the merely
   natural man. You are of the blood royal, you are descended from the
   King of Kings--degrade not your descent! You are born, not to death, as
   you were at your first birth, but unto life! Though you pass through
   the grave, you shall not remain there. The morgue is no home for your
   body--you shall come up out of the grave, for you are begotten again
   unto a hope most full of life by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from
   the dead. Therefore, gird up your loins! If it is so that there is this
   new life in you, a life eternal as the life of God, then be not cast
   down! Pull your belt close about you! Keep yourself free from the
   oppressive cares and temptations of the world and stand with holy hope,
   expecting the coming of your Lord from Heaven! That is a good argument,
   is it not? Your election and your regeneration call you to holy living!

   Further, the Apostle goes on to say that you are heirs of "an
   inheritance incorruptible, undefiled and that fades not away, reserved
   in Heaven for you." For you, the harp of gold! For you, the starry
   crown, the endless victory, the sight of the King in His beauty! For
   you, the sitting upon the Throne of Jesus, even as He has overcome and
   has sat down with His Father upon His Throne! Courage, then, Brethren,
   if this is your destiny! Within a month you may be in Heaven! If within
   a brief period you shall be exalted to share the rest of your Redeemer,
   do not be cast down, nor overwhelmed with trouble, nor dismayed by the
   abounding of sin, nor even by your own personal temptations. "Gird up
   the loins of your mind, be sober and hope to the end," for your end
   must be glorious! Good argument, is it not?

   Then he goes on to say that you are "kept by the power of God through
   faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." God
   Himself surrounds you as with a wall of fire. Until Omnipotence can be
   vanquished, until Immutability can be changed, until the Immortal God
   can die, not one of His chosen people shall be destroyed! "Kept by the
   power of God," what power can destroy us? Therefore, Brothers and
   Sisters, be brave and confident. Shall such a man as I flee? Kept by
   the power of God, shall I tremble? If the power of God keeps me, shall
   I "reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man?" If the power of God
   keeps me, shall I be hopeless? Shall I speak like one that has no
   hereafter to rejoice in? It cannot be so! If God keeps us, we will keep
   our hope even to the end. Is not that a good argument?

   Further, the Apostle goes on to say that we may be passing through
   necessary trial, but it is only for a little while. "Wherein you
   greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if necessary, you are in
   heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith,
   being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it is tried
   with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the
   appearing of Jesus Christ." See, Beloved, the Apostle declares that you
   must be tried even as gold must be put into the furnace--you have faith
   and faith must be tested--it is according to its nature and Divine
   purpose! The faith of Abraham was sharply tried and so must the faith
   of all Believers. That your religion may be really solid metal and not
   an imitation of it, or a mere gilded bauble, you must be tried!

   Your Master was tried--not without fighting did He win His crown! Not
   without labor did He enter into His reward. There is a necessity for
   our present affliction. God has a design in it--that He may have praise
   and Glory and honor at the appearing of His dear Son--a praise, Glory
   and honor in which we shall share! Come, then, Brethren, if this fire
   is to be passed through, let us gird up our loins to dash through it!
   Let us not fear, for the Lord has said, "When you pass through the fire
   I will be with you, you shall not be burned; neither shall the flame
   kindle upon you." My Brethren, if for a little time we must be tried,
   let us set our faces like flints to bear the trial. Let us not be
   intoxicated with sorrow or fear. Since God has a grand design in it,
   let us bow ourselves to His Divine will and only ask that His holy
   design may be fully answered. Let us hope to be sustained in the trial
   and sanctified as the result of it--and let no unbelieving fear cast a
   cloud over our sky. Is not this a good argument?

   Nor is this all. He tells us that even while we are in trial we are
   still full of joy. Read the eighth verse concerning, "Jesus Christ,
   whom, having not seen, you love; in whom, though now you see Him not,
   yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory."
   Beloved, we who love the Lord have our joy even in our present
   adversity! We have two heavens--a Heaven here and a Heaven hereafter!
   Jesus is with us and this is Heaven--we are soon to be with Jesus and
   that is another Heaven! Though sometimes cast down, we are glad at
   heart--

   "I would not change my blessed estate For all that earth calls good or
   great." Give me but the company of the sweet Lord Jesus and I ask no
   greater happiness! Yes, let me go back to my bed and my pain if I may
   have Jesus there! Better to lie in a dungeon and pine on bread and
   water with Christ's company than to sit in a parliament of kings and be
   their emperor and be without the Lord! Saints find everything in Christ
   when they have nothing else--and they equally find everything in Him
   when earthly comforts are multiplied! Beloved, if it is so, then let us
   gird up the loins of our mind, be sober and hope to the end! He that is
   with us now and makes all our sorrows work for good will be with us
   even to the end! Come life, come death, our Lord's Presence provides us
   with an all-sufficiency. If His Presence shall go with us and He will
   give us peace, we need not stipulate as to the road. Therefore let us
   not be dismayed, nor even think of doubting. Is not this a good
   argument?

   Once more--the Apostle goes on to say that the Gospel which we believe
   and which we teach, and for which we are ready to suffer and even to
   die--is a Gospel that comes to us with the sanction of the Prophets.
   The Holy Spirit moved upon those choice spirits so that they spoke to
   us concerning the sufferings of Christ and the Glory which should
   follow. It seems to me, Brothers and Sisters, that with such men as
   Moses and David, Isaiah and Jeremiah to support our faith, we need not
   be ashamed of our company, nor tremble at the criticisms of the
   moderns! We ought, rather, to gird up the loins of our mind and give
   our whole soul to the proclamation of a Gospel which is rendered
   venerable by the testimony of inspired men of all ages! Be sober and
   steadfast in the belief of the old faith! Never be moved by anything
   that modern rationalism or ancient unbelief may have to say! For not
   only do the Prophets assure us that we follow no cunningly-devised
   fable, but the angels stand gazing into it with strong desire to know
   more of it! The daily study of cherubim and seraphim is the Revelation
   of God in Christ. I tell you, Sirs, that the Gospel which, today, is
   hacked in pieces by the wise men of this world who tell us that they
   have found out something more in harmony with growing enlightenment, is
   still the admiration of every holy one who walks yon golden streets, or
   waits before the burning Throne of God! Still do angels and
   principalities and powers admire the mystery of the Incarnate God and
   the substitutionary Atonement made for men by the crucified Lord! They
   never cease to wonder and adore concerning the glorious Gospel of the
   blessed God! Standing, then, side by side with Prophets, looking with
   intent gaze to the same Object which fixes the attention of angels, we
   are not abashed by ridicule, nor disquieted by opposition! We stand
   fast, as upon a rock, girding up the loins of our mind and hoping to
   the end! There again is a right good argument. Is it not so?

   II. I beg you, dear Friends, to follow me to the next head of
   discourse, namely, THE EXHORTATION. The exhortation is a triplet--"Gird
   up the loins of your mind, be sober and hope to the end."

   The first exhortation, "Gird up the loins of your mind," sounds very
   sweet in my ears. I do not know whether it raises echoes in your minds,
   as it does in mine. I fancy that Peter had a noticeable habit of
   pulling his garments together. I read of him that he, "girt his
   fisher's coat unto him, for he was stripped." Almost everybody has some
   personal peculiarity and mannerism. And it may have been the way of
   Peter to be often tightening his belt. Hence the Savior--and here is
   the music of the text to me--said to him by the sea, after He had said,
   "Simon, son of Jonas, do you love Me?"--"When you were young, you
   girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you shall be old,
   you shall stretch forth your hands and another shall gird you and carry
   you where you would not. This spoke he, signifying by what death he
   should

   glorify God."

   That word, "gird," while it had something to do with Peter's old habit,
   is now sanctified by that blessed word which his Master had given him.
   Turning to the Lord's people, whom he desires to feed, he says to them,
   "Gird up the loins of your mind." "My Master talked of my girding my
   loins and of my being girt. I say now to you, Gird up the loins of your
   mind." Do you not think he borrowed the expression from the Lord Jesus?
   I think he did.

   Moreover, he was writing to Hebrew strangers scattered throughout
   Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia. May he not have had
   ringing in his ears for these Hebrews, the words of Moses to their
   fathers when they were

   strangers in Egypt? They were to eat the Passover with their loins
   girded and their staves in their hands. Thus would Peter have his
   brother "strangers" live in expectation of their complete deliverance
   and Home-going which was drawing near. I detect an echo of Egypt and
   the Paschal supper in this word.

   Or did Peter wish them to be ready to rejoice in the great blessing
   which was soon to come to them? Were they to be ready to leap and run
   for joy? We read of Elijah, that when he heard the sound of an
   abundance of rain, he girded himself and ran before Ahab's chariot--and
   so when we hear of the Grace that is to be revealed at the coming of
   our Lord, we are ready to run without weariness and walk without
   fainting! Oh that every servant of God would gird up his loins to run
   and meet his Master's chariot, for the King is on His way! He comes! He
   comes! Go forth to meet Him. Meeting Him, it is but fit that you should
   be found as servants prepared to do His bidding and run on His errands.

   The exact meaning of the metaphor, "Therefore gird up the loins of your
   mind," is to be found in the form of Oriental dress, which requires the
   use of a belt and the girding of it tightly, lest the garments should
   entangle the feet of the traveler, or otherwise hinder his action.

   "Gird up the loins of your mind." My Brethren, that certainly teaches
   us, in the first place, earnestness. A man going to work tucks up his
   sleeves and tightens his robes. He has something to do which demands
   all his strength and, therefore, he cannot afford to have anything
   hanging loosely about him to hinder him. We brace ourselves for a
   supreme ef-fort--and the Christian life is always such. We must always
   be in earnest if we would be disciples of our earnest Lord.

   Does it not also mean preparedness? When a man has girt his garments
   about him, he is ready for his work. A true Believer should be ready
   for suffering or service--ready, indeed, for anything. A servant
   standing with his loins girt signifies that whatever the message may be
   from his Master, he is ready to deliver it. Whatever the errand, he is
   ready to run upon it. He only needs the word and he will not hesitate,
   but will obey at once. This is the position which Christian people
   should always occupy--you should be earnestly prepared for the will of
   the Lord, let it be what it may. The future is unknown to you, but you
   are in a fit condition to meet it, whatever form it may assume.

   But the figure means more than this, does it not? It means
   determination and hearty resolution. The man who girds himself up for a
   work means that he is resolved to do it at once. He has made up his
   mind--no shilly-shallying remains with him, no hesitancy, no
   questioning, no holding back--he is set upon his course and is not to
   be moved from it. You will never get to Heaven, any of you, by playing
   at religion! There will be no climbing the hill of the Lord without
   effort; no going to Glory without the violence of faith. I believe that
   the ascent to Heaven is still as Bunyan described it--a staircase,
   every step of which will have to be fought for. He heard sweet singers
   on the roof of the palace singing--

   "Come in! Come in! Eternal Glory you shall win."

   Many had a mind to enter the palace and win that eternal Glory, but
   then, at the doorway stood a band of warlike men, with drawn swords, to
   wound and kill every man that ventured to enter! Therefore many who
   would have liked to have walked on the top of the palace did not care
   for so dangerous an enterprise--they desired the end but not the way to
   it! At last there came one with a determined countenance and he said to
   the writer with the inkhorn by his side, "Set down my name, Sir." And
   when his name was duly recorded, he drew his sword and rushed upon the
   armed men with all his might! It was a fierce conflict, but he meant to
   conquer or die, and he did conquer! He cut a lane through his enemies
   and, by-and-by, he, too, was heard singing with the rest--

   "Come in! Come in!

   Eternal Glory you shall win."

   By conflict throughout a whole life we come to our rest--there is no
   other way. You cannot go round to a back door and enter into Heaven by
   stealth! You must fight if you would reign! Therefore, gird up the
   loins of your mind.

   Once more, the figure teaches us that our life must be concentrated.
   "Gird up the loins of your mind." We have no strength to spare. We
   cannot afford to let part of our force leak away. We need to bring all
   our faculties to bear upon one point and exert them all to one end.
   Much can be done by concentration. The rays of the sun are warm, but if
   you collect them into a focus, by a magnifying glass, you produce a
   fire which otherwise you could not find in them. Concentrate your
   faculties upon faith in Jesus! Concentrate your emotions upon the love
   of Jesus! Concentrate your whole being upon the Glory of Jesus! You
   will accomplish marvels if you do this. A man who is all over the place
   is nowhere, but he whose life is one and indivisible, is strong--and
   his influence will be felt in the service of his Master.

   I cannot stay long upon one point, though there is so much to be said.
   The second exhortation is--"Be sober." And does not that mean, first,
   moderation in all things? Do not be so excited with joy as to become
   childish. Do not grow intoxicated and delirious with worldly gain or
   honor. On the other hand, do not be too much depressed with passing
   troubles. There are some who are so far from sobriety that if a little
   goes wrong with them, they are ready to cry, "Let me die." No, no!

   "Be sober." Keep the middle way--hold to the golden mean. There are
   many persons to whom this exhortation is most necessary. Are there not
   men around us who blow hot today and cold tomorrow?--their heat is
   torrid, their cold, arctic! You would think they were angels from the
   way they talk one day, but you might think them angels of another sort
   from the manner in which they act at other times. They are so high up,
   or so low down, that in each case they are extreme. Today they are
   carried away with this and the next carried away with that. I knew a
   Christian man right well to whom I was accustomed to use one salutation
   whenever I saw him. He was a good man, but changeable. I said to him,
   "Good morning, Friend! What are you now?" He was once a valiant
   Arminian, setting young people right as to the errors of my Calvinistic
   teaching. A short time after, he became exceedingly Calvinistic,
   himself, and wanted to screw me up several degrees! But I declined to
   yield. Soon he became a Baptist and agreed with me on all points, so
   far as I know. This was not good enough and, therefore, he became a
   Plymouth Brother! And after that he went to the church from which he
   originally set out. When I next met him, I said, "Good morning,
   Brother, what are you now?" He replied, "That is too bad, Mr. Spurgeon,
   you asked me the same question last time." I replied, "Did I? But what
   are you now? Will the same answer do?" I knew it would not. I would
   earnestly say to all such Brethren, "Be sober. Be sober." It cannot be
   wise to stagger all over the road in this fashion! Make sure of your
   footing when you stand. Make doubly sure of it before you

   shift!

   To be sober means to have a calm, clear head, to judge things after the
   rule of right and not according to the rule of mob. Be not influenced
   by those who cry loudest in the street, or by those who beat the
   biggest drum. Judge for yourselves as men of understanding. Judge as in
   the sight of God with calm deliberation.

   "Be sober," that is, be clear-headed. The man who drinks and thus
   destroys the sobriety of his body is befogged, muddled and has lost his
   way. Ceasing to be sober, he makes a fool of himself. Do not commit
   this sin spiritually. Be especially clear-headed and calm as to the
   things of God. Ask that the Grace of God may so rule in your heart that
   you may be peaceful and serene and not troubled with idle fear on one
   side or with foolish hope on the other.

   "Be sober," says the Apostle. You know the word translated, "be sober,"
   sometimes means, "be watchful." And, indeed, there is a great kinship
   between the two things. Live with your eyes open. Do not go about the
   world half asleep. Many Christians are asleep. Whole congregations are
   asleep! The minister snores theology and the people in the pews nod in
   chorus. Much sacred work is done in a sleepy style. You can have a
   Sunday school and teachers and children can be asleep. You can have a
   tract-distributing society, with visitors going round to the doors all
   asleep! You can do everything in a dreamy way if so it pleases you. But
   says the Apostle--be watchful, be alive! Brothers and Sisters, look
   alive! Be so awakened by these grand arguments with which we have plied
   you already, that you shall brace yourselves up and throw your whole
   strength into the service of your Lord and Master!

   Finally, let us "hope to the end." Never despair; never even doubt.
   Hope when things look hopeless. A sick and suffering Brother rebuked me
   the other day for being cast down. He said to me, "We ought never to
   show the white feather, but I think you do, sometimes." I asked him
   what he meant and he replied, "You sometimes seem to grow desponding
   and low. Now I am near to die, but I have no clouds and no fears." I
   rejoiced to see him so joyous and I answered, "That is right, my
   Brother, blame me as much as you please for my unbelief, I richly
   deserve it." "Why," he said, "you are the father of many of us! Did you
   not bring me and my friend over yonder to Christ? If you get low in
   spirit after so much blessing, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" I
   could say no other than, "I am ashamed of myself and I desire to be
   more confident in the future."

   Brethren, we must hope and not fear. Be strong in holy confidence in
   God's Word and be sure that His cause will live and prosper. Hope, says
   the Apostle. Hope to the end. Go right through with it. If the worst
   comes to the worst, still hope. Hope as much as ever a man can hope,
   for when your hope is in God you cannot hope too much!

   But let your hope be all in Grace. Do not hope in yourself or in your
   works, but "hope in the Grace," for so the text may be read. Hope,
   moreover, in the Grace which you have not yet received--in "the Grace
   that is to be brought unto

   you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." Bless God for the Grace that
   you have not yet obtained, for He has it in store for you! Yes, He has
   put it on the road and it is coming to you. When for the moment you
   seem to be slack in present Grace, say, "Glory to God for all the Grace
   I have not tasted yet." Hope for the Grace which is to come with your
   coming Lord.

   III. This has brought me to my last head, in which there is much
   sweetness. I ask your patience while I dwell upon it. The third point
   is EXPECTATION--"Hope to the end for the Grace that is to be brought
   unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." What you have got to hope
   for, Brothers and Sisters, is more Grace! God will always give you
   Grace. He will never deal with you upon the ground of merit--that door
   is shut--He has begun with you in Grace and He will go on with you in
   Grace. Therefore, "hope to the end for the Grace."

   Next, it is Grace that is on the way to you. The Greek should be
   rendered, "Hope to the end for the Grace that is being brought to you,"
   or, "the Grace that is a bringing to you." Grace is coming to you with
   all speed. Jesus Christ is coming! He is on the way to earth--look for
   Him to appear soon! The Grace you are to look for is Grace linked with
   your Lord Jesus Christ--you never received any Grace apart from
   Him--and you never will.

   The Grace you are to hope for is to be brought to you at the revelation
   of Jesus Christ. He has been revealed once, at His First
   Advent--therefore the Grace you have. He is to be revealed very soon in
   His Second Advent, therefore the Grace that is coming to you. Think of
   the Grace that is coming. "My ship is coming home," says the child. So,
   also, is mine--Jesus is coming--and that means all things to me. The
   golden chariot of my Lord is coming loaded down with unutterable love,
   infinite joy and eternal delight! Rejoice this morning for the Grace
   that is coming, Grace that is linked with Jesus Christ.

   But what can this Grace be that will be received at His coming?
   Justification? No, we already have that by His Resurrection.
   Sanctification? No, we already have that, by being made partakers of
   His life. What is the Grace that is to be revealed at His coming? Just
   look at the chapter and you will read in the fifth verse, "Who are kept
   by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed
   in the last time." Perfect salvation is one part of the Grace which is
   to be brought in the last time when Christ comes! When He comes there
   will be perfection for our souls and salvation for our bodies. Perhaps
   we may be alive when He comes. If so, we shall be changed in the
   twinkling of an eye into perfection, for, "this corruption must put on
   incorruption." Perhaps we may die before He comes. If so, it does not
   matter--though corruption, earth, and worms may have devoured this
   flesh, yet, at His coming, our body shall rise in the image of Christ's
   glorious body! We look for perfect salvation at the coming of Christ.
   This is the Grace that is coming to us and is on the road now.

   And that is not all. The second Grace that Christ will bring with Him
   when He comes is the perfect vindication of our faith--"that the trial
   of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes,
   though it is tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and
   glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ." Today they sneer at our faith,
   but they will not do so when Jesus comes! Today we, ourselves, tremble
   for the Ark of the Lord, but we shall not do so when He comes! The
   coming of Christ in all the Glory of the Father will be a vindication
   of our faith! Then shall all men say that Believers were wise, prudent,
   philosophical. Those who believe in Jesus may be called fools, today,
   but men will think otherwise when they see them shine forth as the sun
   in the Father's Kingdom! Wait a wee bit--all will soon be cleared.

   Copernicus declared the truth that the earth and the planets revolve
   around the sun. His opponents replied that this could not be true, for
   if the planet Venus revolved around the sun, she must present the same
   phases as the moon. This was very true. Copernicus looked up to Venus
   but he could not see those phases, nor could anyone else! Nevertheless
   he stuck to his statement and said, "I have no reply to give, but in
   due time God will be so good that an answer will be found." Copernicus
   died and his teaching had not yet been justified. But soon after,
   Galileo came forward with his telescope and, on looking at Venus, he
   saw that she did pass through exactly the same changes as the moon.
   Thus Wisdom is justified of her children. the Truth of God may not
   prevail today or tomorrow, but her ultimate victory is sure! Today they
   say that the Doctrines of Grace are antiquated, obsolete and even
   injurious. We are at no trouble to answer the charge. We can wait and
   we do not doubt that public thought will alter its tone.

   I hear the sneering words, "You orthodox are fools, for you hold to
   exploded notions." Truly, Sir, we do believe that which you please to
   say is exploded, but we shall be found to be right when your new
   systems have come and gone like vapors which appear for a little time
   and then vanish away. He is coming who will justify all who believe in
   Him and

   award praise, glory and honor to their faith. If our Gospel is a lie,
   it will prove to be a lie at His coming! But it is so true that we are
   not troubled at the prospect of the Last Great Judgement! The mysteries
   which now perplex us will be solved when the mists are rolled away.
   Therefore, hope on for the Grace that is to be revealed.

   Once more--when Christ comes there will be a revelation ofperfect
   Glory. Read the 11th verse--"Searching what, or what manner of time the
   Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified
   beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the Glory that should follow."
   Now this is the Grace which is to come to us when Christ appears.
   "Grace," you say, "You mean Glory." I do. Yet what is Glory but Grace
   come to perfection? Grace is Glory in the bud and Glory is Grace in the
   full flower! You believe in Jesus Christ, but as yet you do not see the
   Glory that awaits you. Wait a little while. "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 have brought you back to the Second Coming of Christ. I told you it
   was a practical doctrine. I want to leave that impression upon your
   minds that you may go back to your daily work and constant struggle
   with the world. "Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober and hope to
   the end"--because there is wondrous Grace to be revealed to you,
   by-and-by. I should like you to act as the American--Colonel
   Davenport--did, upon a certain occasion. One day, many years back, a
   thick darkness came over the United States. Now and then in London we
   have dreadfully dark days for which we can scarcely account, but this
   was quite a new experience for the New Englanders and caused a terrible
   sensation. So exceedingly black was it that the barn-door fowls went to
   roost in the middle of the day!

   The darkness grew worse and people trembled in their houses, declaring
   that the end of the world was coming. They were all excited and
   alarmed. One of the houses of legislature adjourned under the belief
   that the Day of Judgment was come. The other house was sitting and the
   blackness was so intense that everybody was awed. A motion was made
   that they should break up, as the end of the world had certainly
   arrived. Colonel Davenport objected, saying, "The Judgment is either
   approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for
   adjourning. And if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish,
   therefore, that candles may be brought."

   Brothers and Sisters, it is dark. But whatever is going to happen, or
   whatever is not going to happen, let us be found girded, sober and
   hopeful! In these dark political times, these dark religious times, I
   call for candles, for we mean to go on working! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                            The Heart of The Gospel

   A Sermon

   (No. 1910)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, July 18th, 1886, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the [10]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you
   by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. 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."--2 Corinthians v 20,21.

   THE heart of the gospel is redemption, and the essence of redemption is
   the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ. They who preach this truth
   preach the gospel in whatever else they may be mistaken; but they who
   preach not the atonement, whatever else they declare, have missed the
   soul and substance of the divine message. In these days I feel bound to
   go over again the elementary truths of the Gospel. In peaceful times we
   may feel free to make excursions into interesting districts of truth
   which lie far afield; but now we must stay at home, and guard the
   hearths and homes of the church by defending the first principles of
   the faith. In this age there have risen up in the church itself men who
   speak perverse things. There be many that trouble us with their
   philosophies and novel interpretations, whereby they deny the doctrines
   they profess to teach, and undermine the faith they are pledged to
   maintain. It is well that some of us, who know what we believe, and
   have no secret meanings for our words, should just put our foot down
   and maintain our standing, holding forth the word of life, and plainly
   declaring the foundation truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

   Let me give you a parable. In the days of Nero there was great
   shortness of food in the city of Rome, although there was abundance of
   corn to be purchased at Alexandria. A certain man who owned a vessel
   went down to the sea coast, and there he noticed many hungry people
   straining their eyes toward the sea, watching for the vessels that were
   to come from Egypt with corn. When these vessels came to the shore, one
   by one, the poor people wrung their hands in bitter disappointment, for
   on board the galleys there was nothing but sand which the tyrant
   emperor had compelled them to bring for use in the arena. It was
   infamous cruelty, when men were dying of hunger to command trading
   vessels to go to and fro, and bring nothing else but sand for
   gladiatorial shows, when wheat was so greatly needed. Then the merchant
   whose vessel was moored by the quay said to his shipmaster, "Take thou
   good heed that thou bring nothing back with thee from Alexandria but
   corn; and whereas, aforetime thou hast brought in the vessel a measure
   or two of sand, bring thou not so much as would lie upon a penny this
   time. Bring thou nothing else, I say, but wheat: for these people are
   dying, and now we must keep our vessels for this one business of
   bringing food for them." Alas! I have seen certain mighty galleys of
   late loaded with nothing but mere sand of philosophy and speculation,
   and I have said within myself, "Nay, but I will bear nothing in my ship
   but the revealed truth of God, the bread of life so greatly needed by
   the people." God grant us this day that our ship may have nothing on
   board it that may merely gratify the curiosity, or please the taste;
   but that there may be necessary truths for the salvation of souls. I
   would have each one of you say: "Well, it was just the old, old story
   of Jesus and his love, and nothing else." I have no desire to be famous
   for anything but preaching of the gospel. There are plenty who can
   fiddle to you the new music; it is for me to have no music at any time
   but that which is heard in heaven,--"Unto him that loved us, and washed
   us from our sins in his own blood, to him be glory for ever and ever!"

   I intend, dear friends, to begin my discourse with the second part of
   my text, in which the doctrine of Substitution is set forth in these
   words--"He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we
   might be made the righteousness of God in him." This is the basis and
   power of those appeals which it is our duty to make to the consciences
   of men.

   I have found, my brethen, by long experience, that nothing touches the
   heart like the cross of Christ; and when the heart is touched and
   wounded by the two-edged sword of the law, nothing heals its wounds
   like the balm which flows from the pierced heart of Jesus. The cross is
   life to the spiritually dead. There is an old legend which can have no
   literal truth in it, but if it be regarded as a parable it is then most
   instructive. They say that when the Empress Helena was searching for
   the true cross they digged deep at Jerusalem and found the three
   crosses of Calvary buried in the soil. Which out of the three crosses
   was the veritable cross upon which Jesus died they could not tell,
   except by certain tests. So they brought a corpse and laid it on one of
   the crosses, but there was neither life nor motion. When the same dead
   body touched another of the crosses it lived; and then they said, "This
   is the true cross." When we see men quickened, converted, and
   sanctified by the doctrine of the substitutionary sacrifice, we may
   justly conclude that it is the true doctrine of atonement. I have not
   known men made to live unto God and holiness except by the doctrine of
   the death of Christ on man's behalf. Hearts of stone that never beat
   with life before have been turned to flesh through the Holy Spirit
   causing them to know this truth. A sacred tenderness the obstinate when
   they have heard of Jesus crucified for them. Those who have lain at
   hell's dark door, wrapped about with a sevenfold death-shade, even upon
   them hath a great light shined. The story of the great Lover of the
   souls of men who gave himself for their salvation is still in the hand
   of the Holy Ghost the greatest of all forces in the realm of mind.

   So this morning I am going to handle, first, the great doctrine, and
   then afterwards, and secondly, as God shall help me, we shall come to
   the great argument which is contained in the 20th verse: "Now then we
   are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we
   pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God."

   1. First, then, with as much brevity as possible I will speak upon THE
   GREAT DOCTRINE. The great doctrine, the greatest of all, is this, that
   God, seeing men to be lost by reason of their sin, hath taken that sin
   of theirs and laid it upon his only begotten Son, making him to be sin
   for us, even him who knew no sin; and that in consequence of this
   transference of sin he that believeth in Christ Jesus is made just and
   righteous, ya, is made to be the righteousness of God in Christ. Christ
   was made sin that sinners might be made righteousness. That is the
   doctrine of the substitution of our Lord Jesus Christ on the behalf of
   guilty men.

   Now consider, first, who was made sin for us? The description of our
   great Surety here given is upon one point only, and it may more than
   suffice us for our present meditation. Our substitute was spotless,
   innocent, and pure. "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no
   sin." Christ Jesus, the Son of God, became incarnate, and was made
   flesh, and dwelt here among men; but though he was made in the likeness
   of sinful flesh, he knew no sin. Though upon him sin was laid, yet not
   so as to make him guilty. He was not, he could not be, a sinner: he had
   no personal knowledge of sin. Throughout the whole of his life he never
   committed an offence against the great law of truth and right. The law
   was in his heart; it was his nature to be holy. He could say to all the
   world, "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" Even his vacillating judge
   enquired, "Why, what evil hath he done?" When all Jerusalem was
   challenged and bribed to bear witness against him, no witnesses could
   be found. It was necessary to misquote and wrest his words before a
   charge could be trumped up against him by his bitterest enemies. His
   life brought him in contact with both the tables of the law, but no
   single command had he transgressed. As the Jews examined the Paschal
   lamb before they slew it, so did scribes and Pharisees, and doctors of
   the law, and rulers and princes, examine the Lord Jesus, without
   finding no offence in him. He was the Lamb of God, without blemish and
   without spot.

   As there was no sin of commission, so was there about our Lord no fault
   of omission. Probably, dear brethen, we that are believers have been
   enabled by divine grace to escape most sins of commission; but I for
   one have to mourn daily over sins of omission. If we have spiritual
   graces, yet they do not reach the point required of us. If we do that
   which is right in itself, yet we usually mar our work upon the wheel,
   either in the motive, or in the manner of doing it, or by the
   self-satisfaction with which we view it when it is done. We come short
   of the glory of God in some respect or other. We forget to do what we
   ought to do, or, doing it, we are guilty of lukewarmness,
   self-reliance, unbelief, or some other grievious error. It was not so
   with our divine Redeemer. You cannot say that there was any feature
   deficient in his perfect beauty. He was complete in heart, in purpose,
   in thought, in word, in deed, in spirit. You could not add anything to
   the life of Christ without its being manifestly an excrescence. He was
   emphatically an all-round man, as we say in these days. His life is a
   perfect circle, a complete epitome of virtue. No pearl has dropped from
   the silver string of his character. No one virtue has overshadowed and
   dwarfed the rest: all perfections combine in perfect harmony to make in
   him one surpassing perfection.

   Neither did our Lord know a sin of thought. His mind never produced an
   evil wish or desire. There never was in the heart of our blessed Lord a
   wish for an evil pleasure, nor a desire to escape any suffering or
   shame which was involved in his service. When he said, "Father, if it
   be possible, let this cup pass from me," he never desired to escape the
   bitter potion at the expense of his perfect lifework. The "if it be
   possible," meant, "if it be consistent with full obedience to the
   Father, and the accomplishment of the divine purpose." We see the
   weakness of his nature shrinking, and the holiness of his nature
   resolving and conquering, as he adds, "nevertheless, not as I will, but
   as thou wilt." He took upon him the likeness of sinful flesh, but
   though that flesh often caused him weariness of body, it never produced
   in him the weakness of sin. He took our infirmities, but he never
   exhibited an infirmity which had the least of blameworthiness attached
   to it. Never fell there an evil glance from those blessed eyes; never
   did his lips let drop a hasty word; never did those feet go on an ill
   errand, nor those hands move towards a sinful deed; because his heart
   was filled with holiness and love. Within as well as without our Lord
   was unblemished. His desires were as perfect as his actions. Searched
   by the eyes of Omniscience, no shadow of fault could be found in him.

   Yea, more, there were no tendencies about our Substitute towards evil
   in any form. In us there are always those tendencies; for the taint of
   original sin is upon us. We have to govern ourselves and hold ourselves
   under stern restraint, or we should rush headlong to destruction. Our
   carnal nature lusteth to evil, and needs to be held in as with bit and
   bridle. Happy is that man who can master himself. But with regard to
   our Lord, it was his nature to be pure, and right, and loving. All his
   sweet wills were towards goodness. His unconstrained life was holiness
   itself: he was "the holy child Jesus." The prince of this world found
   in him no fuel for the flame which he desired to kindle. Not only did
   no sin flow from him, but there was no sin in him, nor inclination, nor
   tendency in that direction. Watch him in secret, and you find him in
   prayer; look unto his soul, and you find him eager to do and suffer the
   Father's will. Oh, the blessed character of Christ! If I had the
   tongues of men and of angels I could not worthily set forth his
   absolute perfection Justly may the Father be well pleased with him!
   Well may heaven adore him!

   Beloved, it was absolutely necessary that any one who should be able to
   suffer in our stead should himself be spotless. A sinner obnoxious to
   punishment by reason of his own offences, what can he do but bear the
   wrath which is due to his own sin? Our Lord Jesus Christ as man was
   made under the law: but he owed nothing to that law, for he perfectly
   fulfilled it in all respects. He was capable of standing in the room,
   place, and stead of others, because he was under no obligations of his
   own. He was only under obligations towards God because he had
   voluntarily undertaken to be the surety and sacrifice for those whom
   the Father gave him. He was clear himself, or else he could not have
   entered into bonds for guilty men.

   Oh, how I admire him, that being such as he was, spotless and thrice
   holy, so that even the heavens were not pure in his sight, and he
   charged his angels with folly, yet he condescended to be made sin for
   us! How could he endure to be numbered with the transgressors and bear
   the sin of many? It may be no misery for a sinful man to live with
   sinful men; but it would be a heavy sorrow for the pure-minded to dwell
   with a company of abandoned and licentious wretches. What an
   overwhelming sorrow it must have been to the pure and perfect Christ to
   tabernacle among the hypocritical, the selfish, and the profane! How
   much worse that he himself should have to take upon himself the sins of
   those guilty men. His sensitive and delicate nature must have shrunk
   from even the shadow of sin, and yet read the words and be astonished:
   "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin." Our perfect Lord
   and Master bare our sins in his own body on the tree. He, before whom
   the sun itself is dim and the pure azure of heaven is defilement, was
   made sin. I need not put this in fine words: the fact is itself too
   grand to need any magnifying by human language. To gild refined gold,
   or paint the lily, were absurd; but much more absurd would it be to try
   to overlay with flowers of speech the matchless beauties of the cross.
   It suffices in simple rhyme to say--

   "Oh, hear that piercing cry!

   What can its meaning be?

   'My God! my God! oh! why hast thou

   In wrath forsaken me?'

   "Oh 'twas because our sins

   On him by God were laid;

   He who himself had never sinn'd,

   For sinners, sin was made."

   This leads me on to the second point of the text, which is, what was
   done with him who knew no sin? He was "made sin." It is a wonderful
   expression: the more you weigh it the more you will marvel at its
   singular strength. Only the Holy Ghost might originate such language.
   It was wise for the divine Teacher to use very strong expressions, for
   else the thought might not have entered human minds. Even now, despite
   the emphasis, clearness, and distinctness of the language used here and
   elsewhere in Scripture there are found men daring enough to deny that
   substitution is taught in Scripture. With such subtle wits it is
   useless to argue. It is clear that language has no meaning for them. To
   read the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, and to accept it as relating to the
   Messiah, and then to deny his substitutionary sacrifice is simply
   wickedness. It would be vain to reason with such beings; they are so
   blind that if they were transported to the sun they could not see. In
   the church and out of the church there is a deadly animosity to this
   truth. Modern thought labours to get away from what is obviously the
   meaning of the Holy Spirit, that sin was lifted from the guilty and
   laid upon the innocent. It is written, "The Lord hath laid on him the
   iniquity of us all." This is as plain language as can be used; but if
   any plainer was required, here it is,--"He hath made him to be sin for
   us."

   The Lord God laid upon Jesus, who voluntarily undertook it, all the
   weight of human sin. Instead of its resting on the sinner, who did
   commit it, it was made to rest upon Christ, who did not commit to it;
   while the righteousness which Jesus wrought out was placed to the
   account of the guilty, are treated as righteous. Those who by nature
   are guilty, are regarded as righteous, while he who by nature knew no
   sin whatever, was treated as guilty. I think I must have read in scores
   of books that such a transference is impossible; but the statement has
   had no effect upon my mind. I do not care whether it is impossible or
   not with learned unbelievers: it is evidently possible with God, for he
   has done it. But they say it is contrary to reason. I do not care for
   that, either: it may be contrary to the reason of those unbelievers,
   but it is not contrary to mine; and if I am to be guided by reason, I
   prefer to follow my own. The atonement is a miracle, and miracles are
   rather to be accepted by faith than measured by calculation. A fact is
   the best of arguments. It is a fact that the Lord hath laid on Jesus
   the iniquity of us all. God's revelation proves the fact, and our faith
   defies human questioning! God saith it, and I believe it; and believing
   it, I find life and comfort in it. Shall I not preach it? Assuredly I
   will.

   "E'er since by faith I saw the stream

   His flowing wounds supply,

   Redeeming love has been my theme,

   And shall be till I die."

   Christ was not guilty, and could not be made guilty; but he was treated
   as if he were guilty, because he willed to stand in the place of the
   guilty. Yea, he was not only treated as a sinner, but he was treated as
   if he had been sin itself in the abstract. This is an amazing
   utterance. The sinless one was made to sin.

   Sin pressed our great Substitute very sorely. He felt the weight of it
   in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he "sweat as it were great drops of
   blood falling to the ground." The full pressure of it came upon him
   when he was nailed to the accursed tree. There in the hours of darkness
   he bore infinitely more than we can tell. We know that he bore
   condemnation from the mouth of a man, so that is written, "He was
   numbered with the transgressors." We know that he bore shame for our
   sakes. Did not your hearts tremble last Sunday evening when our text
   was, "Then did they spit in his face?" It was a cruel scorn that
   exhausted itself upon his blessed person. This, I say, we know. We know
   that he bore pains innumerable of body and mind: he thirsted, he cried
   out in the agony of desertion, he bled, he died. We know that he poured
   out his soul unto death, and yielded up the ghost. But there was at the
   back, and beyond all this, an immeasurable abyss of sufferings":
   probably to us they are unknowable sufferings. He was God as well as
   man, and the Godhead lent an omnipotent power to the manhood, so that
   there was compressed within his soul, and endured by it, an amount of
   anguish of which we can form no conception. I will say no more: it is
   wise to veil what it is impossible to depict. This text both veils and
   discovers his sorrow, as it says, "He made him to be sin." Look into
   the words. Perceive their meaning if you can. The angels desire to look
   into it. Gaze into this terrible crystal. Let your eyes search deep
   into this opal, within whose jewelled depth there are flames of fire.
   The Lord made the perfectly innocent one to be sin for us: that means
   more humiliation, darkness, agony, and death than you can conceive. It
   brought a kind of distraction and well-nigh a destruction to the tender
   and gentle spirit of our Lord. I do not say that our substitute endured
   a hell, that were unwarrantable. I will not say that he endured either
   the exact punishment for sin, or an equivalent for it; but I do say
   that what he endured rendered to the justice of God a vindication of
   his law more clear and more effectual than would have been rendered to
   it by the damnation of the sinners for whom he died. The cross is under
   many aspects a more full revelation of the wrath of God against human
   sin than even Tophet, and the smoke of torment which goeth up for ever
   and ever. Who would know God's hate of sin must see the Only Begotten
   bleeding in body and bleeding in soul even unto death: he must, in
   fact, spell out each word of my text, and read its innermost meaning.
   There, my brethen, I am ashamed of the poverty of my explanation, and I
   will therefore only repeat the full and sublime language of the
   apostle--"He hath made him to be sin for us." It is more than "He hath
   put him to grief"; it is more than "God hath forsaken him"; it is more
   than "The chastisement of our peace was upon him"; it is the most
   suggestive of all descriptions--"He hath made him sin for us." Oh depth
   of terror, and yet height of love!

   So I pass on to notice in the third place, who did it? The text saith,
   "He hath made him to be sin for us"; that is, God himself it was who
   appointed his dear Son to be made sin for guilty men. The wise ones
   tell us that this substitution cannot be just. Who made them judges of
   what is right and just. I ask them whether they believe that Jesus
   suffered and died at all? if they believe that he did, how do they
   account for the fact? Do they say that he died as an example? Then I
   ask, is it just for God to allow a sinless being to die as an example?
   The fact of our Lord's death is sure, and it has to be accounted for.

   In the appointment of the Lord Jesus Christ to be made sin for us,
   there was first of all a display of the Divine Sovereignty. God here
   did what none but he could have done. It would not have been possible
   for all of us together to have laid sin upon Christ; but it was
   possible for the great Judge of all, who giveth no account of his
   matters, to determine that so it should be. He is the fountain of
   rectitude, and the exercise of his divine prerogative is always
   unquestionable righteousness. That the Lord Jesus, who offered himself
   as a willing surety and substitute, should be accepted as surety and
   substitute for guilty man was in the power of the great Supreme. In his
   Divine Sovereignty he accepted him, and before that sovereignty we bow.
   If any question it, our only answer is, "Nay but, O man, who art thou
   that repliest against God?"

   The death of our Lord also displayed divine justice. It pleased God as
   the judge of all, that sin should not be forgiven without the exaction
   of the punishment which had been so righteously threatened to it, or
   such other display of justice as might vindicate the law. They say that
   this is not God of love. I answer, it is God of love, pre-eminently so.
   If you had upon the bench to-day a judge whose nature was kindness
   itself, it would behove him as a judge to execute justice, and if he
   did not, he would make his kindness ridiculous; indeed, his kindness to
   the criminal would be unkindness to society at large. Whatever the
   judge may be personally, he is officially compelled to do justice. And
   "shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? " You speak of the
   Fatherhood of God. Enlarge as you please upon that theme, even till you
   make a heresy of it; but still God is the great moral Governor of the
   universe, and it behoves him to deal with sin in such a way that it is
   seen to be an evil and a bitter thing. God cannot wink at wickedness. I
   bless his holy name, and adore him that he is not unjust in order to be
   merciful, that he does not spare the guilty in order to indulge his
   gentleness. Every transgression and disobedience has its just
   recompense of reward. But through the sacrifice of Christ he is able
   justly to pardon. I bless his holy name that to vindicate his justice
   he determined that, while a free pardon should be provided for
   believers, it should be grounded upon an atonement which satisfied all
   requirements of the law.

   Admire also in the substitutionary sacrifice the great grace of God.
   Never forget that he whom God made to be sin for us was his own Son;
   ay, I go further, it was in some sense his own self; for the Son is one
   with the Father. You may not confound the persons, but you cannot
   divide the Son of God from the Father as to forget that God was in him
   reconciling the world unto himself. It is the Father's other self who
   on the cross in human form doth bleed and die. "Light of light, very
   God of very God": it is this Light that was eclipsed, that Godhead
   which purchased the church with his own blood. Herein is infinite love!
   You tell me that God might have pardoned without atonement. I answer,
   that finite and fallible love might have done so, and thus have wounded
   itself by killing justice; but the love which both required and
   provided the atonement is indeed infinite. God himself provided the
   atonement by freely and fully giving up himself in the person of his
   Son to suffer in consequence of human sin.

   What I want you to notice here is this, if ever your mind should be
   troubled about the propriety or rightness of a substitutionary
   sacrifice, you may at once settle the matter by remembering that God
   himself "hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin." If God did
   it, it is well done. I am not careful to defend an act of God: let the
   man who dares accuse his Maker think what he is at. If God himself
   provided the sacrifice, be you sure that he has accepted it. There can
   be no question ever raised about it, since Jehovah made to meet on him
   our iniquities. He that made Christ to be sin for us, knew what he did,
   and it is not for us to begin to say, "Is this right, or is this not
   right? " The thrice holy God hath done this, and it must be right. That
   which satisfies God may well satisfy us. If God is pleased with the
   sacrifice of Christ, shall not we be much more pleased? Shall we not be
   delighted, entranced, emparadised, to be saved by such a sacrifice as
   God himself appoints, provides, and accepts? "He hath made him to be
   sin for us."

   The last point is, what happens to us in consequence? "That we might be
   made the righteousness of God in him." Oh this weighty text! No man
   living can exhaust it. No theologian lived, even in the palmiest day of
   theology, who could ever get to the bottom of this statement.

   Every man that believes in Jesus is through Christ having taken his sin
   made to be righteousness before God. We are righteous through faith in
   Christ Jesus, "justified by faith." More than this, we are made not
   only to have the character of "righteous," but to become the substance
   called "righteousness." I cannot explain this, but it is no small
   matter. It means no inconsiderable thing when we are said to be "made
   righteousness." What is more, we are not only made righteousness, but
   we are made "the righteousness of God. "Herein is a great mystery. The
   righteousness which Adam had in the garden was perfect, but it was the
   righteousness of man: ours is the righteousness of God. Human
   righteousness failed; but the believer has a divine righteousness which
   can never fail. He not only has it, but he is it: he is "made the
   righteousness of God in Christ." We can now sing,

   "With my Saviour's vesture on,

   Holy as the Holy One."

   How acceptable with God must those be who are made by God himself to be
   "the righteousness of God in him"! I cannot conceive of anything more
   complete.

   As Christ was made sin, and yet never sinned, so are we made
   righteousness, though we cannot claim to have been righteous in and of
   ourselves. Sinners though we be, and forced to confess it with grief,
   yet the Lord doth cover us so completely with the righteousness of
   Christ, that only his righteousness is seen, and we are made the
   righteousness of God in him. This is true of all the saints, even of as
   many as believe on his name. Oh, the splendor of this doctrine! Canst
   thou see it, my friend? Sinner though thou be, and in thyself defiled,
   deformed, and debased, yet if thou wilt accept the great Substitute
   which God provide for in the person of his dear Son, thy sins are gone
   from thee, and righteousness has come to thee. Thy sins were laid on
   Jesus, the scapegoat: they are thine no longer, he has put them away. I
   may say that his righteousness is imputed unto thee; but I go further,
   and say with the text, "Thou art made the righteousness of God in him."
   No doctrine can be more sweet than this to those who feel the weight of
   sin and the burden of its curse.

   II. So now, gathering all up, I have to close with the second part of
   the text, which is not teaching, but the application of teaching,--A
   GREAT ARGUMENT. "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God
   did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled
   to God."

   Oh, that these lips had language, or that this heart could speak
   without them! Then would I plead with every unconverted, unbelieving
   soul within this place, and plead as for my life. Friend, you are at
   enmity with God, and God is angry with you; but on his part there is
   every readiness for reconciliation. He has made a way by which you can
   become his friend--a very costly way to himself, but free to you. He
   could not give up his justice, and so destroy the honour of his own
   character; but he did give up his Son, his Only Begotten, and his
   Well-Beloved; and that Son of his had been made sin for us, though he
   knew no sin. See how God meets you ! See how willing, how anxious he is
   that there should be reconciliation between you and God to-day it is
   not from want of kindness on his part; it is from want of willingness
   on yours. The burden of your ruin must lie at your own door: your blood
   must be on your own skirts.

   Now observe what we have to say to you to-day is this: we are anxious
   that you should be at peace with God, and therefore we act as
   ambassadors for Christ. I am not going to lay any stress upon the
   office of ambassador as honourable or authoritative, for I do not feel
   that this would have weight with you: but I lay all the stress upon the
   peace to which we would fain have you reconciled also. I once knew him
   not, neither did I care for him. I lived well enough without him, and
   sported with trifles of a day, so as to forget him. He brought me to
   seek his face, and seeking his face I found him. He has blotted out my
   sins and removed my enmity. I know that I am his servant, and that he
   is my friend, my Father, my All. And now I cannot help trying in my
   poor way to be an ambassador for him with you. I do not like that any
   of you should live at enmity with my Father who made you; and that you
   should be wantonly provoking him by preferring evil to good. Why should
   you not be at peace with one who so mush wants to be at peace with you?
   Why should you not love the God of love, and delight in him who is so
   kind to you? What he hath done for me he is quite willing to do for
   you: he is a God ready to pardon. I have preached his gospel now for
   many years, but I never met with a sinner yet that Christ refused to
   cleanse when he came to him. I never knew a single case of a man who
   trusted Jesus, and asked to be forgiven, confessing his sin and
   forsaking it, who was cast out. I say I never met with one man whom he
   has restored to purity, and drunkards whom he has delivered from their
   evil habit, and with men guilty of foul sins who have become pure and
   chaste through the Lord Jesus. They have always told me the same
   story--"I sought the Lord, and he heard me; he hath washed me in his
   blood, and I am whiter than snow." Why should you not be saved as well
   as these?

   Dear friend, perhaps you have never thought of this matter, and this
   morning you did not some here with any idea of thinking of it; but why
   should you not begin? You came just to hear a well-known preacher; I
   pray you forget the preacher, and think only of yourself, your God and
   your Saviour. It must be wrong for you to live without a thought of
   your Maker. To forget him is to despise him. It must be wrong for you
   to refuse the great atonement: you so refuse it if you do not accept it
   at once. It must be wrong for you to stand out against your God; and
   you do stand out against him if you will not be reconciled to him.
   Therefore I humbly play the part of an ambassador for Christ, and I
   beseech you believe in him and live.

   Notice how the text puts it: "We are ambassadors for Christ, as though
   God did beseech you by us." This thought staggers me. As I came along
   this morning I felt as if I could bury my head in my hands and weep as
   I thought of God beseeching anybody. He speaks, and it is done; myriads
   of angels count themselves happy to fly at his command; and yet man has
   so become God's enemy that he will not be reconciled to him. God would
   make him his friend, and spends the blood of his dear Son to cement
   that friendship; but man will not have it. See the great God turns to
   beseeching his obstinate creature! his foolish creature! In this I feel
   a reverent compassion for God. Must he beseech a rebel to be forgiven?
   Do you hear it? Angels, do you hear it? He who is the King of kings
   veils his sovereignty, and stoops to beseeching his creature to be
   reconciled to him! I wonder not that some of my brethen start back from
   such an idea, and cannot believe that it could be so: it seems so
   derogatory to the glorious God. Yet my text saith it, and it must be
   true--"As though God did beseech you by us." This makes it awful work
   to preach, does it not? I ought to beseech you as though God spoke to
   you through me, looking at you through these eyes, and stretching out
   his hands through these hands. He saith, "All day long I have stretched
   forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people." He speaks
   softly, and tenderly, and with paternal affection through these poor
   lips of mine, "as though God did beseech you by us.

   Furthermore notice that next line, which if possible has even more
   force in it: "We pray you in Christ's stead." Since Jesus died in our
   stead we, his redeemed ones, are to pray others in his stead; and as he
   poured out his heart for sinners in their stead, we must in another way
   pour out our hearts for sinners in his stead. "We pray you in Christ's
   stead." Now if my Lord were here this morning how would he pray you to
   come to him? I wish, my Master, I were more fit to stand in thy place
   at this time. Forgive me that I am so incapable. Help me to break my
   heart, to think that it does not break as it ought to do, for these men
   and women who are determined to destroy themselves, and, therefore,
   pass thee by, my Lord, as though thou were but a common felon, hanging
   on a gibbet! O men, How can you think so little of the death of the Son
   of God? It is the wonder of time, the admiration of eternity. O souls,
   why will you refuse eternal life? Why will ye die? Why will ye despise
   him by whom alone you can live? There is one gate of life, that gate is
   the open side of Christ; why will ye not enter, and live? "Come unto
   me," saith he; "Come unto me." I think I hear him say it: "Come unto me
   all that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my
   yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and
   ye shall find rest unto your souls." I think I see him on that last
   day, the great day of the feast, standing and crying, "If any man
   thirst, let him come unto me, and drink." I hear him sweetly declare,
   "Him that cometh to me I will no wise cast out." I am not fit to pray
   you in Christ's stead, but I do pray you with all my heart. You that
   hear my voice from Sunday to Sunday, do come and accept the great
   sacrifice, and be reconciled to God. You that hear me but this once, I
   would like you to go away with this ringing in your ears, "Be ye
   reconciled to God." I have nothing pretty to say to you; I have only to
   declare that God has prepared a propitiation, and that now he entreats
   sinners to come to Jesus, that through him they may be reconciled to
   God.

   We do not exhort you to some impossible effort. We do not bid you do
   some great thing; we do not ask you for money or price; neither do we
   demand of you years of miserable feeling; but only this--be ye
   reconciled. It is not so much reconcile yourselves as "be reconciled."
   Yield yourselves to him who round you now the bands of a man would
   cast, drawing you with cords of love because he was given for you. His
   spirit strives with you, yield to his striving. With Jacob you know
   there wrestled a man till the breaking of the day; let that man, that
   God-man, overcome you. Submit yourselves. Yield to grasp of those hands
   which were nailed to the cross for you. Will you not yield to your best
   friend? He that doth embrace you now presses you to a heart that was
   pierced with the spear on your behalf. Oh, yield thee! Yield thee, man!
   Dost thou not feel some softness stealing over thee? Steel not thine
   heart against it. He saith, with a Tone most still and sweet. "To-day
   if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." Believe and live!
   Quit the arch-enemy who has held thee in his grip. Escape for thy life,
   look not behind thee, stay not in all the plain, but flee where thou
   seest the open door of the great Father's house. At the gate the
   bleeding Saviour is waiting to receive thee, and to say, "I was made
   sin for thee, and thou art made the righteousness of God in me."
   Father, draw them! Father, draw them! Eternal Spirit, draw them, for
   Jesus Christ thy Son's sake! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--2 Corinthians 4 and 5.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--917, 404, 284.
     __________________________________________________________________

Hideous Discovery

   (No. 1911)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JULY 25, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And He said, That which comes out of the man, that defiles the man.
   For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts,
   adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness,
   deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all
   these evil things come from within and defile the man." Mark 7:20-23.

   How weary the Savior must have been of the idle prattle of the scribes
   and Pharisees! They are forever talking about washing hands before
   meals and washing pots and cups--and He is all the while occupied with
   the great griefs and sins of men and how He can save them from the
   wrath to come. He must have felt as some true physician feels who looks
   upon a patient, marks the serious nature of the sickness and plans a
   remedy--while some quack is boasting his nostrums or performing
   ridiculous signs and passes over the dying man. To serious compassion,
   imposture is provoking and sincere truthfulness is grieved by the
   mockeries of pretense. The dear Savior, knowing the Truth about the
   whole thing and solemnly concerned about it, is pained with the talk of
   these pretenders of learning and religion who, knowing nothing at all
   about the real mischief, professed to purge away defilement by the
   washing of water and outward ceremonies! Truly, I think every spiritual
   man must have a feeling of disgust, every now and then, as in these
   days he reads dissertations upon the cut of a priestly garment or the
   positioning of an altar!

   Have you ever read what is to be done if a little wine is spilt upon
   the cloth of the holy table, or how the cup used in the "mass" is to be
   rinsed again and again, and carefully drained by the person
   ministering? Have you ever heard of arguments concerning the fate of a
   mouse which was so irreverent as to eat the holy wafer? What trifling
   it all seems--this serious discussion of garments and vessels with
   strange names, this exact directory as to when to bow and when to
   kneel, when to put on a robe and when to take it off! What a waste of
   time, of learning and of thought! What exaltation of trifles and
   forgetfulness of serious realities! Men are diseased to the heart with
   sin and ready to die and pass before the Judgment Seat to receive the
   condemnation which must lie upon those who continue in sin--and
   meantime, the teachers of the people are either busy with vain
   ceremonies or dreaming over equally vain philosophies!

   Behold, a pretender to profound thought informs us that Moses was in
   error and Paul scarcely knew what he wrote about! These philosophic
   amenders of the Gospel are as arrant triflers as the superstitious
   posture makers at whom they sneer! The Savior makes short work of human
   traditions and authorities! Your meats and your drinks, your fasting
   thrice in the week, your paying of the tithe of mint, anise and cummin,
   your broad phylacteries and fringes--He waves them all away with one
   motion of His hand--and He comes straight to the real point. He deals
   with the heart and with the sins which come out of it! He draws up a
   diagnosis of the disease with fearless truthfulness and declares that
   meats do not defile men! He states that true religion is not a matter
   of observation or non-observation of washing and outward rites, but
   that the whole matter is spiritual and has to do with man's inmost
   self, with the understanding, the will, the emotions, the conscience
   and all else which makes up the heart of man. He tells us that
   defilement is caused by that which comes out of the man, not by that
   which goes into him! Defilement is of the heart--not of the hands!

   To this teaching our Savior calls particular attention. Observe that He
   spoke it to the whole of the people and not to the scribes and
   Pharisees, only. It is necessary for every man to know this Truth of
   God and to lay it to heart. When He spoke, He added these
   words--"Hearken unto Me, every one of you, and understand." And then He
   said more--"If any man has ears to hear, let him hear." If a man fails
   to understand more deep and mysterious Truths, yet let him understand
   this--for an error here is an error upon a vital point and may lead to
   most serious damage, if not to eternal ruin! We are,

   all of us, called upon, therefore, to hear and to understand this day
   what the Savior says in the words of the text! Let me read them again,
   that they may sink into your minds. "And He said, That which comes out
   of the man, that defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of
   men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts,
   covetous-ness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye,
   blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within,
   and defile the man."

   I. First, this morning, think, dear Brothers and Sisters, with deep
   self-abasement, of THE SWARM OF SINS. I seem to have broken open a
   wasp's nest and the stinging creatures fly out in number, numberless!
   Here are 13 words, each one of them teeming with all manner of evils.
   Matthew, when he condenses the Savior's utterances, mentions seven of
   these horrible things, one of which is omitted here, but Mark is more
   full in this instance and mentions 13 items of abomination. I am struck
   with the legion of foul spirits which are here set free, as if the door
   of the Bottomless Pit had been opened! As armies of locusts, or as
   swarms of the flies of Egypt, so are sins! As the wilderness was full
   of fiery serpents and scorpions, so is this world full of iniquities.
   The very names of them are a pain to the ears! Let us bow our heads in
   sorrow as we read the muster-roll of this legion of terror--"Evil
   thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covet-ousness,
   wickednesses, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride,
   foolishness."

   Now, notice first, that this awful catalog, this horrible list of the
   unclean birds that find a cage within the human heart, begins with
   things that are lightly regarded among men--"evil thoughts." "We shall
   not be hanged for our thoughts," cries one! I wish that such idle
   talkers would remember that they will be damned for their thoughts and
   that instead of evil thoughts being less sinful than evil acts, it may
   sometimes happen that in the thought, the man may be worse than in the
   deed! He may not be able to carry out all the mischief that lurks
   within his designs and yet, in forming the design, he may incur all the
   guilt! Thoughts are the eggs of words and actions--and within the
   thoughts lie compacted and condensed all the villainy of actual
   transgressions. If men did but more carefully watch their thoughts,
   they would not so readily fall into evil habits! Men first indulge the
   thought of evil and then the imagination of evil--but the process does
   not stop there. Picturing it before their mind's eye, they excite their
   own desires after it--these grow into a thirst and kindle into a
   passion. Then the deed is speedily forthcoming--it was long in the
   hatching, but in a moment it comes forth to curse a whole lifetime!

   Instead of fancying that evil thoughts are mere trifles, let us regard
   them as the root of bitterness, the still in which the poisonous spirit
   is manufactured. Our Savior here puts evil thoughts first in the
   catalog of evil things and He knew well their true nature. If we would
   be lost, we have only to indulge these--if we would be saved we must
   conquer these! Let us be very aware of our thoughts. He that does not,
   will not long be very aware of his words or deeds. Let us pray God to
   purge us in the inward parts, lest haply, by entertaining vain thoughts
   as lodgers within our hearts, they take up their residence, become
   masters of our lives and drive us onward to the outward sins which
   shall utterly pollute and defile us in the eyes of our fellow men.

   Since this indictment begins with evil thoughts, who among us can plead
   guiltless? Since evil thoughts are the first of sins, we had better
   meet the charge with immediate repentance and an instant faith in the
   only Savior. These thoughts come into our minds in the House of God!
   They intrude into our prayers, they defile our Psalms! They disturb our
   meditations. Is there a sacred hill so high, is there a quiet valley so
   deep that in it we may be quite clear from these "evil thoughts"? Who
   can deliver us from this plague but the Lord our God? We need to humble
   ourselves at the first reading of this list and cry unto the Lord for
   mercy!

   Carefully notice the range which this catalog takes. It is a very
   singular one, for it begins with thoughts and then it runs on until it
   lands us in utter lack of thought, or foolishness. Matthew Henry says,
   "Ill-thinking is put first and unthinking is put last." Sin begins with
   "evil thoughts," but ends in foolishness. The word rendered, "evil
   thoughts," may be translated evil disputes, evil dialog. Now, this is
   thought, by some, to be almost a virtue, certainly a manly exercise! To
   be able to dispute, to be a questioner, a quibbler, a perpetual and
   professional doubter, that, I say, is highly esteemed among men! What
   is modern thought but evil thought? David says, "I hate vain thoughts"
   and all thoughts which run counter to the Revelation of God are vain.
   In this instance I may quote the Psalmist--"The Lord knows the thoughts
   of men, that they are vanity." Thoughts which are devout and reverent
   towards the sacred oracles are to be cultivated, but the thoughts which
   quibble at the revealed Truth of God and would improve upon the
   Infallible declarations of Jehovah are evil and vain thoughts. All
   manner of mischief may come out of thinking in opposition to God!
   Therefore it is said,

   "Let the wicked forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts."
   Thinking contrary to God's mind and disputing with the clear statements
   of God's own Word may be the first step in a descent which shall end in
   everlasting destruction!

   Rising in evil thought, sin flows through a black country full of
   varying immoralities until it falls into the Dead Sea of "foolishness."
   How often have I heard it said of a vicious life, when it has ripened
   into horror--"The man must have been mad! He was not only wicked, but
   what a fool he must have been! The devil himself seems to have forsaken
   him. He acted craftily enough at one time, but afterwards he went
   against his own interests and insured his own destruction!" Yes, men
   begin with the thought that they know better than their Maker and, at
   last, they reach utter thoughtlessness, stolidity of conscience and
   stupidity of mind! In the end they refuse to think at all and nothing
   can save them from reckless defiance of common prudence. They are given
   over to judicial senselessness. Though God Himself should speak, they
   have no ears for Him--their sin has brought on them the punishment of
   utter hardness of heart! They have made themselves to be as the adder
   which will not hear the voice of the charmer, charm he ever so wisely.
   This is the way of sin--to begin with fancied wisdom and end with
   foolishness! The man who thought himself more than a man, at last ends
   as a brute beast devoid of reason! What a range, my Brothers and
   Sisters, there is between these two points! Read the words, again, and
   see what a terrible zigzag path lies between wrong thought and no
   thought at all.

   In this list you have an amazing variety of sins. The list is not
   complete and was not intended to be. It would be very difficult in
   words to compose a full roll, though it were written within and
   without, which would comprise all kinds of evils. But you have here,
   "deceit," which seems to dread the judgment of men and, therefore,
   would delude it. And then you have, "pride," which defies all mortal
   condemnation and lifts itself above its fellows. You have here
   different forms of the lust which seeks after pleasure at any expense,
   in the form of "fornications" and "adulteries." And then you have the
   "covetousness" which clings to its gold and will consent to no outlay
   which it can avoid. Sin is a contradictory thing which blows hot and
   cold. It hurries men, like fitful winds, this way and that, yet never
   in the right direction. "We have turned, everyone, to his own way," but
   all to the wrong way. Virtue is one, as truth is one, and holiness is
   one, but vice is abnormal and monstrous. Sin is 10,000 evils
   conglomerated in dread confusion. God keep us from ever navigating the
   dangerous sea of iniquity where currents run one way and undercurrents
   another--and where, oftentimes, sensual desires develop into whirlpools
   of abominable passions which suck men down into the depths of infamy
   and perdition!

   In this list you will notice certain sins which may be regarded as
   somewhat singular. It is remarkable that, "evil thoughts" should be
   placed so near to atrocious acts of crime. It is singular, also, to
   find "an evil eye" mentioned just in this connection. What can it mean?
   May the very use of the eye become a sin worthy to be ranked with theft
   and murder? Yes, when that evil eye means envy, it proceeds to a high
   degree of wickedness and borders upon the worst of wrongs! When we look
   upon another man and regard him with malignity. When his prosperity
   makes us grieve. When in his very sorrows we take an inhuman delight
   and gloat over his misery, his sin, his degradation--we then sin most
   heinously and are prepared for any horror. This sin of envy and that
   other of blasphemy would appear to be a wanton superfluity of evil,
   ministering no appearance of benefit to men. Some sins have a winning
   witchery with them, but there are old hags of sins which ought to
   attract no man in his senses--and yet they hold men enslaved. Among
   these sins I rank envy, blasphemy and pride. This last I mention
   because it reads like a grim sarcasm, that sinners should be proud!
   What have such creatures to be proud of? What? Adulteries, murders,
   thefts and yet pride? One would have said that such sins would have
   forbidden pride. What a misalliance! A being infamous and yet puffed
   up! Alas, the worse a man becomes, the more is he filled with a sort of
   vainglory by the force of which he justifies his own iniquities and
   refuses to see his own vileness! This enables men to set darkness for
   light and light for darkness--bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
   What an assemblage of banditti of every nationality range themselves
   under the banner of evil! Lord, save us from them!

   Note, also, that of sins there are many of each sort. Especially in the
   original, it is observable that the first seven of these evil things
   are all in the plural. It is not, "evil thought," but, "evil thoughts."
   Not, "adultery," but, "adulteries," fornications, murders, thefts--the
   translation should also be plural of covetousness and wickedness--these
   are all in the plural for in any one sin there lurks a multitude of
   sins! One crime is built up of many--in any one form of sin there is a
   tangle and conglomerate of many evils. There are myriads of evil
   thoughts. In the crime of uncleanness there are stages-- the thought,
   the word, the deed--all these are varieties of the same species, but
   they are all sins and they are, each one, worthy of the generic name
   though they do not take the same form.

   If the varieties of each sin are so many and if all sins must be spoken
   of as a plurality under each variety, how innumerable must be the sins
   of men! O Lord, You alone know our iniquities! Who could set them in
   order before us but Your own Omniscient Self? What must they appear to
   Your perfect vision! Brothers and Sisters, if we were once to see sin
   in its true colors and were then to see it in its innumerable hosts, we
   would sink into despair if any sort of conscience remained in us. "Who
   can understand his errors? Cleanse You me from secret faults." "All
   these evil things," said our Lord, as He summed them up in that one
   solemn phrase. As we read that word it sounds the knell of all human
   glorying! I hear it yet again. "All these evil things." How like the
   Old Testament declaration--"The Lord looked down from Heaven upon the
   children of men to see if there were any that did understand and seek
   God. They are all gone aside; they are all together become filthy:
   there is none that does good; no, not one!"

   How evil, my Brethren, each one of these sins may be, it is not
   possible for us to know, but there is, not one of them, that is
   defensible. They are, each one of them, vile before God and some of
   them are mischievous towards men. Evil thoughts mainly blacken the
   man's own mind, but when he expresses them in disputations, they
   destroy the love of the Truth of God in others. Adulteries, as
   violations of the marriage vow, shake the very foundations of family
   life. Fornications, which today are winked at as though they were
   scarcely offenses, defile two persons at once in body and in soul!
   Actual murders follow frequently upon unbridled passion, but forget not
   that the command, "You shall not kill," may be broken by anger, hate,
   malice and the desire for revenge. Many a murderer in heart may be
   among us this day, being angry at his brother without a cause. He that
   conceives and hides malice in his soul is a murderer before God! This
   form of evil breeds all manner of harm to society.

   Thefts in all their shapes are also injurious to the commonwealth. By
   this we mean not only robberies, but all taking from others unjustly,
   such as the oppression of the poor in their wages, the taking of undue
   advantage in trading, the incurring of debts without hope of being able
   to pay and the like--these are varied forms of dishonesty and are full
   of injury to others. Covetousness--the greed to get and the greed to
   keep; the adding field to field until the man seems eager to be left
   alone on the earth; the grasping of excessive riches and the creation
   of poverty in others by crushing their humbler enterprises--all this is
   evil, though some applaud it as business sharpness.

   Need I mention the evils which come of wickedness, deceit and
   lasciviousness? These are poisons in the air deadly to all who breathe
   them. I sicken as I think how man has plagued his fellow men by his
   sins. But I will not go through the list, nor need I--the devil has
   preached upon this text this week and few have been able to escape the
   horrible exposition! A foul exhalation has entered into every house in
   this great city, polluting the very atmosphere and spreading moral
   infection. Oh for a hurricane to sweep away the pestilent vapor! Within
   a narrow space, a multitude of iniquities have gathered like vultures
   upon a mass of carrion! What a collection of sins may meet in a single
   story! How soon does one transgression call to its fellows till, "a
   little one has become a thousand and a small one a strong nation!"
   Alas, alas for the multitudes of sins!

   II. Now, secondly, I want to indicate THE NEST FROM WHICH THEY COME.
   Now that we have seen these evil

   beasts, we will go and look at their den. Let us make a journey there.
   No, you need not feel for your money to pay your fare--I am not going
   to take you very far. I do not ask you to quit your homes, or even your
   pews. There is not even need for you to stretch out your hand to feel
   for this foul nest of unclean birds--you can keep your hand upon your
   bosom and it will not be far off from the lair wherein these evil
   things are lurking, ready to leap forth whenever occasion offers. Our
   Lord Jesus Christ says, "All these evil things come from within." "For
   from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts." The
   source from which these rivers of pollution proceed is the natural
   heart of man! Sin is not a splash of mud upon man's exterior, it is a
   filth generated within himself!

   Now this is a very different story from that which we sometimes hear
   from thoughtless people. "Oh, yes, he used to swear. He was unkind to
   his wife and family--no doubt he took too much drink--but he was a
   good-hearted fellow!" What an awful lie! His heart could have been no
   better than that which came out of it. Yet how common it is to say,
   when a man dies, "Well, poor man, he is gone! There was no fear of God
   or man about him. He was a passionate, drunken man and so full of vice
   that no one was safe near him, but he was good at bottom." A likely
   story, is it not? The water which came up in the bucket was black and
   putrid, but, no doubt, at the bottom of the well it is clear as
   crystal! Do you believe it? If men bring to market baskets of fruit
   which upon the top are rotten, they will not be believed if they say
   that they are, "good at bottom." If the goods in the window are
   worthless, the stock in the warehouse is not much better. You can

   only judge of a tree by its fruits--and if I gather sour crabapples
   from a tree, I shall not believe that it is a golden pippin! If grapes,
   when fully ripe, are sour, we cannot believe that the vine which bears
   them is a sweet one! Our Savior makes short work of the lie that the
   life may be impure and yet the heart is good!

   Another fine theory of modern times is disproved by our text. According
   to this evolution doctrine, as applied to theology, the new birth is a
   development of that which is naturally within the heart. I hope we may
   be spared such births and evolutions! According to this theory we have
   had some fine specimens of regenerate people of late, for we have heard
   of evolutions or developments which have brought out from within evil
   thoughts, adulteries, fornications and wickednesses of more than
   average proportions! God save us from all development of the sin which
   dwells in man! Philosophically the dogma of evolution is a dream, a
   theory without a vestige of proof! Within 50 years, children in school
   will read of extraordinary popular delusions and this will be mentioned
   as one of the most absurd of them! Many a merry jest will be uttered
   bearing upon the follies of science in the 19th Century. In its bearing
   upon religion, this vain notion is, however, no theme for mirth, for it
   is not only deceptive, but it threatens to be mischievous in a high
   degree. There is not a hair of truth upon this dog from its head to its
   tail, but it rends and tears the simple ones. In all its bearings upon
   Scriptural Truth, the evolution theory is in direct opposition to it!
   If God's Word is true, evolution is a lie! I will not mince the
   matter--this is not the time for soft speaking.

   Regeneration is much more than reformation, or the development of
   natural goodness. It is described in Scripture as a new creation and as
   a resurrection from the dead. It is not the cleansing of the carnal
   mind, but the implantation of a spiritual nature. It is not a shaping,
   feeding, washing and purging of what is already in fallen man--it is a
   putting into us a life which was never there before. It is a
   supernatural work of God, the Holy Spirit--it is a miracle of Grace, a
   work of God! Out of the heart, if the volcano is permitted to pour
   forth its lava, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, and
   such like. The Savior compels us to see how bad the natural heart must
   be in itself, since that which comes out of it is so vile. Who could
   bring such unclean things out of a clean heart? The source must be foul
   if the streams are so filthy. These evils must be within, or else they
   could not come from within.

   Our Savior is not speaking of a single man, or a certain set of men,
   but of man, generally, of man as a race! We are all very much alike by
   nature. "As in water, face answers to face, so the heart of man to
   man." Friend, you are of the same race as those whose sins you censure.
   Though out of your heart there may never proceed actual fornications
   and adulteries--God grant they may not!--yet the seeds of such evils
   are there and you will be foolish if you think that they can never grow
   into acts. If any man says that no such evil lurks in his heart, I lay
   to his charge the two last sins in the list, namely, pride and
   foolishness! No man should dare to think that he is incapable of a sin
   into which another man has fallen! We may never have suffered from
   fever, or cholera, or diphtheria--but we may not, therefore, conclude
   that we are not liable to such diseases. Nor may an unregenerate man,
   however excellent or moral he may be, conclude that he is invulnerable
   to the arrows of moral disease. Put the man in certain circumstances,
   tempt him in certain ways and there is a terrible possibility that he
   will fall into those very actions which he now so righteously denounces
   in others! I am a man and, therefore, liable to all the faults of human
   nature. Self-righteousness may induce us to say with Hazael, "Is your
   servant a dog, that he should do this thing?" But we shall be wise to
   forego so proud a question, for we may rest assured that we are dog
   enough for anything if the Grace of God is withdrawn from us! It is
   certainly true that "the heart is deceitful above all things and
   desperately wicked: who can know it?" "Out of the heart proceed evil
   thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders" and so forth.

   But what is meant here, do you think, by, "the heart?" Is it not
   intended to indicate the man himself--the man's most real self? Sin is
   sin, for the most part, because it is of the heart and the will. If the
   man's heart had nothing to do with it, I do not see how it would be
   sin. If a man had no will in the matter, where would his responsibility
   be? It is because we willingly do evil that we sin. The essence of the
   sin lies in the will to do it and the full consent of the heart in it.
   The heart is the center of life, the core of being, the place where
   manhood maintains its throne and what a terrible statement this is,
   that out of the very center of life there proceed from man "evil
   thoughts, wickedness, blasphemy" and the

   like!

   The heart is the spring of action--the heart suggests, resolves,
   designs and sets the whole train of life in motion. The heart gives the
   impulse and the force and yet, out of the heart, thus initiating and
   working, proceeds all this mischief of sin. By the heart is meant
   mainly the affections, but it often includes the understanding and the
   will. It is, in fact, the

   man's vital self. Sin is not a thing extra that comes to us and
   afflicts us like robbers breaking into our house at night, but it is a
   tenant of the soul, dwelling within us as in its own house. This evil
   worm has penetrated into the kernel of our being and there it abides.
   Sin has intertwisted itself with the warp and woof of our nature and
   none can remove it but the Lord God Himself! As long as the heart
   remains unchanged, out of it will proceed that which is sinful. "Every
   imagination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually."

   If it is so, that the nest in which sin is born and nurtured is the
   heart, itself, we always carry about with us, by nature, that which
   will surely be the cause of sin unless we look well to it and cry daily
   for Grace to conquer it. This evil nature of ours is an always present
   danger--it is a powder magazine which at any moment may explode. Oh for
   Grace to keep our hearts with all diligence!

   How clearly sin comes from within and not from outside! How truly it is
   born in the heart! Oftentimes we see men commit sins against
   conscience--they know they are doing wrong, for they will lie and even
   swear hard in order to conceal their folly. A man must know that he
   does wrong, for he labors to deny it when it is charged against him.
   Now, if a man sins against light and conscience, it shows that his
   heart must be radically bad.

   Sin must be within us naturally since the best training does not
   prevent it. Children secluded from the sight or hearing of evil--kept,
   as it were, within a glass case--yet run to it when the restraint is
   removed! As the young duck which has been reared in a dry place yet
   takes to the water as soon as it sees a pond, so do many hasten to evil
   at the first opportunity. How often it happens that those young persons
   who have been most shut out from the world have become the readiest
   victims of temptation when the time has come for them to quit the
   parental roof! It must be in them, or it could not thus come out of
   them. In many cases, evil cannot be the result of mistaken education
   nor of ill example--and yet there it is--the seed is in the soil and
   needs no sowing.

   Again, we frequently find men falling into sins towards which they
   would seem to have had no temptation. A man is rich and yet covetous.
   He has enough to content him if his heart were not evil. Men who have
   the enjoyment of almost every desirable pleasure too often crave after
   indulgences altogether unnatural. Does not this show how evil the heart
   is? Is not this specially striking when you see how men invent new
   sins, of which ordinary people would never have dreamed?

   Moreover, put a man where you may and seclude him as you please, sin
   will still break out from him and, therefore, the sin must be somewhere
   within, hidden away. Do we not know this? When we are in associations
   of the best kind we find evil thoughts and imaginations springing up
   within our minds. Shut yourself up in a narrow cell, but there will be
   room in it for troops of sins! Hasten away and dwell alone as a hermit
   where rumor of pollution and iniquity can never reach you from abroad
   and still you will find the cauldron within boiling and bubbling up
   with evil! A door must be well sealed if it is to shut out temptation.
   No, shut the door and hermetically seal it and sin has already entered
   with yourself, for it is within you! Until you are delivered from that
   evil man, yourself, you are not delivered from tendencies to
   wickedness. The heart of man is the seed plot of iniquity and the
   nursery of transgression. As the multitudes streamed forth from the
   hundred gates of Thebes, so do sins proceed from the heart! O Lord,
   have mercy upon us and give us new hearts and right spirits!

   III. Thirdly, and briefly, let us notice for a minute THE DEFILEMENT
   WHICH IS CAUSED BY THE COMING

   OUT OF THESE EVIL THINGS. While they lie asleep within us, they are bad
   enough, but when at last they pour forth into our lives and buzz abroad
   in our acts, then they cause grievous defilement and make us unclean.
   In some cases they cause a defilement which our fellow men see and,
   seeing, begin to cry out against us and even to banish us from their
   society. Where that is not the case, sin always causes defilement to
   the man himself. He goes from bad to worse, from worse to worst. Sin is
   like a ladder. Few reach the height of iniquity at once--the most of
   men climb from one evil to another-- and then to a third and a fourth.
   Sin hardens men to further sin. He who is a moral monster was not
   always such. By sinning much, he learned to sin more. The door of his
   heart was at first a little ajar, but outgoing sins opened it to its
   full width. A man is not capable, at first, of the sins which
   afterwards are habitual to him. Step by step, men descend into the
   abyss of infamy if their feet are not hindered by restraint, or stopped
   by Almighty Grace. Every sin produces a fresh degree of callousness in
   the heart. Even if sin is speedily repented of, its damage is not
   readily repaired--if its writing is erased, you can see where it used
   to be. Even the passage of a momentary thought over the mind will leave
   a stain. See, then, the defiling power of sin.

   Here is the main point--the man out of whose heart these evil things
   proceed is defiled before God. I know that many will not think much of
   this, but that indifference only proves the hardening nature of sin.
   Only think of it--the sinful man is common and unclean before God! He
   is not fit to enter the sanctuary of God, nor to come into His Holy
   Presence. Sinful man cannot commune with a holy God! You do not mind
   that, you say. Ah me, how alienated from God are your hearts! If it
   were not so, we would judge that the most horrible thing in the world
   is for a man no longer to be able to speak with his Maker, nor his
   Maker to look favorably upon him. A breach of communion between the
   creature and the Creator is a kind of Hell, a blight, a curse, a death!
   God cannot comfortably commune with us while our hearts are fountains
   of defilement from which iniquity proceeds. By this defilement we
   become incapable of doing God any service. A defiled priest of old
   could not offer sacrifice. He that is defiled in heart and life can do
   nothing for God. God does not accept him and, therefore, He cannot
   accept anything at his hands.

   All that a defiled person touches becomes defiled by that very
   fact--his hymns are defiled--sing them as sweetly as he may. His
   prayers are defiled, though he may offer them accurately as to their
   words. His very thoughts are defiled! By-and-by it comes to this, that
   God cannot bear this defiled one anywhere in His universe, among holy
   beings, any more than men can bear lepers in common society. The just
   God is driven to find a place where the willfully unclean may be placed
   apart--"where their worm dies not, and their fire is not quenched." At
   last the great High Priest will look upon the defiled one and, looking
   at him and seeing his leprosy of sin still upon him, that Priest will
   say, "Depart! Depart!" Oh the terror of that final word! I dare not
   dwell upon this awful result of choosing sin and refusing mercy! I the
   more readily cease from this theme because my last point is that upon
   which I would dwell as long as possible.

   IV. Hear me, then, while I speak of THE ONLY CURE FOR THIS EVIL. O
   Sirs, your hearts must be cured of sin! Not merely the outcome of your
   heart, but the heart, itself, must be purged from defilement, for as
   long as sin comes forth from your heart, it shows that the heart is
   still sinful. The heart must be changed, or you can never meet God with
   acceptance, nor be found among the glorious throng who behold His face
   and find a Heaven in the sight! You must be renewed in the spirit of
   your minds, or you cannot dwell forever with God. How is this to be
   done? I answer, it is impossible--impossible with man! All that we can
   do towards it must fall short of the mark--

   "Madness by nature reigns within, The passions burn and rage; Till
   God's own Son, with skill Divine, The inward fire assuage."

   You may take a thistle and water it carefully, but it will produce no
   figs--and you may cultivate a thorn through life, but it will yield no
   grapes. The leopard cub taken from its mother and tamed will still be a
   leopard--and the young serpent will still go upon its belly, teach it
   as you may. It is beyond and above all power of mortal man to change
   his own heart!

   How, then, can we be made fit to dwell with God? Must we despair? Must
   we die utterly broken-hearted? Listen! For all the defilement that has
   fallen upon anyone here, even though all the defilement of my text
   should have met upon one single individual, there is cleansing! With
   God there is plenteous redemption and measureless mercy. For adultery,
   for murder, for blasphemy, for all manner of sin, there is forgiveness!
   The Lord rejoices to blot out the transgressions of repenting sinners,
   for He delights in mercy!

   Last Sabbath morning it was my privilege to preach of Him who knew no
   sin, but was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness
   of God in Him. [THE HEART OF THE GOSPEL, Sermon #1910, Volume 32.] The
   glorious Doctrine of the atoning Sacrifice offered upon the Cross of
   Calvary is most charming to those who feel that they are defiled with
   sin. Upon that blessed Truth of God I could dilate without weariness by
   the month together--and this terrible theme of this morning, which
   sinks my heart into the dust--I have only brought forward that I may
   say afterwards, that the Lord Jesus is able to deliver us from all
   iniquity and cleanse us from all sin. Oh, you who are defiled, whoever
   you may be, come and wash and be clean! He that believes in Jesus is
   justified from all sin, whatever his transgressions may be! The Lord
   delights in mercy through the great Sacrifice of Christ. He is able to
   say, "Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
   though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool." "All manner
   of sin and of blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men." Oh, that men would
   seek pardon through Jesus Christ who is exalted on high to give
   repentance and remission!

   "Yes," you say, "but pardon is not all we need." Most true, it is not
   all we need. We need to have the inward source of sin taken away. This
   is also provided. Do you not know that in the blessed Covenant of Grace
   it is written, "A new heart, also, will I give you, and a right spirit
   will I put within you. I will take away the heart of stone out of their
   flesh, and I will give them a heart of flesh"? Our Divine Savior turns
   lions into lambs and ravens into doves! "With men it is impossible, but
   with God all things are possible." There also lives among us One who
   came down to earth when Jesus went up to Heaven, abiding among us
   evermore. The Holy Spirit is here to set us free from the bondage of
   sin! He comes into the heart where evil dwells as a strong armed man
   and, being mightier than the evil, He drives out the foul spirit that
   held possession and He dwells there, Himself, changing the nature and
   creating faith and purity!

   He makes us love the holiness which before we neglected and loathe the
   sin in which we once indulged. It is possible for us to be born
   again--Glory be to God for that! It is written, "Sin shall not have
   dominion over you." I do not think we have ever praised God enough for
   this possibility. To be washed in the blood is a precious thing. But,
   oh, to be cleansed with the water which flowed with the blood from that
   dear pierced side is an equal blessing! To be made holy is a heavenly
   gift! To be sanctified is as great a favor as to be justified! Purity
   of heart is to be had by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ--is not
   this good news? Those who receive Jesus receive power to become sons of
   God and this means holiness! Those who become children of God are made
   like the First-Born and they grow up into Him in all things. Grace
   reigns in them through righteousness unto eternal life!

   Brothers and Sisters, it may be well to make laws to restrain
   fornication, theft and blasphemy, but the only sure cure for all sin is
   the Grace of God in the heart. Are they going to stop dogs from going
   mad by muzzling them? Dogs will go mad with their muzzles on and so
   will men sin despite the restraints of law! So long as hearts are evil,
   evils will proceed from them. The only physician for sin is the Lord
   Jesus and His heavenly surgery lies in the renewing of the heart by
   Grace through the Holy Spirit who works by the Gospel. My Brothers,
   keep to the old Gospel--keep to the one remedy which has healed so
   many! No new theories for us! We accept the old and tried everlasting
   Gospel of the blessed God! The Truth of God will live and flourish when
   all the evil thoughts of men have proven their foolishness and are cast
   to the moles and to the bats, as images of deception, without life or
   power!

   Pray for a blessing upon this burden of the Lord which, with a heavy
   heart, I have delivered to you. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Holy Road

   (No. 1912)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, AUGUST 1, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The
   way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be
   for others. The wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err in it."
   Isaiah 35:8.

   TWICE has Israel come back from captivity--once when the tribes came
   out of Egypt and the Lord led them through the wilderness--and again
   when they returned from banishment in Babylon and the Lord restored
   them to their land. A third return some of us believe still awaits the
   chosen people. In the day when the Grace of God shall change the heart
   of Israel, the seed of Abraham shall again return into the land which
   God gave to their fathers by a Covenant of Salt. I think our text looks
   forward to a future age when the reproach shall be rolled away from
   Palestine and her deserts shall be made to blossom as the rose. Of
   these future glories we say but little, for little is known by the most
   of us. The prophecy is, however, sufficiently clear to make us expect
   that the Lord will make a way for the return of His ancient people and
   will restore unto them the joy of His salvation. I forbear all theories
   of prophecy just now, for I feel it more than ever necessary in this
   evil time to keep close to the simplicities of the Gospel, following
   for the present distress, the beaten road of the first principles of
   the faith. I shall not use the telescope to look into the starry
   future, but rather the chart and compass with which to direct our
   present way. I shall regard the text as having received one fulfillment
   in the way of salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ. If this is not the
   literal fulfillment of the prophecy, yet certainly it is its spiritual
   fulfillment and, for the moment, this is the most vital matter to us.
   As the Savior spoke at Nazareth, so say I now, "This day is this
   Scripture fulfilled in your ears." Hear it, and discern its Divine
   teaching.

   As the Holy Spirit shall help me, I shall speak at this time upon the
   way to the heavenly Zion and our duty with regard to that way.

   I. First, then, THE WAY to the heavenly Zion, to the dwelling place of
   God. Zion of old was the place of the one altar of sacrifice and the
   one Mercy Seat where the Lord, in manifest Glory, communed with His
   Covenant people. There the tribes went up to offer their national
   prayer and praise to Jehovah, the God of Israel. Pilgrimage to the holy
   place was an important part of Israel's religious life. During the
   invasions of the land and especially during the captivity, the solemn
   festivals were neglected and there seemed to be no way up to the house
   of God. Then godly men sighed for the tabernacles of God, saying, "When
   shall I come and appear before God?" As they could not go there in
   body, they sent their hearts and their eyes in that direction, as, like
   Daniel, they prayed with their windows open towards Jerusalem. How much
   they longed for a highway by which they could march to Zion! We, my
   Brothers and Sisters, speak of another Jerusalem which is above and of
   the Throne of God, the Most High, to which we are wending our way. Our
   desire is for the city which has foundations, whose Builder and Maker
   is God. Who will bring us there? Who will point out the road?

   It is with great joy that we learn from Holy Scripture the great Truth
   set forth in the text, that there is a way to God and Heaven. "And an
   highway shall be there, and a way." This way from the City of
   Destruction to the Celestial City is still open and still traversed by
   companies of pilgrims!

   It is noteworthy that this road is one, an highway and a way--not two
   highways, nor two ways. Many roads lead to ruin, but only one to
   salvation! So many men, so many minds--but if we are men of God, all
   our minds are one as to the one way which leads to God. We trust in the
   same Savior and are quickened by the same Spirit and, as a consequence,
   our experience has a vital unity in it. Years ago, at the University of
   Utrecht, several Christian students met together from various nations
   and, on one occasion, it was agreed that four persons, representing
   Europe, Asia, Africa and America,

   should describe the work of Grace upon their hearts. The earnest
   Brother from New England, the friend from the Cape of Good Hope and the
   missionary student from India, all found that their stories agreed with
   that of a young nobleman of Holland. Scenes and circumstances widely
   differed, but the joys and sorrows, the struggles and the victories of
   each were the same--and one hope filled every heart! It was a
   delightful occasion and left upon the minds of those present a very
   vivid impression of the unity of the Divine way, Truth and Life, as
   these are seen in Believers.

   We differ in the pace with which we traverse the way, but the way,
   itself, is one. Today, if Believers in this audience were to rise, one
   by one, although we are a singularly mixed assembly, our religious
   testimony would be one--in each case Christ would be All and in all!
   John Newton tells us of a meeting which he had with one Occam, an
   Indian preacher, who could not have borrowed his story from books, but
   yet, when Newton and he compared notes concerning sin and the Savior,
   they were the counterparts of each other! There is but one right way.
   Let us not be deceived about it--there are no two roads to Heaven! If
   any tell you that there are two gospels, you may remind them of Paul's
   words--"Another gospel, which is not another; but there are some that
   trouble you and would pervert the Gospel of Christ."

   What that "way" is, we learn from John 14, which we have just now read
   in your hearing. Jesus says, "I am the way. No man comes unto the
   Father but by Me." Believing in Jesus, we enter upon the way--receiving
   His Spirit into our hearts, we stand in the way. Following our
   Redeemer's footsteps, we walk in the way, and holding fast to His
   leadership, we reach the end of the way. When we find Jesus, we find
   the way of Truth, the way of life, the way of peace, the way of
   holiness! He is not only the way but the end to all those who put their
   trust in Him. The only way of salvation is by the blood and
   righteousness of Jesus Christ--and all the discoveries of modern
   thought upon this matter are sheer delusion! "There is a way which
   seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." If
   any take you off from the old paths, they take you off from safety.
   What says the Scripture?--"Stand you in the way and see, and ask for
   the old path, which is the good way, and walk in it, and you shall find
   rest for your souls." Go wherever you may, though men or angels lead
   you, they do but deceive you with vain words! There is but one Christ
   and, therefore, but one way of salvation! He is the same yesterday,
   today and forever--and those who pretend that He changes with the
   centuries talk as idle dreamers, knowing nothing of the matter! God has
   given us a way to Himself in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ-- why
   should He give us another? What other can there be?

   This way, you will note, is made through the wilderness--"an highway
   shall be there"--through the deserts where the sand is always
   shifting--where, if the traveler once loses his bearings, he is doomed
   to certain death with the vulture's stomach his only sepulcher.
   Brothers and Sisters, a way is made for us through the deserts of sin
   and the wildernesses of sorrow--over hills of doubt and mountains of
   fear! That way runs close at your feet, poor wanderer, though you are
   now lost amid the habitation of the dragons of despair. The King's
   Highway is made through the wilderness-- every valley is exalted and
   every mountain and hill is laid low. Oh, you who are so faint that you
   lie down to die in despair, lift up your eyes and see the door of hope!
   You think it not possible that there can be an open road for you to
   travel to God, peace and Heaven--but there is such a road, for our text
   says--"an highway shall be there." I am comforted concerning those who
   have wandered furthest into error, vice and hardness of heart, or into
   the gloomy valley of despondency, for even there, this highway runs in
   a straight line! God, who makes rivers in high places and fountains in
   the midst of deserts, has built up a royal road by which the Lord's
   banished may return to Him! From death's dark door up to Heaven's
   pearly gate, the line is unbroken, for Jesus Christ our Savior has
   borne our death and brought us life and immortality!

   We might gather from our text that this way was cast up at great
   expense, for road-making over a long and rugged country is a costly
   business. It might be read, "a causeway shall be there"--it is a way
   thrown up and raised by art. Engineering has done much to tunnel
   mountains and bridge abysses, but the greatest triumph of engineering
   is that which made a way from sin to holiness, from death to life, from
   condemnation to perfection! Who could make a road over the mountains of
   our iniquities but Almighty God? None but the Lord of Love would have
   wished it! None but the God of Wisdom could have devised it! None but
   the God of Power could have carried it out! It cost the great God the
   Jewel of Heaven--He emptied out the treasury of His own heart--for He
   spared not His own Son, but freely delivered Him up for us all! In the
   life and death of the Well-Beloved, Infinite Wisdom laid a firm
   foundation for the road by which sinners in all ages may journey Home
   to God! The Highway of our God is such a masterpiece that even those
   who travel it every day often stand and wonder and ask how such a way
   could have been planned and constructed! Verily that prophecy is

   fulfilled to the letter--"I will even make a way in the wilderness and
   rivers in the desert. The beast of the field shall honor Me, the
   dragons and the owls."

   This road has lasted now, these thousands of years. It is still in good
   traveling condition, nor will it ever be closed till all the chosen
   wayfarers shall have reached the many mansions of the Father's House.
   Conspicuous to all beholders, the everlasting causeway remains unbroken
   and unaltered--and fresh caravans of pilgrims continually traverse it.

   This way, being made by Divine power, is appointed by Divine authority
   to be the King's highway. Whoever travels by this road is under the
   protection of the King of Kings! You can be sure it leads to the right
   end and runs in the best direction, for the Lord never made an error
   and never failed in what He attempted. This is no roundabout way, nor
   broken route, nor blind alley. Let your faith abide in it and it shall
   receive its reward! When I preach Jesus Christ as the way of Life, I
   always feel that I take no responsibility upon myself at all--I am only
   publishing a proclamation for which the King, Himself, is responsible.
   We deliver a royal message when we teach the Doctrine of the Sacrifice
   of Jesus Christ, for it is He "whom God has set forth to be a
   propitiation through faith in His blood." When we tell of the way of
   salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, we are not planning a track, or
   making a road, but pointing you to one which has long been used. If it
   were a highway of our own making, you might criticize it, but as it is
   a way of God's making, you are commanded to walk in it. To quit this
   road for another is to despise the Wisdom and Grace of God in Christ
   Jesus, and to prefer the idle inventions of man--this cannot lead to
   any good--either in this life or the next!

   This highway has already conducted many to God. It is said to be "an
   highway and a way"--it is not only a highway by appointment, but it is
   a way by use and traffic. It is trodden hard by 10,000 times 10,000
   feet which have joyfully and safely traversed it from end to end.
   Behold the cloud of witnesses in Glory who will all tell you that Jesus
   was their way to victory, their one and only way to life eternal!
   Thousands of us are still on the road and we can speak well of it. Yes,
   we can sing in the ways of the Lord! Though we at times faint in the
   way, we find no fault with the road. "Her ways are ways of pleasantness
   and all her paths are peace." It is our joy and our delight to walk
   where our Savior led the way and where Prophets and Apostles are our
   fellow-travelers. We delight to look forward to its end--how glorious
   the prospect! But we are not ashamed to look backward and admire the
   path of Grace in the years which are past. We glory in the fact that we
   are on our way to God and shall soon behold Him whom, not having seen,
   we love, and in whom believing, we even now rejoice with joy
   unspeakable and full of glory!

   This, then, is the sum of what I have spoken--there is a way to God and
   to Heaven. Even for you who as yet have not trodden the path of peace,
   the way yet lies open. Will you not enter upon it at once? Let the glad
   tidings be reported eve-rywhere--there is a way to God. Let no one say,
   "I cannot possibly reach a home with God in Heaven." Wherever you may
   be, "an highway shall be there"--even where you now are, a way is made
   by which you may at once proceed to reconciliation, peace, purity,
   salvation! Oh that you may at once ask the way to Zion with your faces
   facing there!

   But now, secondly, our text also tells us the name of this way--"It
   shall be called The way of Holiness." The way to God by Jesus Christ is
   the Via Sacra, the Holy Road. The way of faith is not contrary to
   holiness, but it is the way of holiness! There is no Way to Heaven but
   by holiness. We have need to insist much upon this in these days, for
   together with laxity of thought and dubiousness of doctrinal teaching,
   there has come into vogue great looseness of morals. I say nothing as
   to the outside world, but I dread this declension in the Church.
   Professing Christians are becoming less and less strict as to their
   amusements. We hear of Christian ministers doing that which those who
   formerly occupied their pulpits never dreamed of doing nor
   countenancing in others. Is there to be an open door from the pulpit to
   the theater? Are men to go from exercising the sacred ministry to the
   playhouse? Time was when this would have seemed utterly incredible! God
   help His Church when the leaders of religion come to this! As Paul says
   of another matter, so say we of this--"We have no such custom, neither
   the Churches of God." I fear that this is not a singular fault, though
   it is a glaring one-- everywhere I see professing Christians doing what
   our Nonconformist ancestors would have viewed with holy indignation! In
   doctrine many are hastening to Socinianism and in conduct towards
   worldliness and worse. God have mercy upon us if this thing is to go
   much further!

   The Way to Heaven, if it is anything, is a way of holiness, and if the
   way we follow is not a holy way and a separated way, it is not God's
   way! If we follow not the way of distinction from the world, we are not
   following Christ. He that is not holy on the way, will not come to that
   holy end where the thrice Holy God reveals Himself in His Glory.
   Brothers and Sisters, if you are ever in a doubt about which is the
   right path, remember those words of the Savior--"Strait is the

   gate and narrow is the way, and few there are that find it. "Prefer
   strictness to laxity. Do not mistake me, I wish to be understood, even
   if I am charged with censoriousness and bigotry. We need to pull up,
   every now and then, and say to ourselves, "Which out of these two
   courses is the right way?" for in these times, exceedingly clever men
   are crying up new roads and extolling them after some such fashion as
   this--"Here you have a road worthy of the period. None of your narrow
   ways! Be liberal, be broad--this is the road for the cultured and
   advanced." Your Savior lifts His warning hand as He cries, "Broad is
   the way which leads to destruction and many there are that go in
   there." Be it yours and mine, even if charged with bigotry and
   illiberality, to still select that way which the saints of old have
   chosen, unpleasing to the flesh, but pleasing to God--the strait and
   narrow road which leads to life eternal!

   God's way is the way of holiness, for He has founded it upon holy
   Truth. He is not unholy in the saving of any sinner. No sinner is saved
   without justice being executed to the fullest in the great expiation of
   the Lord Jesus Christ. Eternal principles forbade a righteous God to
   wink at sin and He has not done so. Justice is as much vindicated by
   the redemption of Christ as if it had poured all its vials of wrath
   upon the sinner.

   Those who follow that road do so by a holy trust. If we would be saved,
   we must have a holy faith in a holy Savior, from whom we look for holy
   blessings. We must not believe that Christ will save us in our
   sins--that would be unholy faith--we must look to Him to save us from
   our sins, for that is holy faith. We must trust in Him that He will
   cast the evil out of us and that He will purify us to Himself, to be a
   people zealous of good works. We preach no faith without works for that
   is a dead faith! Although we speak the word, "Grace," and never stammer
   as we speak it, yet we also assert that the Grace which does not lead
   to holiness is not the Grace of God at all, nor do they that receive it
   prove themselves to be God's elect. The way of those who are saved is
   the way of holy trust.

   It is also the way of holy living. The man who really believes in Jesus
   Christ will be found purging himself from the ways of sinners--he will
   be holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners! He will pant
   and aspire after perfect holiness and if he does not immediately attain
   it, he will still groan towards it, still longing to be made like
   Christ. The Way to Heaven is not only a holy way, but, according to the
   text, it is to be called so by those who speak of it. The way which God
   has marked out for His people to follow is a conspicuously holy and
   Godlike way. Let us keep to it.

   Thirdly, passing on, and further dwelling on our text, this way is a
   select way. It is written, "The unclean shall not pass over it, but it
   shall be for others." The unclean are excluded. Literally this may
   mean, "The uncircumcised and the unclean." These were excluded from the
   House of the Lord and here they are excluded from the sacred way of
   Israel--of this, the spiritual meaning is that unless we are washed in
   the blood of Christ and renewed in the spirit of our minds by the Holy
   Spirit--we are not in the way of God. "Alas," says one, "I am unclean
   and, therefore, the text shuts me out of the way of holiness." This is
   true, but it does not, therefore, exclude you from the possibility of
   salvation, for there are ways by which the unclean can be made pure.
   You cannot enter on this way of life except by being cleansed by the
   Atonement and then renewed by the Holy Spirit. By the way of Atonement,
   you can pass into this way, for the Lord waits to be gracious to you
   and to wash you clean. Pardon and regeneration are freely given to all
   who desire them and you must have both of them or you cannot tread the
   sacred way, for the unclean shall not pass over it.

   It is a select way, for it is reserved for a select people--"it shall
   be for others." "Others"--who are they? Well, look backward and you
   will read of some who make the wilderness and the solitary place to be
   glad. You read of some whose blind eyes were opened, whose deaf ears
   were unstopped. You read of the lame men who were made to leap as an
   hart and of dumb men who began to sing. This highway is reserved for
   those upon whom a miracle of Grace has been performed, for those on
   whom the Messiah has laid His healing hand, for those who love and
   delight in holy things! Though often of a fearful heart, they are bold
   to hold on in the sacred way and they shall never be driven from it.
   The pure in heart shall see God and travel the way to God--"it shall be
   for others."

   Especially, at the end of our text, we read that this way is for the
   ransomed--"the redeemed of the Lord shall walk there." If you believe
   in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have been redeemed with His precious
   blood and the way of Grace is yours. Is the blood-mark on you? Do you
   look only to Him who poured out His soul unto death on your behalf? If
   so, Beloved, you are in the way and you may walk there without any fear
   of ever being driven out of it! He that once comes into this way,
   Christ will in no wise cast him out, and He is Lord of the way. You
   shall walk in it till, with joy, you shall see His face! This way,
   though open to all who come with willing hearts, is a select way which
   no impenitent soul can walk in.

   Another fact makes it very select. You that can look in the margin of
   your Revised Old Testaments, or, indeed, in the margins of the old
   Bibles, will find that this clause may be read thus--"He shall be with
   them," that is, God shall be with them. This way of holiness is a way
   in which God walks with His people, revealing Himself to them, drawing
   them nearer and nearer to Himself and keeping them in happy union with
   Himself. It is a blessed thing to think of Heaven at the end, but it is
   an almost equally blessed thing to think of God with us on the way! Do
   we Christian people often enough consider the blessedness of the Way to
   Heaven? Even to be on the way, there is a marvel of Grace. Such stores
   of Covenant blessings are provided and distributed by the way that even
   as pilgrims we are a blessed people. The Presence of God with us on our
   journey is our choicest joy. If, after all, there should be no
   hereafter, my present life has been rendered happy by walking in the
   way of faith and obedience to God. Godliness has the promise of the
   life that now is--and that promise never fails. We have such joy and
   peace in walking with God that we can bear witness that in keeping
   God's Commandments there is great reward.

   I must pass on, for time flies so swiftly, to notice one more matter
   about this way and that is, that the way which God has appointed is a
   plain way. We are bound to be thankful for a way which is suitable for
   common and unlearned people. You would think, from some people's talk,
   that religion is a very difficult thing--only to be understood by the
   cultured few. You must be a learned scientist, or a scholarly critic
   before you can understand the modern gospel! It is not so with the
   Gospel of Jesus! Oftentimes, learned men miss this way altogether,
   while simple people perceive it and walk in it. I remember the story of
   a Swedish king in years gone by who, when he was ill, was greatly
   concerned about his eternal state. There chanced to come to the palace
   an old farmer, known to his majesty for his piety. The king called him
   to his bedside and said, "Tell me, what is the faith that saves the
   soul?" The peasant explained it out of his heart in plain language,
   much to the king's comfort.

   The king remained ill for months and again fell into doubt and fear.
   Those about him urged him to send for the Archbishop of Upsala, as a
   learned prelate who could allay his fears. The bishop came to the royal
   couch and gave his majesty a logical and theological definition of
   faith in most proper terms. When he was gone the king said, "It was
   very learned, no doubt, and very ingenious, but there was no comfort in
   it for me. The peasant's faith is the faith that can save my soul." It
   is so. The simple Truth of God is necessary for dying men and women! I
   do not wonder that Dr. Guthrie, when he was nearing death, asked to
   have "a bairn's hymn" sung to him! The Gospel which suits little
   children is that which saves souls! The Gospel of the common people is
   the only Gospel! The most educated must find their wisdom in the Cross
   or die fools! In times of trial, men cannot endure speculations,
   mystifications and refining--they need the sure and plain Truth of God
   to build their hopes upon!

   The taste of the present period is all for that which is novel,
   singular, original and pretended profound. Give me my daily bread and
   who will, may have the junkets! Give me bread such as Jesus divided
   among the men, women and children and I will leave the stones of
   philosophy to those who care to try their teeth on them! Good Mr.
   Romaine, when he used to preach over yonder at St. Ann's, Blackfriars,
   was asked by certain of his educated hearers to introduce a little more
   learning into his discourses. Hearing their request, he promised to
   fulfill it. So on the following Sunday he read the text in Hebrew--and
   when he had read it he said, "I suppose very few of you now understand
   it. Perhaps I had better quote it from the Septuagint in Greek." When
   he had read the Greek, he said, "Even now I fear that no great number
   can understand the text. It is a pity that more should not be able to
   receive the Word of God and so I will give it to you in Latin." When
   the Vulgate version had been heard, he saw them smile and he said,
   "Even now I fear that hardly a score of you are much edified and I
   think you all agree that, after all, we may as well drop our learning
   and give you the words from our own English Bible."

   Brothers and Sisters, had we been there we would have seen the point of
   the whole business and we would have agreed with the congregation that
   not the most learned, but the most plain, is the best!

   The Gospel of God needs no wisdom of words to commend it and,
   therefore, our Apostle says, "We use great plainness of speech." The
   true Gospel is as plain as a pike-staff. What says the text? "Wayfaring
   men, though fools, shall not err in it." Nobody will err about the way
   to God if he really resolves to follow that way! The Spirit of God will
   guide those whose hearts are set upon coming to God! It is the
   wayfaring man who does not err--your critic will be sure to err! Your
   trifler cannot help erring, but the true pilgrim, the wayfaring man who
   is actually traveling, he shall not err! If you want to go to Heaven,
   the way is laid down in the Scriptures, so that little children may
   find it! But if you only want to

   talk about the road and about the stumbles of travelers in it, why,
   then, the way is difficult, indeed! If you choose to puzzle yourselves
   about His Gospel, God will give you over to be puzzled. He who must be
   wiser than God shall end in being more brutish than any man!

   If you wish to find the Way to Heaven, there it is--"Behold the Lamb of
   God." Believe in Jesus and be saved! That Jesus is the way to peace and
   holiness is as plain in Scripture as the nose on your face. What more
   teaching do you need? What more assurance do you require? If your heart
   is inclined to see, there is light enough--and the Cross is clear
   enough--look and live! Those who will to see shall see, but those who
   shut their eyes do but prove the truth of the old proverb--"There are
   none so blind as those who do not wish to see." He who says, "I will
   arise and go unto my Father" shall not miss the way! He who has, from
   the Lord, received the will shall, by the Lord, perceive the way. "The
   wayfaring man shall not err." That wayfaring man may be a great fool in
   other matters, but he shall be no fool upon this matter! He may be very
   stupid about science, politics and business, but if the Lord has made
   him willing to be a wayfaring man, with his face to Zion, he shall make
   no mistakes in his journey along the holy way. God will instruct him in
   vital points. The main thing is to know the most necessary Truth and
   practice it. Our Lord said, "One thing is necessary."

   A gentleman riding on the box seat of a coach that was going to Bath in
   the old times asked the driver, "Who lives at yonder mansion?" The
   answer was short, if not sweet. "I don't know, Sir." The gentleman
   traveled on a little further and then inquired, "Where does that canal
   run to?" "Don't know, Sir." Again the passenger sought information and
   asked, "Where does Squire So-and-So live?" "I don't know, Sir." "Why,
   good man," said the gentleman, "what do you know?" The reply was
   final--"I know how to drive you to Bath, Sir." Surely, that was the
   principal business of a coachman! Even thus with regard to spiritual
   things, the chief thing is to know how sin is pardoned, how a sinner is
   justified and sanctified! There are a thousand things which a man may
   not know and he may not be much the worse for not knowing them! But not
   to know the Lord Jesus is to be ignorant of the path of life! If a man
   knows the Lord Christ, he knows the way to eternal happiness and he may
   bless God all the day for such knowledge!

   Let every man gain all the instruction he can, but let him not think
   that mere knowledge will be of great value to him in heavenly things,
   for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil worked no good to our race.
   How often have I wished that I could forget many things which once I
   thought it necessary to know! I would resolve with Paul to know nothing
   among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. There, let the bubbles
   burst and the scum be blown away! Let fire consume the gilt and tinsel!
   What are these when weighed with one ingot of the real gold of the
   knowledge of Him that loved us and gave Himself for us? Let us choose
   the right way. Let us look up to God and say, "You will show me the
   path of life." Then let us despise the pedantry of the age and take to
   that path wherein "wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err."

   The last word of our text teaches us that it is a safe way. Of this I
   will speak more fully another time. "No lion shall be there." Plenty of
   lions prowl up and down the side of the road, but they cannot "go up
   there." He who keeps the crown of the causeway, though he may hear the
   lion roar, shall not meet it in the way. No ravenous beasts shall be
   found there, for the way is not to their mind. Reptiles cannot live in
   Ireland, nor lions on the holy way. There is one lion which those who
   make Jesus their way need never be afraid of--that is the lion of
   unpardoned sin. If you are believing in Jesus Christ, your iniquities
   are forgiven you for His name's sake. Another lion also roars upon us,
   but cannot devour us, namely, temptation. You shall not be tempted
   above what you are able to bear. We read of some who followed their own
   way, that the Lord sent lions among them, but He drives away the lions
   from those who keep the right way. Lions are afraid of fire and the
   Lord is a wall of fire round about His people!

   As for that grim lion of death of which some speak, it does not exist!
   This is a fabulous monster--death to a Believer is rather an angel than
   a lion. The valley through which we are to pass is not the valley of
   death, but of the shadow of death. For the Believer, there is no
   substance in death--it is only a shadow! Brothers and Sisters, you
   shall soon pass from under that temporary shade and no ill shall come
   of it. The shadow of a dog cannot bite, the shadow of a sword cannot
   wound and the shadow of death cannot destroy! Go onward without fearing
   any evil, for the Lord is with you! His rod and His staff are your
   comfort. No ravenous beast can harm you, for it is written, "There
   shall no evil befall you." Walk with God and "you shall tread upon the
   lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shall you trample under
   feet." To be safe we must be holy--to be holy we must trust in Christ
   Jesus the Lord!

   II. Only two or three minutes remain, in which I will speak of OUR DUTY
   IN CONNECTION WITH THIS WAY OF HOLINESS. If there is such a road, let
   us not neglect it lest we perish from the way when the king's wrath is
   kindled but a little.

   The first thing is to carefully discriminate in these days between road
   and road. Beware of false prophets. "Believe not every spirit, but try
   the spirits whether they are of God." Put on your considering caps and
   when you see a road which looks broad, smooth, pleasant and well
   bordered with flowers, say to yourself, "There are many ways, but since
   only one of them leads to eternal life, I must be careful. I will pray,
   'Lord, be my Guide, even unto death.'" Then make the inquiry, "Is this
   The Way of Holiness? For if it is not the holy way, it is not the road
   which I dare to follow." O my dear Hearers, believe the Truth of God
   and follow the Truth of God! Do not believe that sincerity is
   enough--you need the Truth of God as well.

   "If we are sincere in our religion," says one, "it will be all right
   with us, whatever that religion may be." Nonsense! You know better. If
   you sincerely mistake the road and go northward, you will not get to
   Brighton. If you sincerely drink poison, it will kill you! If you
   sincerely cut your throat, you will die! If you sincerely believe a
   lie, you will suffer the consequences. You must not only be sincere,
   but you must be right! Therefore, submit your judgment to the Word of
   the Lord. This Infallible Book is given to you and the Infallible
   Spirit waits to instruct you as to its meaning. Cry unto the Wise One
   for wisdom! Yield your minds to the teaching of Him who is the Way, the
   Truth and the Life--and so shall you not be deceived, but shall attain
   unto holiness and bliss.

   The next thing is that when you know the road, you should scrupulously
   stay in it, for many ways branch from it. Let no man draw you aside
   from it. It is one straight line. Keep to it, even as the stars keep in
   their courses. Gird up the loins of your mind; be sober and hope to the
   end. May the Holy Spirit so rest upon you that you may have no wish to
   leave the strait and narrow way--no desire to start aside from it, even
   for a moment! He that endures to the end, the same shall be saved.
   Temporizers who begin for a little season and run well, and then are
   hindered, what shall become of them? Why this--that it were better for
   them not to have known the Way of Righteousness than to turn from it
   after they have known it. To the end! To the end, Man! Hold on and hold
   out, or your faith will prove to be a thing of nothing.

   Once more--are we in the way? Then let us be very earnest in telling
   other people of it. Traveling, the other day, by a country road, the
   traveler wished to know the way to a certain spot. He inquired of one
   who sat by the roadside, but all the answer he got from him was a
   vacant stare and a shake of the head. A little time later he found that
   the poor man was deaf and dumb. I am afraid there are many such
   Christians nowadays--they are spiritually deaf to the woes of others--
   and dumb as to giving them either instruction or encouragement. All
   they seem to do is to shake their wise heads, as if they knew a great
   deal more than they meant to tell. "Oh," you say, "we are not deaf and
   dumb." Then why do you not talk of Jesus, the Way? Why do you not tell
   others the way to Heaven? Why do you not hear the cry that is going up
   to God everywhere for spiritual instruction?

   How is it that so many Christians are content to occupy their pews, but
   never go forth to declare what they have found in Jesus? I'll tell you
   why--I fear that some professors cannot tell the way because they do
   not know it. I asked a person the other day, the road to a certain
   place, and in the politest possible manner he answered, "I beg your
   pardon, but I am quite a stranger in these parts." That was a very
   sufficient reason for not directing me. He could not tell what he did
   not know. If any of you do not know the way and are strangers in these
   parts, do not tell anybody--but let this mournful reflection go home to
   your consciences--"I cannot tell another the Way to Heaven because I am
   a stranger in these parts." God grant that we may never stretch the arm
   of our testimony beyond the sleeve of our experience! It shall be well
   for any minister if it may be written upon his tombstone, "He never
   preached what he did not practice."

   May you Christian people who are busy at Mission Rooms and Sunday
   schools, and so forth, so live what you teach that you may teach what
   you live! It is a horrible thing to stand like a signpost by the way,
   to point to the road, but never to run in that road, yourself. It would
   be well if we were always ready to tell the Way to Heaven to everybody,
   whether they want to know it or not! Possibly the men we are most
   likely to bless are those who at this present do not desire to know the
   Gospel. If we point out the way to them, God may ordain that our
   describing the path may be an effectual influence for leading them into
   it! There are two occasions in which we ought to point out the way to
   all around, namely, in season and out of season. We shall be clear of
   the blood of men if we show them the way and entreat them to walk in
   it. If we do not, they may perish for lack of knowing the road and then
   their blood may be required at our hands.

   Finally, what ought we to do in connection with this way? I would say,
   beloved Friend, if you are not in the road, may the Lord help you to
   get into it this morning. "What is to be done to reach the heavenly
   city?" asks one. A notable Divine once gave this direction--"The Way to
   Heaven is, turn to the right, and keep straight on." I would add, turn
   when you come to the Cross--only one turn is needed--but that must be a
   thorough turn and one in which you persevere. Keep straight on till you
   come to Glory. Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and you have eternal
   life!

   "But," says one, "I have begun to trust Christ, but I am always afraid
   of myself, lest I should go back, after all." This is by no means an
   unhealthy fear when you consider the matter in reference to your own
   strength, but there is another light in which to regard it. Trust in
   the Lord for final perseverance and He will give it to you. One thing I
   would earnestly recommend to you who are afraid of backsliding and
   apostasy--say to yourself, "Whether or not, whether I get to Canaan or
   not, I will never go back to Egypt! I will die with my face toward God
   and holiness." The soul that can keep this solemn resolve never to
   return to the country from where he came out, will surely reach the
   promised rest! Your carcass will not fall in the wilderness if your
   face is towards the Lord Jesus, His promise and His Throne!

   No, never will we love this evil world, nor bow before its idols--we
   have lifted our hands to the Lord and we cannot go back. If God has
   brought you only a little out of your sins, I pray that you may press
   forward. But if He has clean delivered you, you must do so! Lord God,
   if I am cast away. If You never give me joy, again, yet I will never
   cease to look to Your mercy in Christ Jesus, for there, only, have I
   hope! By Your Grace I will die with my face to the Cross!

   Did you ever hear of anybody who perished in that posture? No, it shall
   never be reported in Heaven above, nor in Hell beneath, that a soul
   died in the Way--Christ being that Way. No soul can perish whose eyes
   look towards the five wounds of Jesus Crucified. He is the Way, the
   living Way, the only Way, the sure Way--follow Him. O poor Sinner! Do
   as the blind man did who followed Jesus in the Way--rise this morning,
   for He calls you. Before you leave your pew, look to Jesus! Flee along
   this road of refuge, this way of Grace. May God the Holy Spirit help
   you to take to the Way at once, without delay! Unto you shall be
   salvation and unto the Lord of the Way shall be Glory forever and ever.
   Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Confidence and Concern

   (No. 1913)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, AUGUST 8, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not
   ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is
   able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.
   Hold fast the form of sound words, which you have heard of me, in faith
   and love which is in Christ Jesus. That good thing which was committed
   unto you keep by the Holy Spirit which dwells in us." 2 Timothy
   1:12-14.

   OUR Apostle was in prison. If he was confined in the Mammertine, those
   of us who have shivered in that dark underground dungeon may well pity
   him. And if he was confined in the prison of the Praetorian Guards, he
   fared no better, for the near company of such rough and cruel soldiers
   would involve much suffering. The Apostle was not only a prisoner,
   chained by his right hand to a soldier both day and night, but he was,
   to his intense sorrow, forsaken by his friends. The encouragements of
   Christian communion are exceedingly great and the loss of them is very
   bitter. Those who ought to have gloried in the Apostle for his fervor,
   his self-sacrifice, his courage and his zeal, had turned against him.
   He writes to Timothy, "This you know, that all they which are in Asia
   have turned away from me; of whom are Phygellus and Her-mogenes." It
   would seem that these two notable persons were ashamed of Paul's chain
   and, to their endless disgrace, turned against him.

   Deserted in his utmost need, deprived of his liberty and treated as a
   breaker of the laws, we could not have marveled if the Apostle had been
   somewhat dispirited. Active spirits are apt to fret in confinement and
   tender hearts bleed under desertion. Beside that, the man of God was in
   daily danger of execution by the tyrant's sword. He was not likely to
   be spared by the monster who occupied the Roman throne and already he
   had the sentence of death in himself. Any morning he might be awakened
   by a rough summons to come forth and die. See him, then--such a one as
   Paul the Aged! Wearing his chain, he sits in his cell, expecting soon
   to die a cruel death--but instead of being personally discouraged--he
   has encouragement to spare for others! He is thinking of young Timothy
   and not of himself! As for himself, he says, "Nevertheless, I am not
   ashamed." And then he charges his young Brother not to be disheartened
   nor shaken in faith, but bravely to carry on the great work committed
   to his charge. It is grand to see how calmly this man bore himself! In
   his case it was, indeed, true, that "stone walls do not a prison make,
   nor iron bars a cage." Paul ranged the world with his free missionary
   spirit and he reigned more royally in his prison than Caesar in his
   palace! No one envies Nero, but many have felt that Paul's sufferings
   might readily be embraced for the sake of his exalted life.

   What was the cause of the cool courage of the Apostle? On what
   foundation was his peace built? How was his confidence sustained? He
   tells us in our text how his fears were removed--and he also informs us
   as to a matter which pressed upon his mind. Our discourse this morning
   will be an attempt to show at once Paul's confidence and his concern. I
   pray God to bring our minds into a parallel line with that of the
   Apostle so that we may enjoy the most serene peace, as Paul did, and
   may, at the same moment, feel a noble concern for higher interests than
   those which begin and end with ourselves! The honored Apostle had
   committed all his own matters into the hands of God and so was at
   perfect peace about them. But he experienced deep anxiety for another
   treasure which was committed to him--which he handed over to Timothy
   with an earnest entreaty that he would guard it by the Holy Spirit. The
   blending of deep peace and holy zeal will give us a condition of heart
   of a most desirable kind!

   Our subject opens up to us under four divisions. First, we shall notice
   what Paul had done. Then, secondly, what Paul knew. Thirdly, what Paul
   was persuaded of. And lastly, what he was concerned about.

   I. First, observe carefully WHAT PAUL HAD DONE. I will speak but
   briefly here.

   He had trusted a Person--"I know whom I have believed." He had trusted
   that Person with full, clear knowledge of Him--so trusted that he did
   not alter his trust as years rolled by but, as he grew in the knowledge
   of that Person, he was also confirmed in his confidence in Him--"I know
   whom I have believed."

   He does not say, "I know what I have believed," though that would have
   been true. He does not say, "I know when I believed," though that would
   have been correct. Nor does he say, "I know how much I have believed,"
   although he had well weighed his faith. He does not even say, "I know
   in whom I have believed," but he goes still closer! He says expressly,
   "I know whom I have believed," as much as to say, "I know the Person
   into whose hand I have committed my present condition and my eternal
   destiny. I know who He is and I, therefore, without any hesitation,
   leave myself in His hands." Brothers and Sisters, it is the beginning
   of spiritual life to believe Jesus Christ! Is not this the one word
   that we preach to you continually? "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
   and you shall be saved." "He that believes on the Son has everlasting
   life." "He that believes on Him is not condemned." Many are the
   Scriptural assurances to the same effect. Paul had not ventured upon a
   fancy, but he had trusted in a well-known Friend! He had not done this
   in ignorance, nor in fanaticism, nor in desperation, but with cool,
   clear, deliberate judgement--knowing whom he had trusted. Ignorance is
   a wretched foundation, but sure knowledge is like a rock!

   Paul had gone further and had practically carried out his confidence,
   for he had deposited everything with this Person. He had unreservedly
   committed his body, soul, spirit, character, life and immortality to
   the guardian care of that Person whom he knew and loved so well! I may
   believe in a person and yet I may never have committed anything to his
   charge-- he might not wish that I would do so, nor be willing to accept
   any trust at my hands. But we must go that length with the Lord Jesus.
   While we are bound to believe in the Lord Jesus as faithful and true
   and able to save, this belief is not enough, in itself, to work
   salvation--we must, in consequence of this belief--actually and
   definitely convey out of our own keeping all our eternal interests and
   put them into His keeping. We must make the Lord Jesus Christ the
   depository of all our anxieties and hopes. He must be to us the banker
   who has the custody of all our valuables, bonds and title-deeds--yes we
   must also leave ourselves with Him--all that we are, all that we have,
   all that we expect to have, we must confide with Jesus.

   A poor idiot, who had been instructed by an earnest Christian, somewhat
   alarmed him by a strange remark, for he feared that all his teaching
   had been in vain. He said to this poor creature, "You know that you
   have a soul, John?" "No," said he, "I have no soul." "No soul!" thought
   the teacher, "this is dreadful ignorance." All his fears were rolled
   away when his half-witted pupil added, "I had a soul, once, and I lost
   it, but Jesus found it. And so I have let Him keep it." How could he
   better have expressed his faith? Is not that exactly what the Apostle
   meant--he passed his soul out of his own keeping into the care of
   Jesus, his Lord? As a man leaves his estate with a trustee, or as the
   patient entrusts his life to his physician, even so had the Apostle
   Paul committed himself into the hands of that glorious Person whom
   having not seen, he loved!

   I pause here to ask whether we have all done the same. This is a vital
   question. If you, my Friend, are keeping your own soul, you have a poor
   keeper! You will lose your soul as surely as you attempt to be your own
   savior! Have you once and for all transferred salvation work from
   yourself to Jesus? Are you looking out of yourself and looking to
   Jesus, only? Are you leaning upon the Beloved? Are you living in Him?
   If so, your safety is secure. In the hands of Jesus, a soul must be
   safe. In the keeping of Jesus, nothing shall hurt you either night or
   day. In Him you dwell in a fortress and high tower--and no enemy shall
   molest you. Through time and eternity you are secure! Death shall leave
   you sleeping on His bosom! Resurrection shall awaken you in His
   likeness and endless ages shall display your security in Him forever
   and ever!

   What Paul did is summed up in these words, "I know whom I have
   believed," "I have committed everything to

   Him."

   II. The next thing is, WHAT DID PAUL KNOW? He tells us plainly, "I know
   whom I have believed." We are to understand by this that Paul looked
   steadily at the Object of his confidence and knew that he relied upon
   God in Christ Jesus. He did not rest in a vague hope that he would be
   saved, nor in an indefinite reliance upon the Christian religion, nor
   in a sanguine expectation that all things would, somehow, turn out
   right at the end. He did not hold the theory of our modern divines,
   that our Lord Jesus Christ did something or other, which, in one way or
   another, is more or less

   remotely connected with the forgiveness of sin. No, Paul knew the Lord
   Jesus Christ as a Person and he deliberately placed himself in His
   keeping, knowing Him to be the Savior!

   His countrymen did not know Jesus, or they would not have crucified the
   Lord of Glory, but Paul knew Him. Those around the Apostle were
   strangers to the Lord Jesus and could not sympathize with Paul, yet he
   knew Him. Some of them curiously asked, "Who is this Christos of whom
   you sing?" Others asked, "Who is this Crucified One, of whom you make
   so much fuss?" Paul answers by avowing his own faith--"I know whom I
   have believed." He had no phantom Savior, no mythical Savior, no
   unknown Savior, no Savior sharing salvation with two or three others.
   Paul knew no company of saints and virgins, nor even a church to which
   he trusted his soul--he says, "I know whom I have believed." Jesus was
   a distinct Person to the Apostle, so real as to be known to him as a
   man knows a friend. Paul knew nobody else so well as he knew his Lord!

   By faith he knew Jesus as He was born at Bethlehem, partaker of our
   humanity, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh--a Brother born for
   adversity. He knew Him as He died on Calvary, bearing our sins in His
   own body on the tree. He knew Him as dead and buried in the tomb of
   Joseph--and as risen from the dead for our justification! He knew Him
   as gone up into Glory and sitting at the right hand of God, clothed
   with honor and majesty. Because of all this, the Apostle trusted his
   Lord. On what better ground could he have gone? What could be more
   reasonable than that he should entrust his all with One so fitted to
   preserve him till he day of His appearing?

   Dear Friends, do you really know Christ Jesus as a real Person? Do you
   trust in Him as now living? I beseech you, do not trust the weight of
   your salvation upon a doctrine! A statement, an abstraction, cannot
   save you--you need the active interference of a Person. Do not trust in
   a form of faith, nor in a code of rules. What are they? Trust in the
   living Person of Him who, though He was dead, rose again and always
   lives to make intercession for us at the right hand of God, even the
   Father! I trust that you have no hesitation as to faith in Him, but
   that you can sing with me--

   "Jesus, my God, I know His name,

   His name is all my trust!

   Nor will He put my soul to shame,

   Nor let my hope be lost."

   Paul also knew the Character of Jesus whom he trusted. His perfect
   Character abundantly justified the Apostle's implicit trust. Paul could
   have said, "I know that I trust in One who is no mere man, but very God
   of very God. I have not put my soul into the keeping of a priest, like
   unto the sons of Aaron, who must die, but I have rested myself in One
   whose Priesthood is according to the Law of an endless life--a Priest
   forever after the order of Melchizedek. He upon whom I confide is He
   without whom was not anything made that was made, who sustains all
   things by the Word of His power and who, at His coming, shall shake
   both the heavens and the earth, for all fullness of Divine energy
   dwells in Him." Paul knew that his Christ was God as well as Man and so
   he felt safe in relying upon Him.

   He knew also that this blessed Person was pre-eminently satisfactory to
   the heart of the eternal God. What manner of perfection must
   concentrate itself in Him in whom the Father, Himself, delights? Think
   of Him as the great Sacrifice for sin who has made a complete, absolute
   and everlasting Atonement, to which nothing can be added, from which
   nothing shall ever be taken away! Think of Him in whom the Justice of
   God is vindicated and the Love of God is displayed! When my own eyes
   dart a glance to Calvary and I picture the Lord of Glory dying there
   for my sake, I cannot allow a doubt to live--I feel compelled to
   trust--I cannot but rest in perfect peace when I see that great
   Sacrifice which has forever put away all the sins of Believers!

   Beloved, Paul knew whom he had believed as being Divine in His Person
   and complete in His Sacrifice, but more than that. Paul knew that the
   Lord Jesus Christ, to whom he trusted his soul, was now adorned with
   all the Glory of Heaven and clothed with all the Omnipotence of the
   mighty God. He knew that, if he was bound, Jesus was not bound and
   that, if he must die, yet Jesus could not die. He knew that the Lord
   shall reign forever and ever and his expectant ears caught the
   hallelujahs of eternity when the Crucified shall be acknowledged Lord
   of All! "All power is given unto Me in Heaven and in earth," said
   Jesus, "Go you therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them." Paul
   felt that such power was worthy of boundless confidence and, therefore,
   he said--"I know whom I have believed." Jesus was to Paul's faith no
   longer the despised and rejected Nazarene; no longer the condemned and
   crucified Man of Sorrows, but He was the acknowledged King of Kings and
   Lord of Lords! He knew Him in His risen Glory. Happy, happy, happy
   heart which has such knowledge of Jesus and such confidence in Him!

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, I think I have shown you why Paul had much
   faith in Jesus. How could he do otherwise than trust in One of whom he
   knew such wonderful things? But how did Paul come to know Christ? I
   suppose he knew Him in great part by the Word of God. Every page of
   Scripture, as the Apostle perused it, revealed Jesus to him. These
   Scriptures are the swathing-bands of the Holy Child Jesus. Unroll them
   and there He is! This Book is a royal pavilion within which the Prince
   of Peace is to be met with by Believers who look for Him. In this
   celestial mirror, Jesus is reflected! This is a sure testimony--more to
   be trusted than the sight of the eyes, or the hearing of the ears. Do
   you know Christ by seeing Him in His Word?

   Paul also knew Jesus in another way than this. He had personal
   acquaintance with Him. He knew Him as "the Lord Jesus, who appeared
   unto him in the way." When he was going to Damascus to persecute the
   saints of God, this same Jesus spoke out of the excellent Glory and
   said to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?" Brethren, have we
   any personal acquaintance with Christ? If not, our witness will not run
   parallel with Paul's utterance in our text, "I know whom I have
   believed." Did Jesus ever call you to Himself, and have you answered
   His call? Has He so spoken as to change the whole current of your life?
   Does He still speak to you? Do you remember a sacred place, a
   consecrated spot where Jesus has met you? Have you a chamber where He
   meets you and manifests Himself to you as He does not to the world? If
   so, you can well trust Him whose love is shed abroad in your heart by
   the Holy Spirit. You can well trust Him, for He is no stranger, but
   your near kinsman who is mindful of you and visits you. Cannot you join
   with our poet and softly sing--

   "Yes, though I have not seen and still

   Must rest in faith alone,

   I love You, dearest Lord, and will,

   Unseen, but not unknown."

   There are other gates of the soul beside eyes and ears, other touches
   than those of the hands and other feelings than those of the flesh. Our
   inner spirit, when it would commune with the spiritual world, disdains
   to use the gross and inefficient instruments of this poor body--she
   cannot, with these, have fellowship with the Father and with His Son,
   Jesus Christ. By its own inner hands, our spirit has touched Him. With
   her own inner mouth she has kissed the Well-Beloved. With other than a
   material eyes she has beheld her unseen Spouse. Our eyes do not see--we
   see through our eyes even these temporal things--but we see eternal
   things without the need of eyes. Our spirit needs no intervening
   medium, but she sees in her pure spirit the pure spirit of Jesus, face
   to face! More than the senses could convey to the soul, she perceives
   without them! This is a Divine and blessed knowledge and the Apostle
   could, with all his heart, declare that it was his own. Though he had
   once known Christ after the flesh, he declared that after the flesh he
   knew Him no more, but he knew Him so well and so truly after the spirit
   that he said, without reserve, "I know whom I have believed."

   He knew the Lord, also, by practical experience and trial of Him. Paul
   had tested Jesus amidst furious mobs, when stones fell about him, and
   in prison when the dampness of death chilled him to the bone! He had
   known Christ far out at sea, when Euroclydon drove him up and down in
   the Adriatic. And he had known Christ when the rough blasts of
   un-brotherly suspicion had beaten upon him on the land. All that he
   knew increased his confidence! He knew the Lord Jesus because He had
   delivered him out of the mouth of the lion. "I know," he said--he was
   past the age of speculation and theory. Look at his hoary locks and his
   scarred face--he is no fair-weather sailor--he has sailed with his Lord
   upon the great deeps and has suffered many things for His sake. And
   now, after all his experience, he does not say that he hopes, supposes,
   or thinks, but he writes, "/know."

   Glorious dogmatist, we are not ashamed to follow in your track! Where
   is there any comfort or stimulus except in the Truth of God assuredly
   believed? To doubt is to be downcast and feeble. Only in solemn
   assurance is there courage and strength. Come on, you who quibble and
   criticize--Paul meets you with, "I know!" You demand that he shall
   maintain his thesis with logic? He answers, "I know!" What he knew of
   his Lord was as sure to him as his own consciousness. He had no reserve
   in his mind for future alterations of creed, for he had reached
   certainty. "I know whom I have believed." He could not doubt Him, nor
   distrust Him, nor stir an inch from the absolutely unlimited confidence
   which he reposed in Him. Beloved, I trust we know as much of Jesus as
   leads us to a living faith in our living Lord. Some people do not know
   much else, but they are well educated if they know this! Others are
   skillful in classics, mathematics and applied sciences, but if they do
   not know Jesus, in whom the saints believe, they are in the worst of
   ignorance! I pray God to send such untaught persons to His infant
   school, for it is written, "Except you are converted and become as
   little children, you

   shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." May we be taught of God to
   know Jesus by that practical acquaintance which engenders trust in Him!

   III. Thirdly, let us enquire--WHAT WAS THE APOSTLE PERSUADED OF? If one
   should say to a Christian man, "Pray, Sir, what are your opinions?" he
   might answer, "I have no opinions, but I know whom I have believed." If
   the enquirer then said, "But what is your persuasion?" he might answer,
   "I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to
   Him." This method of treating matters is far better than forming mere
   opinions for ourselves, or borrowing persuasions from others.

   /mplicitly Paul declares his faith in our Lord's willingness and
   faithfulness. He does not mention these in words, but sometimes there
   is great instruction in omissions--things not said may, perhaps, be
   more conspicuous by their absence than things which are spoken. Silence
   is often more emphatic than speech. Paul does not raise the question
   whether the Savior was willing or faithful to keep what he had
   committed to Him--he takes that for granted. He will not even assert
   his knowledge of the Truth and Grace of his Redeemer--he leaves these
   among the things which could not be questioned for a moment! Dear
   Heart, if you have given yourself to Christ, Christ has given Himself
   to you--do not doubt His readiness to receive you! If you are leaning
   upon the Beloved, He is willing to be leaned upon and He will never
   fail you. If, in very truth His Word is your trust, the Lord will never
   run back from His promise. Has He not said it and will He not do it?
   Take this for granted! Receive it as an acknowledged principle which
   none may question.

   But the point which the Apostle expressly mentions is the power of
   Christ--"I am persuaded that He is able." He had a solemn conviction of
   the ability of the Lord Jesus, who is able to save unto the uttermost.
   Let us hope that no Believer here has any doubt about the power of
   Christ. If he has, the doubt is most absurd! He that goes to the sea
   for salt water cannot rationally fear that he will be forced to come
   back with an empty bucket. He that lifts up his face to the sun can
   have no doubt but that his features will be bright with the light. So
   he that turns to Christ may be persuaded that there is no lack of
   sufficiency or ability in Him.

   "Oh," one says, "I do not doubt the ability of Christ to save me!" May
   I ask you, then, what you do doubt? "Oh, I doubt my own merit, my own
   ability and so forth." What have any of these things to do with the
   matter in hand, which is the power of Jesus? These things are
   altogether out of the circle! All the salvation of a man depends upon
   the Lord Jesus Christ--and if He is able to save you, why are you full
   of fears? If you have committed your money to the banker and you say,
   "I am afraid it is not safe," the only justifiable reason for such
   suspicion must be because the bank is not solvent. Would you say, "I
   doubt about my money because I have a headache?" Would that be
   rational? Would you say, "I am afraid my money is unsafe because my
   eyesight is failing me?" Does that influence the safety of your deposit
   at the bank? Nothing can affect that matter but lack of stability in
   the bank, itself.

   If you have committed yourself to the care of the Lord Jesus Christ, I
   cannot listen to those miserable, "ifs," and "buts"--they are
   unreasonable and irrelevant. I blow them away as so much chaff. If
   Jesus is able to save and you are trusting Him, there is no room for
   distrust. Can you doubt the Lord's ability? Have we not believed in His
   Godhead and in the almighty power with which the Father has girt Him as
   the God-Man, the Mediator, now that He has gone up into His everlasting
   reward? If these are facts, how can it be difficult to trust such a
   One? Trust my soul with Christ? Why, if I had all your souls within my
   body, I could trust them all to Him! And if every sin that man has done
   in thought, word and deed since worlds were made, or time began, could
   meet upon my one guilty head--I dare say it--the precious blood of
   Jesus could wash them all away! Trust Him with one soul? Yes, indeed,
   it seems too little a thing!

   He that goes on board a great Atlantic liner does not say, "I venture
   the weight of my body upon this vessel. I trust it to bear my ponderous
   frame." Yet your body is more of a load to the vessel than your soul is
   to the Lord Jesus. Did you ever hear of the gnat on the horn of the ox
   which feared that it might be an inconvenience to the huge creature? O
   Friend, you are but a gnat in comparison with the Lord Jesus! No, you
   are not so heavy to the ascended Savior as the gnat to the ox! You were
   a weight to Him once, but having borne that load once and for all, your
   salvation is no burden to Him now. Well may you say, "I am persuaded
   that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him."

   What was this which Paul had committed to Christ? He committed to Him
   everything that he had for time and for eternity--his body, his soul,
   his spirit--all fears, cares, dangers, sins, doubts, hopes, joys. He
   just made a clean removal of his all from himself to his Lord. "I am
   persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto
   Him." See how the eyes of the Apostle light up as he tells his copyist
   to write down, "He is able to keep my deposit against that

   day." If he had little joy and rejoicing in his waiting time, he would,
   nevertheless, look to have his full of it in that day of days, that day
   in which his Lord would appear! He left everything with Jesus with a
   view to the Advent, the Judgment, and the eternal Glory! Then would he
   look for his Divine Keeper to produce the deposit entrusted to Him.
   There will be no need in that day to ask, "My Lord, is it all right?"
   Yes, we may picture Him as coming in all His Glory and majesty to be
   admired in all them that believe! He sits upon the Throne of His Glory
   and there are you among the countless multitude!

   Suppose you could say, "My Lord, I trusted You with my soul. Am I safe?
   I trusted You with my eternal interests. Are they all secure?" How
   sweet will be His reply, as He says to His Father, "Of them which You
   gave Me have I lost none." And to us, "Come, you blessed of My Father,
   inherit the Kingdom prepared for you!" If any enquire of us in Glory,
   "How did you get here?" we will answer, "He brought us here." If they
   say, "How is it that you are on His right hand?" we will reply,
   "Because His own right hand brought us there." "But how is it that you
   are so bright in your apparel?" "We have washed our robes and made them
   white in His blood." "How is it that after you were converted you did
   not turn back?" "He kept us in the Way and preserved our lives, for He
   said, 'Because I live, you shall live also.'" "How is it that you have
   escaped the power of the enemy, since you were only a sheep, and a wolf
   was after you?" "It is because He said, 'I give unto My sheep eternal
   life and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out
   of My

   hand.'"

   When the Lord shall make up His last account of His jewels in that
   Great Day, we shall be found in Christ, even as gems are found in a
   golden vault! In the Lord Jesus Christ, all His elect, all His
   blood-bought, all His called, all His justified, all His believing
   people shall be found in that day. None of His redeemed shall be absent
   in the day when the sheep shall pass, again, under the hand of Him that
   counts them. All who were marked with the blood-mark here below shall
   be folded in the pastures of Glory! "I know whom I have believed," says
   Paul, "and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have
   committed unto Him against that day."

   Those of you who are acquainted with the original will follow me while
   I forge a link between my third division and my fourth. If I were to
   read the text, thus, it would be quite correct--"I am persuaded that He
   is able to keep my deposit against that day." Here we have a glimpse of
   a second meaning. If you have the Revised Version, you will find in the
   margin, "that which He has committed to me." And the original allows us
   to read the verse whichever way we choose-- "He is able to keep that
   which I have committed unto Him"--or "that which He has committed unto
   me." This last expression, though I could not endorse it as giving the
   full sense of the text, does seem to me to be a part of its meaning. It
   is noteworthy that, in the 14th verse, the original has the same phrase
   as in this verse. It runs thus--"that good deposit guarded by the Holy
   Spirit which dwells in us."

   Inasmuch as the words are the same--the Apostle speaking of "my
   deposit" in the 12th verse and, in the 14th verse speaking of "that
   good deposit"--I cannot help thinking that one thought dominated his
   mind. His soul and the Gospel were so united as to be, in his thought,
   but one deposit--and this he believed that Jesus was able to keep. He
   seemed to say, "I have preached the Gospel which was committed to my
   trust and now, for having preached it, I am put in prison, and am
   likely to die, but the Gospel is safe in better hands than mine." The
   demon of distrust might have whispered to him, "Paul, you are now
   silenced and your Gospel will be silenced with you! The Church will die
   out. The Truth of God will become extinct!" "No, no," says Paul, "I am
   not ashamed, for I know that He is able to guard my deposit against

   that day."

   I cannot tell you what heart-cheer it often brings to my soul, in these
   evil days, to join in the confidence of this text! At the present
   moment it seems as if parts of the Church had almost forgotten the
   Gospel of the Grace of God. We hear on all hands, "another gospel,
   which is not another; but there are some that trouble you, and would
   pervert the Gospel of Christ." We hear the noise of archers at every
   place of drawing of water and the wayfaring man almost ceases from the
   highways of Zion. Worldliness is growing over the Church, she is
   overgrown with the moss of it. The visible Church is honeycombed
   through and through with a baptized infidelity! Unholy living is
   following upon unbelieving thinking. They boast that they have nearly
   extirpated Puritanism--some of us are described as the last of the
   race! Have they quenched our coal? Far from it! The light of the
   Doctrines of Grace shall yet again shine forth as the sun!

   Elijah was known to say, "As the Lord lives, before whom I stand." And
   this also is my confidence--the Truth of God lives because God lives!
   Though Truth were dead and buried, it would rise again. The day is not
   far distant when the

   old, old Gospel shall again command the scholarship of the age and
   shall direct the thoughts of men! Even if it were not so, it would be a
   small matter, for it signifies little, except to themselves, what men
   think, since God is true and with the Truth of God there is power. The
   fight is not over! The brunt of the battle is yet to come! They dreamed
   that the old Gospel was dead more than a hundred years ago, but they
   dug its grave too soon. Conformists and Nonconformists had, alike, gone
   over to a cold Socinianism and in the old sanctuaries, where holy men
   once preached with power, modern dreamers droned out their wretched
   philosophies! All was decorous and dead, but God would not have it so.
   All of a sudden, a voice was heard from Oxford, where the Wesleys and
   their companions had found a living Savior and were bound to tell of
   His love!

   From an inn in Gloucester there came a youth who began to preach the
   Everlasting Gospel with a trumpet tongue. A new era dawned. Two schools
   of Methodists with fiery energy proclaimed the living Word of God. All
   England was awakened! A new springtide arrived--the time of the singing
   of birds had come--life rejoiced where once death withered all things!
   It will be so again. The Lord lives and the Gospel lives, too. Our
   charioteers are driving as fast as they can in the direction of
   Unitarianism and spiritual death, but the Lord will lay His hand upon
   the bridles of the horses, though Jehu himself drives them, and He
   shall turn them back by the way they came! "I know whom I have
   believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep my deposit against
   that day."

   IV. This leads me on to this fourth point--WHAT THE APOSTLE WAS
   CONCERNED ABOUT. The matter

   about which he was concerned was this deposit of his--this everlasting
   Gospel of the blessed God. He expresses his concern in the following
   words--"Hold fast the form of sound words, which you have heard of me,
   in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. That good thing which was
   committed unto you, keep by the Holy Spirit which dwells in us."

   First, he is concerned for the steadfastness of Timothy and, as I
   think, for that of all young Christians and especially of all young
   preachers. What does he say? "Hold fast the form of sound words." I
   hear an objector murmur, "There is surely not much in words." Sometimes
   there is very much in words. Vital truth may hinge upon a single word.
   The whole Church of Christ once fought a tremendous battle over a
   syllable--but it was necessary to fight it for the conservation of the
   Truth of God. Only the unorthodox ridicule words and with them it is an
   affectation, for were they not impressed with the importance of words,
   they would not be so eager to alter them. "Surely we may change our
   terms." I have no objection if I know that your intentions are honest!

   "Surely we may change the form of a creed, however sound it may be." Do
   so if you like. I will not contend for words to no profit. But as for
   some of you who ask for these changes, I shrewdly suspect that you
   would get rid of a phrase that you might be rid of that which the
   phrase means. You gentlemen who say, "Surely you will not stick out for
   a word," are, after all, neither so innocent nor so liberal as you
   appear to be. Brethren, it is not a word they would amend, but a Truth
   of God they would efface! I intend calling a rose a rose, even though I
   admit that by another name it might smell as sweet, for I perceive that
   there is an intent to inflict upon me a rank smelling weed which is no
   rose at all! When people rail at creeds as having no vitality, I
   suppose that I hear one say that there is no life in eggshells. Just
   so--there is no life in egg shells--they are just so much lime, void of
   sensation.

   "Pray, my dear Sir, do not put yourself out to defend a mere shell."
   Truly, good Friend, I am no trifler, nor so litigious as to fight for a
   mere shell. But listen! I have discovered that when you break eggshells
   you spoil eggs! And I have learned that eggs do not hatch and produce
   life when shells are cracked! I have come to be rather tender about
   shells, now that I find that certain rogues are depriving me of
   chickens by cracking my eggshells! At certain periods when everybody is
   sound and right at heart, it may be wise to revise expressions, but we
   will have none of it when the very air is tainted with unbelief! If you
   walk round certain continental towns you will see bright lawns and
   gardens where once there stood grim walls. In times of peace we are
   glad to see fortifications demolished, but, mark you, when the
   Prussians are around Paris, no Frenchman will tolerate the proposition
   to throw down the forts! This is our case, today, and therefore we hold
   fast the form of sound words!

   "We hate your narrowness--your nasty narrowness! You are shut in within
   your walls of creeds and beliefs!" Yes, gentlemen, so we are. And we
   mean to remain so, since we see how you hate the Gospel. If everything
   were in peace and we believed in you, we might, perhaps, think about
   turning bulwarks into boulevards--but at the present moment we will do
   nothing of the kind, but rather hear the voice of our old captain from
   his prison at Rome, crying--"Hold fast the pattern of wholesome words
   which you have heard from me." Brothers, do not change your posture nor
   shift your posi-

   tion! Stand fast on the Immutable Truth of God, trusting and loving
   your Lord. Hold the old faith and hold it in the old fashion, too. We
   are crossing the stream and can make no change of horses. Brothers, why
   should we change? Do these tempting novelties offer any real
   improvement on the old? Do they offer us anything to die upon? Can
   these new teachings afford us comfort in poverty, in sickness, in
   depression of spirit or in prospect of the Day of Judgment? They are
   only pretty flowers for the children of this world to play with. They
   suit well with minds that love frivolities, but they are not for men
   whose life is a warfare against sin! The eternal Truths revealed within
   this Book and grasped by the hands of our inner life--these are
   everything to us--therefore we shall stand by them even to the last
   with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus!

   The Apostle was anxious not only that the men should stand, but that
   the Everlasting Gospel, itself, should be guarded. "That good thing
   which was committed unto you, keep by the Holy Spirit which dwells in
   us." O Friends, it were better for us that the sun were quenched than
   that the Gospel were gone! I believe that the moralities, the liberties
   and, perhaps, the very existence of a nation depend upon the
   proclamation of the Gospel in its midst! Have you not noticed that
   where the Gospel has been given up and various forms of infidelity have
   ruled, foul pollution has also boiled up from below! The very idea of
   morality seems to have departed from some men by whom belief in God has
   been rejected. The Lord save us from the general spread of this
   mischief! Let the sea, itself, cease to ebb and flow sooner than the
   Gospel fail to be preached among the sons of men! If the whole Church
   were to die for the defense of the Gospel, it were a cheap price to pay
   for the maintenance of it! I speak solemnly when I say that our main
   care in life should be to preserve this Gospel intact and hand it down
   to our descendants. God grant that future ages may not have to curse us
   for having been undecided or cowardly in the hour of conflict!

   How are we to keep the faith? There is only one way. It is of little
   use trying to guard the Gospel by writing it down in a trust-deed--it
   is of small service to ask men to subscribe to a creed--we must go to
   work in a more effectual way. How is the Gospel to be guarded? "By the
   Holy Spirit which dwells in us." If, my dear Brothers and Sisters, the
   Holy Spirit dwells in you and you obey His monitions, are molded by His
   influences and exhibit the result of His work in the holiness of your
   lives, then the faith will be kept. A holy people are the true
   bodyguard of the Gospel. Only living people, in whom the Holy Spirit is
   the soul of their soul and the spirit of their spirit, are able to keep
   the Truth of God living and influential in the world! Let the power of
   the Gospel be missing where it may, it must be present where the Holy
   Spirit abides, for He makes the Word of God to be a living and
   incorruptible Seed which lives and abides forever! God send us, more
   and more, the Holy Spirit! May He be in us as rivers of Living Water!
   Oh for His heavenly Presence in this day of blasphemy and rebuke! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Secret Drawings Graciously Explained

   (No. 1914)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, AUGUST 15, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The Lord has appeared of old unto me, saying, Yes, Ihave loved you
   with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have Idrawn
   you." Jeremiah 31:3.

   THE dread of Divine Justice has often driven men to seek mercy. Many
   have been caught in the whirlwind of wrath and, in their dismay, they
   have fled for refuge to that Man who is a covert from the tempest.
   Hence the Lord does not decline to work upon the minds of the guilty by
   motives drawn from fear. Notice the 23rd and 24th verses of the
   previous chapter--"Behold, the whirlwind of the Lord goes forth with
   fury, a continuing whirlwind: it shall fall with pain upon the head of
   the wicked. The fierce anger of the Lord shall not return until He has
   done it, and until He has performed the intents of His heart." This is
   by no means a solitary passage. Holy Scripture is strewn with solemn
   admonitions to flee from the wrath to come. Our dear Redeemer, whose
   lips are as lilies dropping sweet-smelling myrrh, in great tenderness
   of heart warned men of the sure result of their sins and none used
   stronger or more alarming language than He did concerning the future of
   ungodly men.

   He knew nothing of that pretended sympathy which will rather let men
   perish than warn them against perishing. Such tenderness is merely
   selfishness excusing itself from a distasteful duty. Our Savior spoke
   as the true and earnest lover of men and, therefore, uttered words
   which, having first wounded His own heart and brought the tears to His
   own eyes, went home with tremendous force to the minds of others. He
   spoke of weeping and gnashing of teeth, of a worm which dies not and of
   a fire which is not quenched. Weeping, He reminded them how often He
   would have gathered them together as a hen gathers her chickens under
   her wings, but they would not--and, therefore, He warned them that
   nothing could come of it but desolation and destruction!

   Brothers and Sisters, like our Lord, we do not hesitate to warn men
   ofjudgment to come. "Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we
   persuade men." We dare not quit this solemn duty lest it cost us our
   own souls! We dare not cease to sound the trumpet of alarm lest the
   enemy destroy our people and their blood be required at our hands!

   Still, the master magnet of the Gospel is not fear, but love. Penitents
   are drawn to Christ rather than driven. The most frequent impulse which
   leads men to Jesus is hope that in Him they may find salvation. Truly,
   even then, they are moved by fear of the evil which they would escape,
   but their feet are led to fly towards Him by hope in His gentleness,
   His goodness, His readiness to receive sinners. Hope in that mercy of
   God which endures forever is the great cord which draws men to
   repentance. Consequently, after the Lord had sounded the clarion note
   of warning which we have just heard, He touched the harp strings of
   Grace and brought forth from them notes both soft and sweet, cheering
   the sad and encouraging the despondent--these notes He knew would be
   heard where even the trumpet sounded not. Love wins the day!

   One hair from the head of Love will draw more than the cable of fear!
   Let but Love speak a single word out of her heart--and let it reach the
   hearts of men--and it will accomplish greater marvels than all the
   prolonged discourses and threats of wrath. I am glad, therefore, that I
   have to speak to God's people, this morning, and set forth God's Love
   as the reason why they should love Him in return! "We love Him because
   He first loved us" is the great Law of the Christian life. In
   proportion as we recognize the love of God and know somewhat of its
   height, depth, length and breadth, our heart will be graciously
   affected by it. When the love of God is shed abroad in the heart by the
   Holy Spirit which is given to us, then we love our Lord with all our
   might!

   I want you, this morning, to pray that you may realize the things which
   I speak to you, so that when we discourse upon the love of God you may
   feel it glowing in your own souls. Oh, that His love, like coals of
   juniper, may burn in our hearts! With its vehement flame may it consume
   our hearts with a heavenly passion till all our nature ascends to
   Heaven like clouds of incense from the golden altar! May our God and
   Father speak within each one of us and say, "Yes, I have loved you with
   an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you!"

   I. Our first observation will run on this wise--GOD'S DEALINGS WITH US
   ARE NEVER UNDERSTOOD TILL HE, HIMSELF, APPEARS TO US. He must speak, or
   we cannot interpret His acts. "The Lord has appeared of old unto me,
   saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love: therefore with
   loving kindness have I drawn you." The Lord had been drawing these
   people, but they did not know it. God had been loving them with an
   everlasting love, but they did not recognize it. Nor could they know or
   recognize His loving kindness till the Lord, Himself, visited them in
   Person and removed the scales from their eyes! God is His own
   Interpreter. His Providence and Grace reveal Him, but still more does
   He, Himself, explain and reveal His Providence and Grace. Though all
   things in the field and the garden show what the sun does, yet none of
   these "fruits put forth by the sun" can be perceived till the sun,
   itself, reveals them.

   For first, man is not in a condition to perceive God till God reveals
   Himself to him. By nature, Brothers and Sisters, we are blind
   Godward--yes, deaf and in all ways insensible towards the great Spirit.
   By nature we are dead to the Presence of the Lord. Naturally, man is an
   atheist. When the "Essays and Reviews" made a great deal of stir, an
   experienced preacher said, concerning them, "'Essays and Reviews' do
   not trouble me, nor any of the nostrums of modern doubt, for my heart
   is a deviser of worse things than 'Essays and Reviews'--my evil heart
   is a fountain of atheism." Brethren, worse difficulties have occurred
   to us than any that have ever been penned by the most notorious
   infidels! By nature we are as the fool who said in his heart, "There is
   no God." Our carnal mind is enmity against God and, consequently, it
   would be rid of Him if it could. We have need to pray and we do pray,
   "Save me from an atheistic heart, which hates the Trinity." Man,
   therefore, living in alienation from God, does not trace the inward
   drawings of Divine Love up to their source--he regards them as common
   things--and treads them out as sparks from an earthly fire. Though God
   may be sweetly influencing the man to something better, higher, nobler
   than sin, self and the world, yet he does not perceive the Divine
   working. The Lord said of Cyrus, "I girded you, though you have not
   known Me." And even so may He say of many an unconverted man, "I warned
   you and awakened you, and drew you when you were not aware of Me."

   Besides this, my Brothers and Sisters, we are so selfish that when God
   is drawing us to Himself, we are too much absorbed in our own things to
   notice the hand which is at work upon us! We crave the world; we sigh
   for human approbation; we seek ease and comfort; we desire, above all
   things, to indulge our pride with the vain notion of self-righteousness
   and, therefore, we look not for God. Rather do we cry with Pharaoh,
   "Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice?" God may draw a long
   time before we will budge an inch away from those gods which our own
   selfishness has set up. Young Samuel answered to the call of Jehovah at
   midnight--but with us there is neither hearing nor answering. How can
   we see God while our eyes are blinded with self?

   While we are carnal, sold under sin, our heart is dead to the movements
   of God's Grace. Only a spiritual mind can discern spiritual things and,
   as we are not spiritual, we remain insensible to the Divine drawing. I
   know this was the case with me and I speak, therefore, with a humbling
   experience clear in my memory. For many a day the Lord drew me, but I
   did not know Him. The Lord worked upon my heart, but I did not perceive
   Him. Alas for the insensibility which even Gospel influences cannot
   remove! The Lord must appear to each one of us or we shall remain
   ignorant of His ways!

   Moreover, dear Friends, God must explain His dealings to us by
   revealing Himself to us because those ways are, in themselves,
   frequently mysterious. Take Israel, for instance. The Lord moved
   Pharaoh to treat Israel with great severity and to make them serve with
   rigor. They made bricks without straw and the production of bricks was
   doubled till they cried by reason of their taskmasters! How was Israel
   to perceive that Jehovah was at the back of all this? Yet the Lord was
   thus accomplishing His design of bringing His chosen out of Egypt. The
   most difficult thing was not for Pharaoh to be compelled to let Israel
   go, but to bring the people into such a state that they would be
   willing to quit the fertile land! They lived in plenty in the land of
   Goshen and ate of the leeks, garlic and onions of Egypt--and had they
   been left alone, they would have had no wish to go forth to Canaan.

   They would have been satisfied to become Egyptians had they always been
   treated as they were treated at the first. How were the Israelites to
   understand, till God explained it, that this rough usage on the part of
   Pharaoh was to wean

   them from Egypt and make them willing to go out, even, into a desert
   that they might escape from the tyrant? When Pharaoh began to kill
   their first-born; when he refused to let them go, for a few days, to
   offer sacrifice and oppressed them more and more, how were they to know
   that this was a part of the plan of Jehovah who had loved them with an
   everlasting love? Even after He had smitten Pharaoh with plagues and
   Egypt was glad when they departed, how could they comprehend why God
   led them down to the brink of the Red Sea? Between Migdol and the sea,
   over against Baalzephon, the host was made to encamp, even in a place
   from which there was no escape from their cruel foes whose chariots
   they heard rattling behind them!

   How were they to know that the Lord had His way in the sea and His path
   in the mighty waters? How could they guess that He meant to bring Egypt
   down into the depth of the sea and there to crush the dragon with so
   heavy a blow that, through the 40 years of Israel's sojourn in the
   wilderness upon the Egyptian border, the nation should never be
   troubled by its old taskmaster? With a high hand and an outstretched
   arm, the Lord brought forth His people, but they understood not His
   wonders in Egypt till He appeared to them and said, "I am the Lord your
   God, which has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house
   of bondage." God's dealings with His chosen are often so mysterious
   that they cannot know them till they know Him!

   So it is when the Lord works eternal life in the soul. He does not
   usually begin by giving the man light, peace and comfort. No, but He
   sorely plagues him with "darkness that might be felt." He makes sweet
   sin to become bitter. He pours gall into the fountains of his carnal
   life till the man begins to be weary of the things which once contented
   him. Full often the Lord fits the arrows of conviction to the string
   and shoots again and again, and again till the soul is wounded in a
   thousand places--and is ready to bleed to death! The Lord kills before
   He makes alive! Is this the Lord's way of dealing with men? It is even
   so--it is the way of His loving kindness and tender mercy. But I say
   again, how could we expect unspiritual men to see the hand of the Lord
   in all this? The awakened man sees more of anger than of loving
   kindness in his griefs and the idea of everlasting love never enters
   his imagination! That God is drawing him with bands of love and cords
   of a man is a Truth of God of which he has no inkling. God must reveal
   Himself to the man or else he will not discover the hand of the Lord in
   the anguish of his spirit.

   This appearance of the Lord must be personal. "The Lord has appeared of
   old unto me." I do not think any man knows the Lord by merely reading
   Scripture, nor by being convinced in his judgment of the truth of the
   Gospel. There is a special manifestation of the Lord unto the
   conscience, heart and soul of every man who is, indeed, taught of God.
   A personal revelation by the Holy Spirit is needed to bring home to us
   the Revelation of the Book. The result of it is conversion, or the new
   birth--and this is always effected by the Spirit of God. True knowledge
   of God is always a Divine operation--not worked second-hand by
   instrumentality--but worked by the right hand of the Lord, Himself. "No
   man can come to Me," says Christ, "except the Father which has sent Me
   draw him." And no man understands those drawings unless the same Father
   shall come to him and manifest Himself to him!

   I do not ask the children of God whether they understand this, for I
   know they do. You can, many of you, say, "The Lord has appeared unto
   me." Not that you have heard a voice, nor seen a great light as Saul
   did on the way to Damascus. But as vividly to your inward eyes has God
   appeared as the great light appeared to Saul's outward eyes--and as
   potently to your secret ears has God spoken as that voice spoke to
   Saul's outward ears. God has drawn near to us and His visitations have
   new-created us! Till we know the Lord by personal revelation, we cannot
   read His handwriting upon our hearts, or discern His dealings with us.

   This appearance needs to be repeated. The text may be read as a
   complaint on the part of Israel. Israel says, "The Lord has appeared of
   old unto me"--as much as to say, "He has not appeared to me lately." Of
   old he was seen by brook, bush, sea and rock--when Jacob met Him at
   Jabbok and Moses in the wilderness at the burning bush--but now His
   visits are few and far between. "The Lord has appeared of old unto me."
   Oh, that He would appear now! I pray at this time that those of you who
   are mourning after that fashion may be able to rise out of it. It is
   not the Lord's desire that He should be as a stranger in the land, or
   as a wayfaring man that tarries but for a night. He is willing to abide
   with us! His delights are with the sons of men! Let us not forget the
   time when He did, of old, appear to us--I mean the first time.

   It must be more than 36 years since the Lord first appeared to me and I
   beheld Him by the eyes of faith. How vile was I in my own sight and how
   glorious was He in my eyes! How my heart melted when I saw Him bleeding
   on the tree for me! How all my passions burned and glowed with heavenly
   ardor as I understood that He loved me and gave Himself for me!

   Then His name, His word, His day, His people were all precious in my
   sight! That was of old, but I do earnestly remember it! It is very
   sweet to look back upon the time of our espousals, but it will become a
   bitter retrospect if we do not again and again behold our Lord. It is
   woe to have seen the sun if one is now shut up in a dark dungeon! O
   Brothers and Sisters, do not let us be satisfied with old
   appearances--let us cry to our Beloved, "O Lord, manifest Yourself anew
   to me! O You that hides Yourself, appear to me! Look through the
   lattices and let Your face be seen again!"

   He that condescended to show Himself to you of old will again reveal
   His love. What Jesus has done, He will still do. Once you walked by the
   way and your heart burned within you because Jesus spoke with you. He
   has said, "I will come again." Do you not remember how, in the very pew
   in which you are now sitting, you felt as if you could hardly keep your
   seat? You wanted to cry, "Hallelujah!" for joy of heart. Recall those
   happy periods, but only recall them with this resolve--"I will behold
   my Lord again. I will again delight myself in Him." Do not let the text
   be the epitaph of a long-ago appearance, but let it be the dawning of a
   new day whose sun shall no more go down!

   This appearance is always an act of mighty Grace. The text might be
   read, "The Lord appeared from afar to me." So He did at first. What a
   great way off we were from God, but behold, the Beloved came like a roe
   or a young hart, leaping over the mountains, skipping upon the hills!
   He came to us in boundless love when we lay at death's dark door, the
   fast-bound slaves of Hell! Brethren, He can and will come again. If He
   came to us from far, He will surely come again, now that He has made us
   near. Expect Him to come to you all of a sudden. While I am yet
   speaking, pray that, before you are aware, your soul may be like the
   chariots of Amminadib! Pray for the immediate revelation of God,
   Himself, to your spirit in a way of joy and transport that shall set
   your soul in rapid motion towards the Lord! Should the Lord return to
   you in gracious manifestation, take care that you do not lose Him
   again. If the bridegroom deigns to visit you, hold Him fast. If you
   once see the splendor of His love, do not close your eyes to it, but
   gaze on till you behold Him face to face in Glory! Be this your prayer,
   "Abide with me." Be not satisfied till, like Enoch, you always walk
   with God! But to this end God must appear to His people.

   II. Secondly, when the Lord does so appear, WE THEN PERCEIVE THAT HE
   HAS BEEN DEALING WITH US.

   "The Lord has appeared of old unto me, saying, Yes, I have loved you
   with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn
   you." What exceeding love the Lord showed to us before we knew Him! Let
   us now look back and remember the love of long-suffering which spared
   us when we delighted in sin. The Lord did not cut us off in our
   unbelief--there in is love. Some read this text, "therefore in loving
   kindness have I respited you," or, "therefore have I drawn out My
   loving kindness unto you," as if God stretched His loving kindness
   while we were stretching out our sinfulness and continued, year after
   year, to bear with us though we continued in wanton rebellion against
   Him!--

   "Determined to save, He watched over my path When, Satan's blind slave,
   I sported with death." Think of sparing mercy now that you are able to
   see it because the Lord has appeared unto you.

   The next admirable discovery is the Lord's restraining Grace. We now
   see that the Lord held us back from plunging into the deepest abysses
   of sin. He would not let us commit crimes by which we might have ended
   our lives before conversion. He kept us back from sins which might have
   linked us in sad connections and led us into such circumstances that we
   never might have been brought to hear His Word or seek His face at all.
   Since the Lord has appeared to me, He has made me see His restraining
   hand where once I saw nothing but the cruel disappointment of my hopes.
   Blessed be God for those crooks in my lot which kept me from poisonous
   pleasures!

   So, too, we now see the preparations of Grace, the plowing of our
   hearts by sorrow, the sowing of them by discipline, the harrowing of
   them by pain, the watering of them by the rain of favor, the breaking
   up of them by the frosts of adversity. These were not actually grace,
   but they opened the door for Grace. We now see how, in a thousand ways,
   the Lord was drawing us when we knew Him not!

   The text chiefly dwells upon drawings. I beg you to refresh your
   memories by recollecting the drawings of the Lord towards you while you
   were yet ungodly. They began very early with some of us--even as little
   children we had great tenderness of conscience and many movements of
   the Spirit which would not let us sin as others did. Often when we had
   done wrong, we went to our little beds and cried ourselves to sleep
   under a sense of sin, a fear of punishment and a longing for mercy!
   Those drawings were continuous with some of us--we can hardly remember
   when we were without holy impulses, though we did not yield to them.
   When we left the parental roof, those drawings followed us to our first
   em-

   ployment. Do you remember them? Before you knew the Lord Jesus, His
   Holy Spirit strove with you. You went into great sin, some of you, but
   the Lord continued to follow you. Even in your dreams He did not leave
   you. They were a way which the Lord had of getting at you--you hardened
   yourself against Him when you were awake--but when you fell asleep, He
   scared you with visions and made you think of judgment to come!

   Often these were very gentle drawings--they were not such forces as
   would move an ox or an horse, but such as were meant for tender
   spirits. Yet sometimes they tugged at you very hard and almost overcame
   you. Drawing supposes a kind of resistance, or, at any rate, an
   inertness and, truly, we did not stir of ourselves, but needed to be
   persuaded and entreated. Some of you will remember how the Holy Spirit
   drew you many times before you came to Him. Remember those thundering
   sermons which sent you home to your knees? Those deep impressions which
   you could not shake off for a week or two? Those depressions of spirit
   and horrors of darkness out of which you could not readily rise? The
   Lord surrounded you as a fish is surrounded with a net and though you
   labored to escape, you could not, but were drawn more and more within
   the meshes of Mercy.

   There are times with men, before conversion, when a sort of softness
   steals over them, when they feel as if they could not hold out much
   longer against appeals so reasonable and so gracious. A mother's
   prayers come up--perhaps her dying words are heard again--or the death
   of a little child touches the parent's heart as nothing else has done.
   The man is under holy influences, he knows not how! There are angels in
   the air around him, though there are devils in the heart within him.
   The man cannot be at peace in sin! He is restless till he finds rest in
   Jesus! It is the Lord drawing all the while and after the Lord has
   appeared to us we see it to be so.

   Do you remember when, at last, the Holy Spirit drew you over the line?
   When, at last, without violating your free will, He conquered it by
   forces proper to the mind? Blessed day! You were made a willing captive
   to your Lord, led in silken fetters at His chariot wheels, a glad
   prisoner to Almighty Love, set free from sin and Satan, made to be unto
   your Lord a life long servant. He drew you! You did not know much about
   it, then, but you see it now.

   After I had found Grace and salvation, a little time elapsed before I
   had surveyed the work of the Lord upon me. But when I did so, I learned
   much. Sitting down, one day, I meditated upon where I was and what I
   was. I said to myself, "I have believed in Jesus Christ and I have
   passed from death unto life. To God be praise!" Then my train of
   thought ran thus--"How have I come to be in this condition? Did I make
   this change in myself? No. Must I praise my own free will? No. Was
   there originally in me some betterness which led me to Christ, while my
   companions have not come?" I dared not say so and, therefore, I
   perceived that the difference was made by the Sovereign Grace of God. I
   do not know whereabouts in theology I might have wandered, but those
   reflections made me a Calvinist--that is to say, one who traces
   salvation to the Lord, alone. I saw that my salvation was of the Lord
   from first to last and I have never had a doubt about the matter since!

   It is no wish of mine to preach salvation by the will of man, or by the
   will of the flesh, but salvation all of Grace, from beginning to end
   according to the eternal purpose which the Lord purposed in Christ
   Jesus before the world was! It did not need any intricate reasoning to
   land me on the rock of Free Grace doctrine! If the Lord saved me, then
   He intended to save me--He did not do so by accident or inadvertence.
   Then if He once intended to save me, there could be no reason why that
   intention should begin at any one moment--He must have purposed to save
   me from all eternity! God has His plan and purpose, and what He
   actually does must have been known to Him and purposed by Him from of
   old. Then I saw, as in a glass, the ways of God towards me--but it was
   not till the Lord, Himself, had appeared unto me that I had this
   conception of His ways. He, Himself, by His Spirit, expounded to me the
   whole system after this fashion, "I have loved you with an everlasting
   love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you." We understand
   the drawings of the Lord after we have seen the Lord, Himself, but not
   till then.

   III. We proceed a step further and WE PERCEIVE THAT LOVING KINDNESS WAS
   THE DRAWING FORCE-- "therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you."
   At first we think God has dealt sternly with us, but in His Light we
   see light and we perceive that the drawing power which has brought us
   to receive mercy is the Divine Loving Kindness. Love is the attractive
   force!

   What multitudes of persons have been drawn to the Lord, first, by His
   loving kindness in the gift of His dear Son! Perhaps there is no
   greater soul-saving text in the Bible than this, "God so loved the
   world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him
   should not perish, but have everlasting life." I must have conversed
   with more than

   a hundred persons who have found the Lord through this blessed verse! I
   am speaking very moderately, for I think I might say that I have known
   several hundreds who have been guided into liberty by this polestar
   text. What a drawing there is in the fact that God gave His Son to
   redeem the guilty! Jesus died for the lost world and men, believing in
   Him, shall not perish but have everlasting life. This is the master
   magnet--"I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto
   Me." The loving kindness of God as seen in the Sacrifice of the Lord
   Jesus draws men from sin, from self, from Satan, from despair and from
   the world!

   Next, the hope of pardon, free and full, attracts sinners to God. "Your
   sins, which are many, are all forgiven you," makes a man run after
   Christ! Oh, what a draw there is in those Words, "Let the wicked
   forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him
   return unto the Lord, for He will have mercy upon him; and to our God,
   for He will abundantly pardon!" How one is drawn by the declaration,
   "all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men!" The
   blotting out of sin is a glorious phase of the Divine Loving Kindness
   and many are allured by it to confess their sins. Is not the promise of
   remission the cord with which the Lord draws men to Himself? "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." Yes, there is such a thing as the
   entire blotting out of a life spent in iniquity! Jesus can wipe out the
   record of sin as a boy wipes the writing from his slate with a sponge.
   Sin is carried away by Jesus, even as the scapegoat bore away the sin
   of Israel. "They shall not be mentioned against you any more, forever."
   "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions and, as a
   cloud, your sins." Thus does loving kindness draw us.

   I have known others drawn to the Lord by another view of His loving
   kindness, namely, His willingness to make new creatures of us. The
   prayer of many has been, "Create in me a clean heart, O God," and they
   have been charmed by hearing that whoever believes in Jesus is born
   again, to start a new life, ruled by a new principle and endowed with a
   new nature, sustained by the Holy Spirit! Many who desire purity of
   life and nature--and wish to be right with God--are won by the blessed
   prospect of being created anew in Christ Jesus.

   It may seem somewhat strange to you, but that form of loving kindness
   which mainly drew me to the Lord was this--I saw a good deal of the
   instability of character in young men who began life with bright
   prospects and fair prom-ises--and I trembled for my own future. I read
   in the New Testament that he that believes in Jesus has everlasting
   life. I saw in the language of Christ, Himself, these Words--"I give
   unto My sheep eternal life and they shall never perish, neither shall
   any man pluck them out of My hands." Oh, how I longed to be one of
   those sheep in the hands of Jesus! I had known school fellows who were
   held up as patterns to me who acted very disappointingly after they
   left home--and I thought within myself--"Oh, for a spiritual life
   insurance! Oh, for a way of putting my soul into secure keeping so that
   I shall not become the prey of sin, but shall be kept by the Grace of
   God even to the end!"

   The belief that I should find this permanence of Grace in Christ Jesus
   drew me more than anything else to Jesus! What a blessing to obtain
   "eternal salvation and good hope through Grace!" What a favor to
   receive within the heart a well of Living Water, springing up into
   everlasting life! Let me live till my hair is all white with age, He
   will not suffer me to turn, again, unto folly, for it is written, "I
   will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me."
   I clutched at that promise from the beginning and thus, with loving
   kindness, the Lord drew me to Himself. I see it now and bless His name
   for using such a magnet!

   Brothers and Sisters, since we have known the Lord, has it not been His
   loving kindness that has always drawn us? Can you tell me how much
   loving kindness you have enjoyed? Begin the calculation! Yes, you may
   take out a paper and pencil, if you like, and write away during the
   rest of my sermon! And when I have finished, I will ask you whether you
   have finished and you will answer, "Sir, I have not quite begun yet."
   Oh, the loving kindness of the Lord! You may measure Heaven! You may
   fathom the sea! You may plunge into the abyss and calculate its depth,
   but the loving kindness of the Lord is beyond you! Here is an infinite
   expanse. It is immeasurable, even as God, Himself, is beyond
   conception! It is everywhere about us--behind, before, beneath, above,
   within, without! Every day the Lord loads us with benefits. He binds us
   with so many loving kindnesses that He draws us, now, not with one
   cord, but with many--and each one draws Omnipotently!

   His mercies are more than the hairs of our head--by day and by night He
   is drawing, drawing, drawing with those bands of love--and one of these
   days our whole body, soul and spirit will so yield to the sweet
   compulsion of Almighty Love that the whole man will remove to be with
   Him where He is! And we will still feel His loving kindness as we
   behold

   His Glory! All this was always true, but we could not see it till the
   Lord appeared to us and declared the gracious fact that with loving
   kindness He had drawn us! The fact is precious and the knowledge of it
   is exceedingly joyful!

   IV. Lastly, I believe the appearing of the Lord to a man is the great
   means of teaching him Divine Truth. THEN WE LEARN THAT THE GREAT MOTIVE
   OF THE DIVINE DRAWINGS IS EVERLASTING LOVE. I do not want to preach any
   longer, but I want you to think. Description is not needed so much as
   meditation and realization. Imagine you hear the Voice which with a
   word made Heaven and earth! Imagine you hear it as a still small Voice,
   whispering in your ear, "I have loved you with an everlasting love:
   therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you." Perhaps the less I
   talk about this, the better, for words cannot express the
   inexpressible! Let your spirit lie soaking in this Divine Assurance--"I
   have loved you with an everlasting love." Take it up into yourself as
   Gideon's fleece absorbed the dew!

   Notice, the Lord has done it. It is an actual fact, the Lord is loving
   you. Put those two pronouns together, "f and "you" "I," the Infinite,
   the inconceivably Glorious--"you," a poor, lost, undeserving,
   ill-deserving, Hell-deserving sinner! See the link between the two! See
   the diamond rivet which joins the two together for eternity-- "I have
   loved you." It is not, "I have pitied you," nor, "I have thought about
   you," but, "I have loved you!" God is in love with you! I think
   Aristotle said that it was impossible for one to be assured of
   another's love without feeling some love in return. I am not sure about
   that, but I think it is quite impossible to enjoy a sense of God's Love
   without returning it in a measure. Soul, do you return it?

   "I have loved you." Not, "I will do so," but, "I have loved you." Poor
   "you!" Do you not reply, "Lord, if I might say it, You know all things,
   You know that I love You. I cannot say that I love You as You love me,
   for I am such a feeble, finite creature. Still, I assuredly love You,
   and I dare say no other"? O Beloved, what more can I add? The bare fact
   that the Lord loves us is Heaven below if it is once thoroughly grasped
   by the soul!

   See the antiquity of this love--"I have loved you with an everlasting
   love." I loved you when I died for you upon the Cross, yes, I loved you
   long before and, therefore did I die! I loved you when I made the
   heavens and the earth, with a view to your abode in it--yes, I loved
   you before I had made sea or shore. When this great world--the sun, the
   moon and the stars slept in the mind of God, like unborn forests in an
   acorn cup--He loved His people. He saw them in the glass of the future
   with prescient eyes ages before ages had begun--and then He loved them
   with an everlasting love! There is a beginning for the world, but there
   is no beginning for the love of God to His people!

   Nor does that exhaust the meaning of "everlasting love." There has
   never been a moment when the Lord has not loved His people. There has
   been no pause, nor ebb, nor break in the love of God to His own. That
   love knows no variableness, neither shadow of turning. When we were
   babes and could not know Him, He loved us. When we were foolish youths,
   running riot in iniquity, He loved us. When we became men, hard and
   callous, resisting Divine Grace, He drew us though we did not run after
   Him--for He loved us then. He loves us this day as much as ever, even
   though He may be chastening us. His love is a river, always flowing and
   overflowing--it will never diminish and it cannot increase, for it is
   already Infinite--

   "Mine is an unchanging lore,

   Higher than the heights abo re!

   Deeper than the depths beneath,

   Free and faithful, strong as death." "I have loved you with an
   everlasting love." You may take a leap into the future and find that
   love still with you. Everlasting evidently lasts forever. Certain
   divines have tried to cut the heart out of that word, "everlasting,"
   and to make it out that it means a terminable period--but it is idle to
   argue with men to whom words are mere shuttlecocks to play with. Most
   plainly that which is everlasting, lasts forever! You and I may live
   till we grow old and decrepit, but the Lord will not leave us, for it
   is written, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." We shall come
   to die and this shall be a downy pillow for our deathbed, "I have loved
   you with an everlasting love." When we wake up in that dread world to
   which we are surely hastening, we shall find infinite happiness in
   "everlasting love." When the judgment is proclaimed and the sight of
   the Great White Throne makes all hearts tremble and the trumpet sounds
   exceedingly loud and long-- and our poor dust wakes up from its silent
   grave, we shall rejoice in this Divine Assurance--"I have loved you
   with an everlasting love." Roll on, you ages, but everlasting love
   abides! Die out, sun and moon and you, O time, be buried in
   eternity--we need no other Heaven than this, "I have loved you with an
   everlasting love!" Brothers and Sisters, the Lord's appearing to us has
   taught us great things in teaching us everlasting love!

   I want the child of God to receive this assurance thoroughly into his
   soul, that God loves him with an everlasting love. Why, it makes my
   pulses beat more quickly! It makes me so full of delight that I can
   scarcely contain myself! A Divine delight thrills me. I, a poor sinner,
   even I, am the object of everlasting love! What then? Why, I must love
   my Lord--how can I help it? Do you not feel that you must wake up, from
   this time forth, to serve your loving Lord at a sevenfold pace? Will
   you not consecrate yourselves to Him, to spend and to be spent for Him?
   What is there too precious to lay at His feet? Out with your alabaster
   boxes right now, if ever in your lives! What is there too heavy for you
   to bear? What is there too difficult for you to undertake for One who
   has loved you so faithfully, without beginning, without change, without
   measure, without end?

   Alas for you, poor Heart, to whom this text does not belong! There
   stands the golden chalice. Oh, that you were thirsty, for then you
   might drink of it! You have not seen the Lord, for you have not sought
   Him. You know not that you are drawn, for you have never come to
   Christ, nor have you believed in His great Sacrifice. If there were no
   Hell hereafter, it would be Hell enough to me not to enjoy everlasting
   love! I count that man a wretch undone who has never heard the sweet,
   full music of this text. What? Do you live without God? Do you despise
   His love? If there were no hereafter, it is unhappiness, enough, to be
   lost to the infinite delight of knowing the love of God! Oh, that you
   would now believe in Jesus and find peace through His blood!

   But O you that have this cup of blessing, drink of it to the fullest!
   Live upon this assurance! Go away singing because of it! Let not
   trouble disturb you--why should it? Let nothing vex you--why should it?
   Let no evil deed done to you by another provoke you--be ready to
   forgive because you see that the Lord has loved you and, therefore, you
   can love the most unlovable! None are too vile to share in our love
   since God has loved us! My heart sings, "He loved me and gave Himself
   for me," and I am now prepared to love my enemies if I have any!

   O Lord, appear to each one of us now! Appear to us and say, "I have
   loved you with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have
   I drawn you." Grant it, Lord! Grant it for Your sweet love's sake!
   Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Ever-Living Priest

   (No. 1915)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, AUGUST 22, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And they truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to
   continue by reason of death: but this Man, because He continues
   forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore He is able to sa ve
   them to the uttermost who come to God by Him, seeing He lives forever
   to make intercession for them." Hebrews 7:23-25.

   THE Apostle Paul is very much at home with his theme whenever he is
   extolling his Master. When handling the Jewish types and figures, with
   which he was so familiar, he was charmed to point out how far superior
   the Lord Jesus Christ is to any and all the priests of the Old
   Testament dispensation. In this case he is dwelling upon the special
   honor of our Lord, because His Priesthood is without end, seeing, He,
   Himself is not put forth from the priesthood by reason of death. A
   common priest served from 30 to 50 years of age and then his work was
   done--priests of the house of Aaron, who became High Priests, held
   their office through life. Sometimes a High Priest would continue in
   his office, therefore, for a considerable length of time. But in many
   cases he was cut off as other men are by premature death and,
   therefore, there was priest after priest of the order of Aaron to go
   within the veil for the people.

   Our Lord is of another race, being a Priest according to the order of
   Melchisedec, "having neither beginning of days nor end of life." He was
   made a Priest not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the
   power of an endless life. He continues to make intercession for the
   people of God by virtue of His eternal life and perpetual Priesthood.
   In this respect the true Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, rises above
   all former priests--they were, indeed, but types and shadows of
   Himself.

   This superiority of our Lord Jesus Christ is a topic which will not
   interest everybody. To many persons it will seem a piece of devotional
   rapture, if not an idle tale. Yet there will always be a remnant
   according to the election of Grace to whom this meditation will be
   inexpressibly sweet. Who are the people that will be interested in this
   theme? They are indicated in the text--they that come unto God by Jesus
   Christ. The people who are in the habit of using Christ as their way of
   access to God are those who will value Him beyond all price--and such
   persons will delight to hear Him extolled in the highest terms.

   We will begin our discourse, then, by the enquiry--Do we come unto God
   by Jesus Christ? Listen and answer for yourselves. Do we come unto God
   at all? Do we recognize the Lord our God as a Person who should be
   approached? Are we now approaching Him? Are we among those who are
   always coming to God, to whom, at the last, the great Judge shall say,
   "You have been coming, continue to come. Come, you blessed of My
   Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you"? Or are we departing from
   God by forgetting Him, or rebelling against Him, so that we shall be
   among that number to whom the Judge shall say, "You have long been
   departing, continue to do so. Depart, you cursed, into everlasting fire
   in Hell, prepared for the devil and his angels"? Are we coming to God?
   That is the question. Is the direction of our lives towards God? We are
   either going to God or from God--and by this we may forecast our
   everlasting destiny. The direction in which the arrow is flying
   prophesies the target in which it will be fixed--the way the tree is
   leaning, that way foretells the place of its fall--and where the tree
   falls, there it will lie.

   So let us judge ourselves this day! Which way are we drifting? Have we
   ever come to God by sincere repentance of our wanderings? Have we come
   to Him by faith and are we reconciled to Him? Do we come to Him in
   prayer? Do we come to Him day by day, speaking with Him and desiring to
   walk with Him? Do we come to God by communion with Him, hav-

   ing fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ? Do we,
   in fact, know the meaning of what it is to draw near to God? It is ill
   with us if we either have no God, or if He seems to be very far off, an
   almost unrecognizable phantom, an idea never fully realized, much less
   approached! Blessed are they that know the name of the Lord and that
   walk with Him, rejoicing in the light of His Countenance. It is to such
   that Jesus is precious as their way of access to the Father.

   In the description there is a little word of distinction, for the
   people who are said to be saved by the great Intercessor are those who
   come unto God by Him. Certain persons talk of coming to God as Creator,
   Ruler and even as Father--but they do not think of His dear Son as
   their way of approach. They forget or otherwise deny the declaration of
   our Lord Jesus--"No man comes unto the Father, but by Me." Yet this
   saying is true. There is no true way of approach to God except through
   Jesus Christ, the one Mediator between God and man. A deep abyss
   divides us from God and only that ladder which Jacob saw can bridge the
   gulf. Our Lord Jesus, being God and Man in one Person, reaches from
   side to side of the chasm. Coming near to us, this ladder stands at our
   feet in the Human Nature of our Lord and it reaches right up to the
   Infinite Majesty by reason of the Divine Nature of our Redeemer. God
   and Man, in one Person, unites God and man in one league of love! We
   come unto God by Jesus Christ.

   Prayers in which Christ is forgotten are insults to the God of
   Revelation! Faith in which Jesus is not the foundation of our hope is
   mere delusion! God cannot accept us if we will not accept His Son. O
   Sinner, God has opened one Door in Heaven--if you will not go in by
   that Door, you shall never enter within the walls of the New Jerusalem!
   God bids you come to Him by One in whom He is well pleased, but if you
   will not be pleased with Jesus, you can not come to the Father! O you
   who are daily users of this royal way to God, you will forgive me if I
   hide myself behind my Lord this day and seek to do nothing more than,
   in all simplicity, set forth His unchangeable Priesthood and endless
   life! Pray the Lord to help me to extol the great High Priest of our
   profession and also to help you all to join in the praise of Jesus in
   the power of His Holy Spirit!

   In the text there are four subjects for your consideration--they are
   joined together as links of a golden chain--and they are all full of
   encouragement for you. Here is a great Savior with an endless life.
   Secondly, with an endless Priesthood. Thirdly, with an endless
   intercession. And fourthly, with an endless salvation--"He is able to
   save them to the uttermost that come to God by Him, seeing He lives
   forever to make intercession for them."

   I. First, we have in our Lord Jesus Christ a Priest with AN ENDLESS
   LIFE. I want you to think earnestly upon this very simple theme--it is
   in the simplicities that we find our greatest consolations. Our Lord
   Jesus is not as Aaron, who had to be stripped of his garments on the
   top of Mount Hor and to die in the mountain. Neither is He like any of
   the sons of Aaron who, in due time, suffered the infirmities of age and
   at last bowed their heads to inevitable death. He died once, but death
   has no more dominion over Him--it is witnessed of Him that He lives!

   We clearly perceive that our Lord Jesus possesses endless life as God,
   for how shall the Godhead expire? It is not possible for the Godhead to
   cease or to suspend its existence. Our Lord is "God over all, blessed
   forever" and, in this respect, He is necessarily everlasting as to His
   life.

   But our Lord also always lives in respect to His Manhood. Though He
   died unto sin once, He soon rose again from the dead, His body never
   having seen corruption. He died in His Priesthood and for His
   Priesthood, but never from His Priesthood. By His Resurrection, His
   Manhood was fully restored to a life which dies no more. We speak of
   Him as, "He that lives, and was dead, and is alive forevermore." This
   is a very sweet Truth of God to those who are in Christ Jesus. The Lord
   Jesus Christ had lived one life as a Man--why did He not end that life
   as a Man when He died on the Cross? It shows His deep attachment to our
   manhood, that He retained the Human Nature after His great Sacrifice
   had been presented and accepted. The fact that He again appeared as a
   Man among men and carried Human Nature into His glorified estate is
   clear evidence of His deep attachment to our humanity!

   If some glorious spirit from on high, angel or archangel, had loved a
   race of ants and had condescended for the salvation of these tiny
   creatures to assume their nature. And if, in that nature, he had died
   for them, you would naturally expect that at the conclusion of his
   labors and sufferings he would lay aside the form of his humiliation
   and return to the greatness of his former estate. But our Lord Jesus
   Christ, whose stoop of condescension, when He assumed our Nature, was
   greater than any archangel could have achieved--having taken our Human
   Nature and having bled and died in it-- continued to wear it after He
   had said, "It is finished," after He had risen from the dead and after
   He had taken His seat

   at the Divine right hand! He has become so wedded to us, so truly one
   flesh with us, that He will not be divided from us in Nature. He sits
   upon the Throne of God, not in His pure Godhead, but as One that has
   been slain, clothed in a body like our own! What manner of love is
   this! What bliss to know that my Kinsman lives! Truly many waters could
   not quench His love to manhood, nor could death, itself, destroy it!
   The Son of God is still the Son of Man! He whom angels worship is not
   ashamed to call us Brethren, for as partaker of our Nature, He lives
   and will live forever!

   He always lives, then, as God and as Man and I prolong the blended
   thoughts by saying that He always lives in His relationship to us. This
   you have already seen to be the case because He lives in our Nature.
   But now I beg you to note that He lives as God and Man for us. I love
   to read these words--"He ever lives to make intercession for them."
   This is the one great objective for which He lives. To make
   intercession for those that come unto God by Him is the business of His
   life. Is not this wonderful? If some influential and powerful person
   should say to you, "I live to promote your interest. Wherever I go and
   whatever I do, whatever I seek and whatever I obtain, I live for
   you"--it would show great friendship and excite in us great
   expectations. Would it not? Yet here is the Lord Jesus declaring that
   He lives for us-- for us He appears in the Presence of God! For us He
   has gone to the many mansions of the Father's house! For us He
   constantly intercedes with God! Oh, the deep debt of gratitude we owe
   to this glorious One who, having died for us, now lives for us!

   It is more than if a brother should say, "I live my whole life for you"
   for, remember, this might be said to be the second life which our Lord
   gives to us. He lived for us here below a whole lifetime! He laid down
   that life for us and now He lives again for us. I know not how to speak
   what I feel concerning the surpassing greatness of His love. He could
   not be content to give His life once for us, but He must take it again
   and shall give it over again for us! See how He loves us-- He died for
   us! See how He loves us--He lives again for us! He lives for sinners,
   for He lives to intercede--and for whom is intercession but for those
   who need an advocate? "If any man sin we have an Advocate." May I say
   that Jesus lives two lives for us?

   Yet more, it is said, "He ever lives to make intercession for us" so
   that the whole life of Christ throughout eternity-- His boundless,
   endless, glorified Existence is still for His people! He glorifies the
   Father and makes glad the hosts of Heaven, but still this is the set
   purpose of His heart--to live for us. "He loved me and gave Himself for
   me" is true. But we may read it in the present tense if we like, for it
   is still true--"He loves me and He gives Himself for me." Christ loved
   His Church and gave Himself for it--and now He loves His Church and
   gives Himself to it! What inspiration lies in the endless life of
   Christ for us! Let our lives be lived wholly for Him since He lives
   wholly for us.

   This truth of the living Christ should be remembered in our greatest
   need. Dear Friends, there is an Almighty and Divine One in Heaven who
   always lives for our highest benefit! Let us adore Him most lovingly.
   This should show us how great our need is, that we always need a living
   Savior to interpose for us. A dying Savior was not enough! We still
   require, every moment of our lives, a living Savior engrossed with the
   care of our spirits, interposing on our behalf in all manner of ways
   and delivering us from all evil! Our hour of necessity is ever present,
   for Jesus is always guarding us and His work is never a superfluity.
   Herein should lie our great comfort--we should fall back upon this
   Truth of God whenever our burden presses too sorely upon our shoulders.
   Jesus lives! My great Redeemer lives for me! He lives in all fullness
   of power and Glory and devotes that life, with all that pertains to it,
   to the preservation of my soul from every evil! Can I not rest in this?
   With such a Keeper, why should I be afraid? Must I not be safe when One
   so vigilant and so vigorous devotes His life to my protection? What
   innumerable blessings must come to those for whom Jesus spends the
   strength of His endless life!

   II. Secondly, I must carry you on to another and kindred
   subject--ENDLESS PRIESTHOOD. Our Lord is ordained unto an unchangeable
   Priesthood or, rather, as the margin has it, to a priesthood "which
   passes not from one to another." His office cannot be taken up by a
   successor--it is not transferable, but belongs to Him alone, seeing He
   always lives to carry it out Himself. We have only one Priest and that
   one Priest we have forever.

   In this, we are not like Israel of old, for, as we have already seen, a
   High Priest would die. I can conceive that to many Jewish believers the
   death of a priest was a great affliction. I could imagine an Israelite
   saying, "And so he is dead--that good man, that tender-spirited
   minister, that gentle and affectionate shepherd. I have told him all my
   heart and now he is taken from me. I went to him in my youth in deep
   distress of conscience. He offered a sacrifice for me when I was
   unclean and brought me near to the Holy Place. Since then, I have gone
   to him when I have needed guidance. He has consulted

   the oracle on my behalf and my way has been made plain. He knows the
   secrets of my family. He knows those delicate griefs which I have never
   dared to tell to anybody else. Alas, he is dead and half my heart has
   perished! What a gap is made in my life by his decease!"

   The mourner would be told that his son had become his successor, but I
   think I hear him say, "Yes, I am aware of it. But the young man does
   not know what his father knew about me and I could never again lay bare
   my heart. The son can never be in entire sympathy with all my sorrows
   as his good old father was. No doubt he is a good man, but he is not
   the same person--I reverenced every hair in the gray beard of the old
   High Priest. I have grown up with him and he has helped me so many,
   many times. It is so sad that I shall see his face no more." There
   would always be the feeling, in some minds, that the next High Priest
   might not be quite so acceptable with God, or so tender towards the
   congregation as he who had passed away. He might be a man superior in
   education, but inferior in affection. He might be more austere and less
   tender. He might have greater gifts and less fatherliness.

   At any rate, it would seem like having to begin again when one went,
   for the first time, to the new priest--it would be a break in the
   continuity of one's comfort. The quiet flow of life would be marred, as
   when a river comes to its rapids and an impassable fall causes a break
   in the navigation--and a necessary unloading of the vessel and a
   laborious portage instead of an easy passage down a gently flowing
   stream. "Oh," says one good Israelite, "the venerable High Priest who
   has just fallen asleep was my friend. We took sweet counsel together
   and walked to the House of God in company. He was in my house when my
   beloved child died. He was with me when the partner of my bosom, the
   light of my eyes, was taken away from me at a stroke. His long
   experience he used for my instruction and comfort, but, alas, it is all
   gone, for the saint of God is dead!"

   Beloved, here is our comfort--we have only one Priest and He lives
   forever! He had no predecessor and He will have no successor because He
   always lives, personally, to exercise the office of High Priest on our
   behalf. My soul reposes in the faith of His one Sacrifice, offered once
   and no more! There is but one Presenter of that one Sacrifice and never
   can there be another, since the One is all-sufficient and He never
   dies! Jesus reads my heart and has always read it since it began to
   beat--He knows my griefs and has carried my sorrows from of old and He
   will bear both them and me when old age shall shrivel up my strength!
   When I shall fall asleep in death, He will not die, but will be ready
   to receive me into His own undying blessedness! Brothers and Sisters,
   our Lord in Glory--

   "Looks like a lamb that has been slain, And wears His Priesthood
   still." Do we not rejoice in the unbroken continuity and everlasting
   perpetuity of the Priesthood of Christ?

   Again, we are not as Israel is at this moment. Alas, poor Israel! After
   all her privileges of the past, where is she now? She is without a High
   Priest! She does not dare, even, to think of anointing one of her
   Cohens to that office. She is without an Altar or a Sacrifice. Once a
   year, on the Day of Atonement, she has something which bears the shadow
   of sacrifice, but it is a worship of her own devising and not after the
   Law of Moses or the ordinances of God. She is left without Priest,
   Altar, Temple, or Sacrifice--and the outlook of her sons and daughters
   as to the future life is, for the most part, exceedingly dark and
   dismal. I am assured that nothing is more unwelcome to a Jew than the
   thought of death--and it may well be so. Beloved, we are not without a
   Priest! Our faith beholds Jesus passed into the heavens and abiding
   there in the Glory of His once-offered Sacrifice, always living to
   intercede for us.

   Jesus is, to my soul, at this moment, as living a Person as I am,
   myself, and even more so! I have come to look on friends and dear ones
   as passing shadows. I see written across their brows the word,
   "mortal." But Jesus is the only one Friend who has immortality and,
   therefore, can never be lost to me. His Sacrifice is forever effectual
   and His Priesthood is forever in exercise. Christ's Priesthood remains
   without end! What bliss it is to be a believer in Jesus and thus to
   have one Priest and never to desire another!

   We are not as the votaries of Rome. That Babylon has many priests
   within her borders. Some say that these priests are substitutes for
   Christ. If so, the assertion is a flat blasphemy against Him who is a
   Priest forever and needs no substitute. Others say they are the vicars
   of Christ, carrying on His work, now that He is gone, by presenting the
   unbloody "sacrifice of the mass." This, also, is clean contrary to the
   teaching of the Apostle in this passage, wherein he proves that this
   Man, because He continues forever, has a Priesthood which cannot be
   passed from one to another. In this he shows that our

   Lord is different from the Aaronic priests who had their office taken
   up by those who followed them, whereas Jesus, like Melchisedec, has no
   successor, but exercises His office in His own proper Person according
   to the power of an endless life.

   We now know no priests on earth, save that in a secondary sense the
   Lord Jesus has made all Believers to be kings and priests unto God. We
   now have no special order of persons set apart to represent their
   fellows before God. Under the Mosaic dispensation there were many
   priests not allowed to continue by reason of death, but under the
   Christian dispensation we have only one Priest who continues always in
   a Priesthood that cannot be transferred--this is the Apostle's
   argument. But this is not true if bishops and presbyters are priests in
   the sense in which they now claim to be! I count the very thought of
   our having other sacrificing priests than the Lord Jesus to be
   derogatory to the one unique, completely-accomplished Sacrifice of our
   Great High Priest who alone abides in His personal office forever and
   ever! Therefore, Brothers and Sisters, despise in your very souls the
   pretensions of a human priesthood either in the Church of England or in
   the Church of Rome!

   If any man calls himself a priest otherwise than as all the people of
   God are priests, we rate him at no higher value than Korah, Dathan and
   Abiram, to whom Moses said, "You take too much upon you, you sons of
   Levi." They claimed a priesthood which did not belong to them, as all
   men do who intrude into the priesthood in these days. Our Lord Jesus
   walks in that supreme, solitary majesty which was foreshadowed in
   Melchisedec--and in that spirit He fulfils a Priesthood which renders
   all other priests a superfluity and a mockery! What have we to do with
   more sacrifices when the one Sacrifice offered once and for all?
   Brethren, hold fast this precious Truth of God and rejoice in it!

   III. Now I conduct you, thirdly, to the fact of ENDLESS
   INTERCESSION--"Seeing He ever lives to make intercession for them."

   If I were to read this passage, "Seeing He ever lives to interpose for
   them," it would not be an incorrect reading. The Lord Jesus Christ, in
   His perpetual Priesthood, lives on purpose to be the Advocate,
   Defender, Patron, Mediator and Interposer for His people. You that come
   to God by Him will highly esteem this constant service rendered to you
   by your Lord. Whereas Christ, by His death, provided all that was
   necessary for your salvation, He, by His life, applies that provision
   which He made in His death. He lives on purpose to see brought home to
   you and enjoyed by you, all those blessed gifts and privileges which He
   purchased upon the Cross when He died in your place. Had He not lived
   for you, His death for you would have miscarried. He would then have
   begun the work and provided all the materials for its completion, but
   there would have been none to render those materials available and to
   complete the building whose foundation had been laid in so costly a
   manner.

   We are pardoned by the death of Christ, but we are justified by His
   Resurrection. We are saved because He died, but that salvation is
   brought home and secured to us because He sits at the right hand of God
   and continually makes intercession for us. I want you, today, to think
   as much of a living Christ as you have ever thought of a dead Christ.
   You have sat down at the foot of Calvary, your eyes suffused with
   tears, and you have said how delightful it is to behold His love
   written out in crimson characters in yonder streams of blood which His
   very heart pours out for our redemption! I want you, now, to sit at the
   foot of His Throne and, as far as your dim eyes will permit, behold His
   splendor and see how He spends His Glory-Life in perpetual intercession
   for you! He is as much ours on the Throne as on the tree. He is always
   living to apply to us with His own hands what He purchased by the
   nailing of those hands and the piercing of His heart upon the Cross of
   our redemption.

   Why is it so necessary that Jesus, ever-living, should always be
   interceding for us? I answer, first, it is most becoming God-ward. The
   great principle which God would teach to men is this--that sin is so
   hateful to Him that the sinner can only approach His Justice through a
   Mediator. This Truth of God is most clearly set forth in the fact that
   even now that we are washed in the blood of the Lamb, there is no
   approach unto God except through the intercession of Christ. Does not
   this teach the grand principle of the evil of sin and teach it in the
   most plain manner? The distance which sin puts between the sinner and
   God--and the necessity of mediation in order that a just God may
   commune with the imperfect--are not these fully taught by the
   institution of the perpetual intercession of the Son of God? This is as
   much a declaration of the righteousness of God as was the
   substitutionary death on Calvary!

   Moreover, the intercession of Christ is necessary God-ward to
   illustrate the union, co-operation, and intercommunion of the Divine
   Trinity in the work of our salvation. The Son of God intercedes in
   Heaven and the Holy Spirit intercedes on earth. If Jesus intercedes, it
   is of necessity that the Father be there with whom He may intercede.
   The Son

   pleads and the Father hears and answers and, in consequence, conveys to
   us by the Holy Spirit the blessings purchased by His Son. Thus, Father,
   Son and Holy Spirit are brought before our minds as all concurring in
   the Believer's salvation. A Mediator who is not only Man, but also one
   Person of the blessed Trinity, continues to intercede for us and thus
   we see how God remembers us.

   Once again, our own communion with God is openly declared, while there
   sits on the Throne of God a Man who is also God, pleading with the
   Godhead! Man is always standing in Glory in connection with God. The
   perpetual intercession of Christ is a perpetual recognition of the
   communion which now exists between God and once fallen, but now
   restored, manhood! We ought to look upon Christ pleading in Glory as
   the sign, token and evidence that man is reconciled to God, that man
   speaks with God, that God speaks with man and that, once again, the old
   dominion is restored to man, for we see Jesus, who was made a little
   lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with Glory
   and honor.

   The perpetual intercession is necessary God-ward. But it is even more
   necessary man-ward. Think, Brothers and Sisters, though we have been
   forgiven through the precious blood, yet we, in many things, offend
   and, therefore, every day we need a fresh application of the Blood of
   Sprinkling. Conscience accuses us for daily flaws and faults and it is,
   therefore, well for us that it is written, "He makes intercession for
   the transgressors." Where would our hope be of continual preservation
   from the weaknesses and sins of our nature did not Jesus constantly
   plead for us? The way is rough, the world is sinful, our wanderings are
   many, our needs are incessant and, therefore, we need the eternal
   intercession. We are never out of danger and, therefore, always need
   the guardian prayer. We are never above weakness and folly and,
   therefore, require the perpetual patronage of our Protector.

   What man is there among you that is not full of needs? What woman is
   there among you that does not need to come to the Mercy Seat many times
   a day? Jesus is always there, waiting to present our petitions--always
   making our persons, our petitions and our praise acceptable with God.
   Brethren, we are daily pressed either with conflict with inbred sin or
   suffering in the body, with service of our Lord or sympathy for our
   Brethren--and for all these we need help from the Holy Place--help
   which can only come by way of the Throne of the heavenly Grace. We need
   an Interposer, at whose feet we may lay down our burdens, into whose
   ears we may tell our sorrows! Therefore Jesus ever lives to make
   intercession for us.

   Our great Intercessor also obtains for us those precious gifts and
   Graces which are necessary for our growth and usefulness. His is the
   hand which leads us onward to those attainments of the spiritual life
   which are necessary for our ser-viceableness in this world and for our
   meetness for the life to come. The higher virtues would be beyond our
   reach if His prayers did not bring us more and more of the Spirit of
   God to make us perfect in every good work to do His will.

   Have you also forgotten that there is an enemy who is always alive and
   always full of malice? He acts as the accuser of the Brethren, who
   accuses them day and night before God. And were it not for our glorious
   Advocate, who, for Zion's sake, does never hold His peace, what would
   become of us? This accuser is also a tempter who subtly contrives plots
   for our overthrow. It is at times true of us as it was of
   Peter--"Simon, Simon, Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift
   you as wheat: but I have prayed for you." How often are we hidden from
   evil by the prayers of Jesus! We do not know, my Brothers and Sisters,
   how many poisoned arrows are caught upon the shield of our Lord's
   intercession. The intercession of Christ, as with 10,000 hands, is
   always scattering benedictions. Job asks, "Have you entered into the
   springs of the sea?" Surely our Lord's intercession is the source of an
   ocean of blessedness! If we but had eyes enlightened by the Holy
   Spirit, we would see the mountain full of horses of fire and chariots
   of fire round about the people of God. Who guides those horses? Who
   directs those chariots? Who is the Captain of the hosts of spirits that
   encompass the camp of God? Who, but the Prince Immanuel, who by His
   all-powerful intercession rules all things for us!

   The Lord Jesus, by His unceasing pleas, keeps all the powers of
   darkness in check and moves all the powers of the Light of God for our
   rescue. His prayers form an atmosphere of blessing in which we live and
   move. We do not know, we cannot begin to calculate the depths of our
   obligation to the ceaseless care of our unwearied Intercessor! Even
   when time shall be no more and all the saints shall be saved, their
   continuance in bliss will be due to His endless intercession.

   Think of it--Jesus always praying, never ceasing! His very appearance
   in Heaven is a plea. The memory of His finished work is a plea. His
   constant thought of us is a pleading with God. Not with tears and cries
   will He pray, as He did in the days of His flesh. Nor, perhaps, even
   with words will He plead, for His Spirit speaks to the Spirit of God
   without such vocal instrumentality as creatures require. This much we
   know, He is always praying, always prevailing and, conse-

   quently, always showering down upon us blessings beyond all count, the
   most of which we scarcely recognize! And yet if they were withheld, we
   would perish miserably. Lord Jesus, Your dying blood is well matched by
   Your living pleas and our hearts rejoice in this because of these two
   sure proofs of Your love and Grace.

   IV. That brings me to my fourth point which is--For this cause,
   therefore, there is ENDLESS SALVATION in the power of Jesus. "He is
   able to save without end, or to the uttermost, them that come unto God
   by Him." That word, "uttermost," includes within it a reference to
   time. Because our Lord Jesus never dies, He is endlessly able to save.
   At all times His power to save remains. He was able to save some of you
   40 years ago, but you would not come to Him that you might have life.
   He is able to save you now though you have passed your fourscore years
   in impenitence. If you come to God by Him, He will save you however
   multiplied your sins!

   Beloved, many years ago, as boys and girls, some of us put our trust in
   the Redeemer and He forgave us our trespasses. Happy day! Happy day! We
   are much further advanced in life at this time and our strength grows
   less as the shadows lengthen, but Jesus is always the same and is still
   able to save to the fullest! No diminution has taken place as to His
   ability to save. He that helped us in the seven struggles of our youth
   and the 70 burdens of our manhood, will help us to 70 times seven, if
   necessary! We need not fear old age or death, seeing He always has the
   dew of His youth and is always our Friend, laying out His life for us,
   even as once He laid it down for us.

   He is abundantly able to save--from the uttermost of evil to the
   uttermost of good He can save us. As He ever lives in the fullness of
   life, so He can save to the fullness of salvation. His name is
   Jesus--the Savior--and as Jesus, the Savior, He lives! He has not
   renounced His office, nor allowed any part of His life to run to
   another purpose--He lives to save.

   The Lord Jesus Christ is, now, "seeing He ever lives," able to save to
   the uttermost in point of our sin. Whatever the sin of anyone here may
   be, if he comes to God by Jesus Christ, it shall be forgiven him! God
   forbid I should try to make a list of human crimes--what purpose would
   it serve? The reading of the details of vice is very defiling. I will
   not, therefore, attempt a list of crimes into which mortals sink. Sorry
   scoundrels come here at times--there may be dreadful characters at this
   moment mingled with this vast congregation--and truly, I am not sorry
   that they are hearing the Gospel! But whoever you may be, the text
   draws a circle of hope around you as it says--"He is able to save them
   to the uttermost that come unto God by Him."

   Whatever your offense, if you will now come to God and confess it, and
   ask mercy through the name of Jesus, He is able to save you to the
   extreme limit of your need. If you have gone as far in sin as is
   possible and are forced to acknowledge that if you could have gone
   farther you would have done so, yet there is forgiveness! O my Hearer,
   though your hands are even red with murder, yet the blood of Christ can
   wash them clean! "All manner of sin and of blasphemy shall be forgiven
   unto men." Yes, let the silver trumpet sound it out! You chief of
   sinners, hear the news! The Savior lives that to the uttermost He may
   save such as you! Come, then, to your living Lord, you that groan under
   the load of deadly guilt, for He can take it all away!

   So, too, He saves to the uttermost of our need and misery. One old
   divine says if we were to climb a great hill from which we could see
   wide fields of spiritual distress and poverty and, if all this
   represented our experience, yet the Lord is able to spread salvation
   all round the far-off horizon and encompass all our needs. Come, poor
   Trembler, climb the mountain and look far over this terrible
   wilderness! As far as you can see, or foresee of dreaded need in years
   to come, so far and much further can the salvation of Jesus reach! As
   far as with the telescope of apprehension you can spy out trials in
   life and woes in death, so far is Jesus able to save you! The uttermost
   will never be reached by you, but it has long ago been provided for by
   Him! All your capacious emptiness can ever need to fill it, He has
   provided. Though your heart should, like a horseleech, cry, "Give,
   give," Jesus can satisfy its hunger! Though like the sea that swallows
   up a navy and is not full, your soul should never cease its cravings,
   yet Jesus can make you content. All that you can require, He can surely
   give you since He always lives by the power of an endless life to be
   the fullness of every emptied soul!

   Jesus can save you to the uttermost of your desires. I want you to
   think of all you would like to be in righteousness and true
   holiness--for all that will Jesus do unto you before He has done with
   you. I asked a young convert the other day "Are you perfect yet?" "Oh
   dear, Sir," she said, "No." I asked, "Would you not like to be?" Her
   eyes twinkled, as well they might, and she said, "That is what I long
   for." It will be Heaven to be perfect! Jesus is able to make us perfect
   and He has resolved to do it. As it is written, "I shall be satisfied,
   when I awake, with Your likeness." In that likeness He will cause us to
   awake if we come unto God through Him! Jesus will save us to the
   highest degree.

   The Lord Jesus Christ will also save us entirely--He will work out the
   salvation of the whole man--body, soul and spirit. He always lives to
   save His people to the utmost, that is to say, all His people and all
   of every one of His people. Nothing essential to manhood shall be left
   to perish in the case of those whom He redeems. All that which the
   first Adam ruined, the Second Adam shall restore. The Canaan of manhood
   from Dan to Beersheba shall be conquered by our Joshua! As yet the body
   is dead because of sin, though the spirit is life because of
   righteousness, but the day comes when the body shall also be delivered
   from the bondage which sin has brought upon it. Not a bone, nor a piece
   of a bone of a redeemed one shall be left in the hands of the enemy!
   God's deliverances are always complete. When the Lord sent His angel to
   bring Peter out of prison, he said to the slumbering Apostle, "Cast
   your garment about you, and follow me." That garment might be only a
   fisherman's cloak, but it must not be left in Herod's hands! He also
   said, "Bind on your sandals," for when the angel of the Lord sets a man
   free, he will not leave even a pair of old shoes behind him! The
   redemption of Christ is perfect--it reaches to the uttermost. He seems
   to say to sin, Satan and death, as the Lord said to Pharaoh--"Not a
   hoof shall be left behind." All that He has redeemed by price, He will
   also redeem by power--and to that end He makes ceaseless intercession
   before God.

   "To the uttermost," from all our doubts and fears, follies and
   failures, Jesus will bring us by His endless intercession. "To the
   uttermost," from every consequence of the Fall, personal sin and actual
   death, Jesus, by His intercession will save us. "To the uttermost." Oh,
   think of it! To the Resurrection Life, to clearance at the Judgment
   Seat and to the highest glories of Heaven and to boundless bliss
   throughout the ages He will save us. Right on while you endure, O
   Eternity, the pleading of the High Priest shall save the chosen company
   who, forever rising into something higher and yet higher, shall prove
   more and more the heights and depths of everlasting bliss! Because He
   lives we shall also live and because He always intercedes, we shall
   forever be glorified.

   There I leave my subject, only coming back to the one enquiry, Do you
   come to God by Jesus Christ? If so, the text speaks comfortably to you.
   It speaks not only of the Church as a whole, but also of each
   individual Believer--Jesus intercedes for each one of those who "come
   unto God by Him." You, dear Friend, though unknown to fame, are known
   to Jesus! You, dear Sister, hidden away in obscurity, are not hidden
   from the all-seeing eyes of the Divine Mediator! His breastplate bears
   your name, yes, He has engraved it upon the palms of His hands and He
   will never forget those whose memorials are thus perpetually with Him!
   May the living blessing of the ever-living Savior be with you today and
   forever! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Great Sin Of Doing Nothing

   (No. 1916)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON THURSDAY EVENING, AUGUST 5, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the Lord:
   and be sure your sin will find you out." Numbers 32:23.

   THERE are many dear friends engaged in business who can only reach the
   Tabernacle in time for the middle of the service and, therefore, they
   lose the reading of the Scriptures and the exposition which make up a
   whole with the sermon. This is a great loss to them, but as it is not
   their fault, we must not let them suffer for it, so far as we can
   remedy the evil. With this design let me explain to them that,
   according to the chapter which we have read and expounded, the
   Israelites had conquered the country possessed by Og, king of Bashan,
   and Sihon, king of the Amorites. And the tribes of Reuben and Gad,
   having great quantities of cattle, thought that a country so rich in
   pasture would be eminently suitable for them and for their flocks. They
   were no bad judges, for the country was specially fitted for sheep
   farming.

   They, therefore, asked Moses that they might have that country to be
   theirs. But Moses objected. Did they mean to sit still and enjoy that
   country--and then leave the rest of the tribes to cross the Jordan and
   to fight for their possessions? If so, he declared that it was a very
   evil course to take--that they were selfish in seeking their own ease
   and that they would be discouraging God's people and doing all sorts of
   mischief. He, therefore, proposed to them that if they were to have
   that conquered country for their own, they should at least cross the
   river with their brethren and fight and continue fighting until the
   land on the other side of the Jordan had been cleared of its old
   inhabitants and the whole of Israel could take the whole of the
   country--and each tribe could possess its portion.

   He put it to them as a matter of honor and as a matter of right, that
   they ought to help in conquering the rest of the land. Why should they
   receive their lot without fighting and leave the other tribes to bear
   the toil and danger of war? Had not God bid them all to go up and drive
   out the condemned Canaanites? How could they evade their duty without
   great sin? He would have them take their full share in the war and on
   that condition they might have the rich meadows of Bashan, but not
   otherwise. This was clearly just and equitable and commended itself to
   those concerned. They at once agreed to the proposal and Moses, to
   enforce the agreement, told them in the words of the text, that if they
   did not keep their covenant and give all due aid to their brethren,
   then they would sin against God and they might be sure that their sin
   would find them out.

   I remarked, in reading the chapter, that Moses spoke very wisely, very
   forcibly, very honestly--and the people were very pliant. They yielded
   to his persuasions and the difficulty which threatened to divide the
   nation was readily remedied. It is well to have a wise leader. It is
   well for him when he leads a reasonable people! Oh, that I may be able,
   tonight, to speak a word in season and may your ears be ready to hear
   it! May the Lord bring as gracious an issue out of this service as He
   did out of the discourse of His servant Moses! To His Holy Spirit shall
   be all the praise.

   We shall speak at this time, first, of what was this sin? Secondly,
   what would be the chief sin of that sin? "If you will not do so,
   behold, you have sinned against the Lord." This would be the peculiar
   atrocity of their sin, that it would be leveled at God, Himself. And
   then there is a third point--What would the consequence of such sin be?
   "Be sure your sin will find you out." They would be guilty and would
   not long go unpunished.

   I. First, then, WHAT WAS THIS SIN? What is this sin about which the
   Spirit of God says by Moses, "Be sure your sin will find you out?" A
   learned divine has delivered a sermon upon the sin of murder from this
   text; another upon theft; another upon falsehood. Now they are very
   good sermons, but they have nothing to do with this text if it is read
   as Moses uttered it. If you take the text as it stands, there is
   nothing in it about murder, or theft, or anything of the kind. In fact,
   it is not about what men do, but it is about what men do not do. The
   iniquity of doing nothing is a sin which is not so often

   spoken of as it should be. A sin of omission is clearly aimed at in
   this warning--"If you will not do so, be sure your sin will find you
   out."

   What, then, was this sin? Remember that it is the sin of God's own
   people. It is not the sin of Egyptians and Philistines, but the sin of
   God's chosen nation and, therefore, this text is for you that belong to
   any of the tribes of Israel--you to whom God has given a portion among
   His beloved ones. It is to you, professed Christians and Church
   members, that the text comes, "Be sure your sin will find you out." And
   what is that sin? It is, very sadly, common among professed Christians
   and needs to be dealt with--it is the sin which leads anyone to forget
   his share in the holy war which is to be carried out for God and for
   His Church. A great many wrongs are tangled together in this crime and
   we must try to separate them and set them in order before your eyes.

   First, it was the sin of idleness and of self-indulgence. "We have
   cattle: here is a land that yields much pasture: let us have this for
   our cattle and we will build folds for our sheep with the abundant
   stones that lie about, and we will repair these cities of the Amorites,
   and we will dwell in them. They are nearly ready for us, and there
   shall our little ones dwell in comfort. We do not care about fighting:
   we have seen enough of it already in the wars with Sihon and Og. Reuben
   would rather abide by the sheepfolds. Gad has more delight in the
   bleating of the sheep and in the folding of the lambs in his bosom than
   in going forth to battle."

   Alas, the tribe of Reuben is not dead and the tribe of Gad has not
   passed away! Many who are of the household of faith are equally
   indisposed to exertion, equally fond of ease. Hear them say, "Thank God
   we are safe! We have passed from death unto life. We have named the
   name of Christ. We are washed in His precious blood and, therefore, we
   are secure." Then, with a strange inconsistency, they permit the evil
   of the flesh to crave carnal ease and they cry, "Soul, you have much
   goods laid up for many years! Take your ease--eat, drink and be merry!"
   Spiritual self-indulgence is a monstrous evil, yet we see it all
   around. On Sunday these loafers must be well fed. They look out for
   such sermons as will feed their souls. The thought does not occur to
   these people that there is something else to be done besides feeding.

   Soul-saving is pushed into the background! The crowds are perishing at
   their gates! The multitudes with their sins defile the air! The age is
   getting worse and worse--and man, by a process of evolution--is
   evolving a devil! And yet these people want pleasant things preached to
   them! They eat the fat, drink the sweet and they crowd to the feast of
   fat things full of marrow and of wines on the lees well
   refined--spiritual festivals are their delight! Sermons, conferences,
   Bible reading, and so forth, are sought after, but regular service in
   ordinary ways is neglected. Not a hand's turn will they do! They gird
   on no armor, they grasp no sword, they wield no sling, they throw no
   stone. No, they have gotten their possession, they know they have, and
   they sit down in carnal security, satisfied to do nothing!

   They neither work for life, nor from life--they are absolute sluggards,
   as lazy as they are long! Nowhere are they at home except where they
   can enjoy themselves and take things easy. They love their beds, but
   the Lord's fields they will neither plow nor reap. This is the sin
   pointed out in the text--"If you do not go forth to the battles of the
   Lord, and contend for the Lord God and for His people, you do sin
   against the Lord: and be sure your sin will find you out." The sin of
   doing nothing is about the biggest of all sins, for it involves most of
   the others! The sin of sitting still while your Brethren go forth to
   war, breaks both tables of the Law and has in it a huge idolatry of
   self, which neither allows love to God or man. Horrible idleness! God
   save us from it!

   This sin may be viewed under another aspect, as selfishness and
   unbrotherly. Gad and Reuben ask to have their inheritance at once and
   to make themselves comfortable in Bashan, on this side Jordan. What
   about Judah, Levi, Simeon, Benjamin and all the rest of the tribes? How
   are they to get their inheritance? They do not care, but it is evident
   that Ba-shan is suitable for them with their multitude of cattle! Some
   of them reply, "You see, they must look to themselves, as the proverb
   has it, 'Every man for himself and God for us all.'" Did I not hear
   someone in the company say, "Am I my brother's keeper?" I know that
   gentleman! I heard his voice years ago. His name is Cain and I have
   this to say to him--it is true that he is not his brother's keeper, but
   he is his brother's killer. Every man is either the keeper of his
   brother, or the destroyer of his brother! Soul-murder can be worked
   without an act or even a will--it can be and is constantly accomplished
   by neglect! Yonder perishing heathen--does not the Lord enquire, "Who
   slew all these?" The millions of this city unevangelized--who is guilty
   of their blood? Are not idle Christians starving the multitude by
   refusing to hand out the Bread of Life? Is not this a grievous sin?

   "But wait," says another, "they can conquer the land themselves. God is
   with them and He can do His own work and, therefore, I do not see that
   I need trouble myself about other people." That is selfishness and
   selfishness is never worse than when it puts on the garb of religion!
   The boy at school who selfishly feeds himself upon his luxuries and
   gives nothing to his young companions is generally their ridicule. He
   is the greedy boy whom all despise. A man with large stores who, in
   time of famine, would feed himself but never think of the poor, is
   despised among men! But what shall I say of the man who, concerning the
   things of the soul--concerning Heaven, Hell, Christ and eternity--is so
   selfish that, being saved himself, he cares not one jot for others? He
   is so unbrotherly that I am half afraid he is no Brother! He is so
   inhuman that I can scarcely think a touch of the life of Christ can
   ever have quickened him! How is he a Christian who is not like Christ,
   but who just feels, "Well, I am all right and if I look to myself,
   other people must look to themselves. God will see to them all, no
   doubt! I have nothing to do with it"?

   Now, unless we shake off that horrible selfishness and feel that the
   very essence of our religion lies in love and that one of the first
   fruits of it is to make us care about the salvation of our fellow
   men--unless, I say, we shake that off and go forth to fight the Lord's
   battles--then this text very solemnly threatens us. "If you will not do
   so, behold, you have sinned against the Lord: and be sure your sin will
   find you out." O my Brothers and Sisters, hear this text and let it
   operate with salutary influence to produce in you constant effort for
   the salvation of those around you!

   But with this there was mingled ingratitude of a very dark order. These
   children of Gad and Reuben would appropriate to themselves lands for
   which all the Israelites had labored. God had led them forth to battle
   and they had conquered Sihon and Og. And now, these men would take
   possession of what others have struggled for, but they are not,
   themselves, to fight. This is vile ingratitude and I fear it is common
   among us at this very day. How came we to be Christians at all?
   Instrumentally, it is through those holy missionaries who won our
   fathers from the cruel worship of the Druids and afterwards from the
   fierce dominion of Woden and Thor. We must also trace our Gospel light
   to those stakes at Smithfield, where men of God counted not their lives
   dear to them, but willingly gave up all they had--and their lives,
   also--by a painful death that they might keep the Truth of God alive in
   the land.

   Some of you came to be Christians through the earnest labors of men who
   preached by the roadside, or by the loving entreaties of tender mothers
   who wept you to the Savior, or by the faithful ministry of some Brother
   from the pulpit, or the equally faithful teaching of an earnest Sunday
   school teacher. We owe under God much to past ages and much to present
   laborers! There is no man among us but stands immensely indebted to the
   Church of God. Though God is our Father, yet the Church is our mother
   and through her various agencies we have been born to God. Do we
   acknowledge all this debt and are we not going to pay it? Are we to
   receive all and then give out nothing in return? Are we to be like
   candles burning under bushels? Are we to waste our life by much
   receiving and little distributing? This will never do! This will not be
   life, but death!

   I do not charge this upon anybody, personally, but if this cap fits
   anybody, pray let him wear it! If any man must acknowledge his
   obligation to the Church of God and yet he is not repaying it, let him
   cover his face for very shame! Will you not pass on the Light you have
   received? Verily you deserves to perish in darkness! Are you fed and
   will you not break your bread to the hungry, or pass a cup of cold
   water to the thirsty? What are you doing, strange ingrate? Will you
   simply be a stagnant reservoir into which streams of mercy never fall
   out of you, to run again, but to stand and putrefy in selfishness?
   Remember the Dead Sea and tremble, lest you be like it--a pool accursed
   and cursing all around you! O God, have mercy upon the great mass of
   Your professing people to whom this must be solemnly applied--that they
   do receive, but give back to You and to Your cause so little either of
   time, substance, talent, prayer, or anything else!

   The text, when spiritually interpreted, says concerning our personal
   service in the conquest of the world for Christ-- "if you do not so,
   behold you have sinned against the Lord: and be sure your sin will find
   you out."

   Again, we may view this from another point of view. It is the sin of
   untruthfulness. These people pledged themselves that they would go
   forth with the other tribes and that they would not return to their own
   homes until the whole of the campaign was ended. Now, if after that
   they did not go to war and did not fight to the close of it, then they
   would be guilty of a barefaced lie! It is a wretched thing for a man to
   be a covenant-breaker. It is sacrilege for any man to lie, not only
   unto man, but unto God. I would speak very tenderly, but if any man has
   been converted from the error of his ways, by that very conversion he
   is bound to serve the Lord. If he has been baptized as a Believer, by
   that Baptism he declared that he was dead to the world and buried to
   it--that from that day on he might live in newness of life.

   Now, if he lives only to make money and hoard it, and he does nothing
   for God's Church and for poor sinners, is not his Baptism a lie? Such a
   baptized person was buried, but he was never dead! Is not this to turn
   Baptism into a farce? He gave himself up to the Church of God--he
   became a member of it--and by that act and deed he pledged himself to
   do all he could for its growth and its prosperity. And if he does
   nothing, he is a deceiver. If his joining a Church meant anything, it
   meant that he would take part in the common service of God. A
   do-nothing professor is a merely nominal member and a nominal member is
   a real hindrance! He neither contributes, nor prays, nor works, nor
   agonizes for souls, nor takes any part in Christian service--and yet he
   partakes in all the privileges of the Church! Is this fair? What is the
   use of him? He sits and hears and sometimes sleeps under the sermon.
   That is all. Is not his union with the Church a practical lie? I will
   not say so, but I will ask the question. It seems to me that if I
   belong to the Israelites and they are sent by God to conquer a
   country--and I do not go forth to the war with them and take my part in
   the conflict--I am not a true Israelite. I am unworthy of my nation! I
   am disloyal to the standard! I am false to my fellow soldiers. I think
   it is so--don't you?

   Having entered the Christian ministry, if I did nothing in it, I should
   feel that I disgraced it. If I simply tried to enjoy religion without
   an effort to spread it, I ought to be drummed out of the army of
   preachers. If there are any in the Church who have talent that they do
   not use for God, or money which they do not lay out for Christ, or time
   which they do not use for holy purposes, they are sinning and their sin
   will find them out. Your buried talent, will it not rust? And rusting,
   will it not create within your spirits a most horrible disease and be a
   peril to you? Must it not be so? Are they not guilty of an acted lie
   before high Heaven who call themselves servants of God and yet do not
   serve Him? You often sing--

   "'Tis done! The great transaction's done!

   I am my Lord's, and He is mine.

   He drew me and I followed on,

   Charmed to confess the voice Divine.

   High Heaven, that heard the solemn vow,

   That vow renewed shall daily hear.

   Till in life's latest hour I bow,

   And bless in death a bond so dear." Is that hymn true? Do you mean
   those verses, or do you mock God? You have all sung the hymn many times
   and mark, "Happy day! Happy day!" the chorus. But is your singing true
   or false? If any man or woman among you shall, after such a song sink
   back into himself and do nothing for his Lord, what truth is there in
   him? God save us from using our lips to mock His holy name! It can be
   little short of blasphemy to sing such words and yet live a selfish,
   indolent life. Will a man thus insult his God? O Sirs, I beseech you
   make such language true, or else have done with it--lest the record of
   it destroy your souls!

   Once more and I will have done with this painful subject. What would
   their sin be? According to Moses it would be a grave injury to others.
   Do you not notice how he put it to them? "Moses said unto the children
   of Gad and to the children of Reuben, Shall your brethren go to war,
   and shall you sit here?" What an example to set! If one Christian man
   is right in never joining a Christian Church, then all other Christian
   men would be right in not doing so--and there would be no visible
   Christian Church! Do you not see, you non-professing Believers, that
   your example is destructive of all Church life? What are you doing? If
   one Christian man, with the talent to preach, is right in not
   preaching, then other Christian men have a right to trifle in the same
   way--and then there would be no ministry left!

   An idler is a great waster and makes others, wasters, too--his example
   is likely to make all around him as indolent as himself. I notice in
   our Churches that a few earnest men and women lead the way and others
   are sweetly drawn to follow them. How precious are the earnest few in a
   Christian community! David knew the value of the first three in his
   band. But if the leading spirits are dead, cold, indifferent--what
   happens? Why, lethargy spreads over the whole! I am sorry to say that I
   hear of instances in which a minister laments, "I labor with all my
   might, but I am persuaded that nothing will ever be done while Mr.
   So-and-So is here." He is often a cold-blooded deacon, or a purse-proud
   member. When you come to know him, you feel, "While there is such a
   great big iceberg floating close to the shore, the garden by the sea
   must be frostbitten--nothing can grow."

   It were a pity that any of us should freeze others. God save us from
   it! "Oh," says one, "nobody knows me and, therefore, I cannot have much
   influence either for good or for evil." Not over your own child--your
   daughter, your son?

   That influence which you have over even one or two little ones may
   spread far further than you imagine. We cannot calculate the range of
   moral influence--it is immeasurable! I suppose that there is not a
   single moving atom of matter which does not influence, in some measure,
   the entire universe. One atom collides with another and that with
   another--and so it reaches the remotest star. Whether we do or do not
   do, what we do or do not do, will have an influence upon all that are
   round us--perhaps to all eternity.

   Perhaps the word I speak tonight shall thrill when yonder sun has
   burned out like a coal and the moon has become black as sackcloth of
   hair. I am not sure but that our thoughts upon our bed may throb
   throughout the ages in their incessant results. "None of us lives to
   himself, and no man dies to himself--for good or for evil we are yoked
   with the universe and there is no possibility of severance. There is
   much influence for evil in an idle example--possibly such an example
   would not be set by certain persons if they would but think of the
   consequences. To such consideration of consequences I invite all whose
   gravest fault is forbearing to do good. O barren tree, do not excuse
   yourself because you do not drip with poison like the upas! It is crime
   enough that you cumber the ground!

   Moses goes on to remark that if these people did not go forth to war
   they would discourage all the rest. "Therefore discourage you the heart
   of the children of Israel from going over into the land which the Lord
   has given them?" It is no slight sin to discourage holy zeal and
   perseverance in others. May we never be guilty of killing holy desires
   even in children! How often has a burning desire in a boy's heart been
   quenched by his own father who has thought him too impulsive or too
   ardent! How frequently the conversation of a friend, so called, has
   dried up the springs of holy desire in the person with whom he has
   conversed! Let it not be so. Yet without cold words, our chill neglects
   may freeze. I know a terrace where the shutting up of one or two shops
   has a deadening effect upon the trade of the other shops. Somehow, the
   closed shutters give a gloomy look to the place and customers are
   repelled. Does not the same thing happen to groups of workers when one
   grows idle? Does not the one dull brother deaden the rest?

   We cannot neglect our own gardens without injuring our neighbors. Do
   you live anywhere near a house that is not let, which has a back garden
   left to run to waste? All manner of seeds are blown over upon your
   ground and, though you keep the hoe going, the weeds baffle you, for
   there is such a nursery for them just over the wall! One mechanic
   coming late among a set of workmen may throw the whole company out of
   order for the day. One railway truck off the rails may block the entire
   system. Depend upon it, if we are not serving the Lord our God, we are
   committing the sin of discouraging our fellow men. They are more likely
   to imitate our lethargy than our energy! Why should we wish to hinder
   others from being earnest? How dare we rob God of the services of
   others by our own neglect? O God, deliver us from this sin!

   If I had preached a sermon about murder or theft, you would all have
   escaped the lash, but few of us will be without rebuke, now that I have
   kept the text in the setting in which God originally put it--and in
   which He meant it to be presented for our rebuke and exhortation!

   II. Secondly, let us carefully notice WHAT WAS THE CHIEF SIN IN THIS
   SIN? Of course, if the Reubenites did not keep their solemn agreement
   to go over the Jordan and help their Brethren, they would sin against
   their Brethren, but this is not the offense which rises first to the
   mind of Moses. Moses overlooks the lesser, because he knows it to be
   comprehended in the greater--and he says, "Behold, you have sinned
   against the Lord." In this, he anticipated the confession of David,
   "against You, You only have I sinned, and done this evil in Your
   sight." To refuse to help their Brethren would be disobedience to the
   Lord! Did He not command all Israel to drive out the Canaanites? In
   like manner, neglect of holy work is positive sin against the Lord. It
   is disobedience against the Lord not to be preaching His Truth if we
   are able to do so. Did not our Lord say, "Go you into all the world and
   preach the Gospel to every creature?" This command was not confined to
   a dozen or so, but was meant for all His people, as they have
   opportunity and ability. We who hear the Gospel are bid to proclaim it,
   for it is written, "Let him that hears say, Come." The hearer of the
   Gospel is bound to be a repeater of the Gospel! We are all called upon,
   as we know the Lord, to tell others what the Lord has told us--and if
   we do not--we are guilty of disobedience to a great Gospel precept.

   We are certainly guilty, dear Friends, of ingratitude, if, as I have
   already said, we owe so much to other men and yet do not seek to bless
   mankind. But chiefly we owe everything to the Grace of God and, if God
   has given us Grace in our own hearts and saved us with the precious
   blood of the Only-Begotten, how can we sit still and allow others to
   perish? As we value salvation, we are under bonds to make it known. We
   rejoice to be in the Kingdom of God--should we not

   spend and be spent for the growth of that Kingdom? He that does not
   bear arms in this war is a traitor to his Sovereign Lord.

   There would be sin against God in the conduct of these people if they
   did not aid in the conquest of Canaan, for they would be dividing God's
   Israel. Shall the Lord's heritage be torn in two? God meant them all to
   stay together. They all came out of Egypt together; they all marched
   through the wilderness together and now He meant them to fight His
   battles together. Were these to take their inheritance and live among
   the sheepcotes and leave the other ten and a half tribes to go over
   Jordan and wage the war alone? This would be scattering the family of
   God! Can it be that any of us are dividing the Church of God, that is,
   dividing it into drones and workers? This would be a terrible division,
   but I fear that it already exists. It is apparent to those who are able
   to observe and it is mourned over by those who are jealous for the God
   of Israel. Half the schisms in churches arise out of the real division
   which exists between idlers and workers. Mind this. Be not sowers of
   division by being busybodies working not at all!

   If you are not serving the Lord, you are sinning against the sacred
   Trinity. You sin against our Father who would have you do good and be
   imitators of Him as dear children. You sin against the Son of God who
   has bought you with a price that you might be zealous for His Glory.
   You sin against the Holy Spirit whose impulses are not to sleep and
   idleness, but to quickening and to holiness. May we no longer sin
   against the Lord by refusing to perform His will!

   III. We have now reached the last point and the point that is most
   serious--WHAT WILL COME OF THIS SIN OF

   DOING NOTHING? What will come of it? "Be sure your sin will find you
   out." Now, as the time is nearly gone, I will not do more than show
   that these Gadites and Reubenites would be sure to be found out by
   their own neglect. Their sin would find them out to their shame and
   sorrow if they did not lend all their strength to their Brethren
   according to their promise.

   It would find them out thusly--they would be ill at ease. One of these
   days their sin would leap upon their consciences as a lion on its prey.
   They would wake up and say, "We were wrong. We were bound to have taken
   our share in that war"--and every man among them that was good for
   anything would be troubled in heart because he had failed to do his
   duty in the hour of need. He would feel uneasy. He would not want
   anybody to point him out, but he would point himself out and he would
   say to himself, "I failed in that case. I know I did. I acted very
   wrongly. I ought to have been with Joshua chasing out those Canaanites.
   I received my own portion of the land and ought, therefore, to have
   helped others to win their portions."

   When conscience was thus awakened, they would also feel themselves to
   be mean and despicable. As king after king was conquered and the notes
   of victory were heard all over Canaan, they would think themselves mice
   rather than men to have shunned so glorious a conflict. They would feel
   disgraced by their own inaction. Their manhood would be held cheap by
   the other tribes--in fact, they would become a by-word and a
   proverb--as men do who are notoriously greedy and selfish. Surely it is
   an intolerable disgrace to anyone to profess to be a man of God and to
   have no care about the souls of others, while they are perishing by
   millions!

   More than that, the tribes who went not to the war would be enfeebled
   by their own inaction. God would have His people learn war, but if
   these men did not go to the fight, they would not be soldierly and they
   would not be able to take care of themselves when their land was
   invaded. How much of sacred education we miss when we turn away from
   the service of God! I believe that no man understands salvation so well
   as the man who, having tasted it for himself, has also preached it to
   those about him. If you want to know the evil of the human heart, try
   to do good to the unconverted and endeavor to guide the unbeliever to
   Jesus.

   Get a dozen girls around you, my Sister, and watch the workings of
   their hearts as you seek to lead them to Christ-- and you will learn
   much more than you knew before! My dear Brother, gather a number of
   youths about you and observe their feeling and conduct while you seek
   their conversion. You will soon know the depravity of human nature if
   you watch for souls for a little season--and if you get souls converted
   and act as a spiritual father to them--you will soon see how much they
   need the Holy Spirit to keep them and how much you need Him to keep
   you, also, for your patience will be tried! You will learn both the
   sweet and the bitter of the things of God by being engaged in Christ's
   service.

   Jesus says, "Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me"--service is a yoke
   we must bear in order to learn of Christ. The only way to learn to swim
   is to get into the water. To be a soldier and never know the smell of
   gunpowder is impossible! At least such soldiers are little to be relied
   on in case of war. No, no--our sin, if we do nothing, will find us out
   in

   our being enfeebled, in our being disgraced, in our feeling that we are
   mean and in the accusation of our conscience. Let us find this sin out
   and shake ourselves free from it before it finds us out!

   Their sin would also have found them out, had they fallen into it,
   because they would have been divided from the rest of God's Israel. If
   they had not gone across the Jordan to fight, the ten and a half tribes
   would have always said, "What have we to do with you? The Jordan rolls
   between us and so let it. We do not want any connection with those who
   acted so basely to us in our hour of need." They would practically have
   cut themselves off from union with the Israel of God and they would
   have secured to themselves the loss of all fellowship with earnest men.
   Those who are non-workers lose much by not keeping pace with those who
   are running the heavenly race. The active are happy--the hand of the
   diligent makes rich in a spiritual sense. There is that which withholds
   more than is meet and it tends to poverty--I am sure it is so in a
   spiritual sense.

   To come more practically home, beloved Brothers and Sisters, if you and
   I are not serving the Lord, our sin will find us out. It will find us
   out perhaps in this way. There will be many added to the Church and God
   will prosper it, and we shall hear of it, but we shall feel no joy in
   it. We had no finger in the work and we shall find no comfort in the
   result. We did not point out the way to troubled consciences. We never
   went to early morning Prayer Meetings, nor to any Prayer Meetings, to
   pray for a blessing. We never spoke a word or even gave a tract away
   and, therefore, we shall see the blessing with our eyes, but we shall
   not eat of it. While God's people lift up their loud hallelujahs of
   joy, we shall only mourn, "My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me!" It
   is no joy to see a harvest reaped from fields which we refused to plow.

   It may be that you will begin to lose all the sweetness of public
   services. By doing nothing you lose your appetite. Many a person who
   has no appetite needs a wise doctor to say to him, "Of course you
   cannot eat, for you do not work. Exercise yourself and your appetite
   will return." He that earns his breakfast, enjoys his breakfast. And he
   who labors for Christ finds that the services of the sanctuary are
   exceedingly sweet to him. I know some dear Brothers here who cannot get
   to a Sunday sermon because they have something to do for their Lord
   throughout the Sabbath--therefore they drop in to this Thursday evening
   sermon. Thus they gain a Sabbath in the middle of the week which is
   exceedingly sweet to them. They can only attend one service on Sunday,
   but that is doubly refreshing to them. They are engaged at the Ragged
   School, or at the corner of the street where they are accustomed to
   preach--and the Lord makes up to them their lost opportunities. Believe
   me, when they do get a meal, they heartily appreciate it, for they come
   with an appetite which they have gathered in the service of their
   Master! If you do not work, your sin will find you out in the loss of
   enjoyment when present at the means of Grace.

   I have known this sin find people out in their families. There is a
   Christian man--we honor and love him--but he has a son that is a drunk.
   Did his good father ever bear any protest against strong drink in all
   his life? No. He, of course, did not like the blue ribbon. I will not
   dispute about total abstinence, but I do not feel much astonished at a
   boy drinking much when he sees his godly father regularly drink a
   little. Every man should labor by precept and example to put down
   intemperance and he who does not do so may be sure that his sin will
   find him out!

   Here is another. His children have all grown up thoughtless, careless,
   giddy. He took them to his place of worship and he now enquires, "Why
   are they not converted?" Did he ever take them, one by one, and pray
   with them? Did he ever speak earnestly to each boy and each girl--and
   labor for the conversion of each one? I am afraid that in many cases
   nothing of the sort has been attempted! Certain mistaken individuals
   almost think it wrong to seek the conversion of their children while
   they are children--and their sin finds them out when they see them
   growing up in ungodliness.

   Besides, if we do not look after God's children, it may be that He will
   not look after ours. "No," says God, "there were other people's
   children in the streets and you had no concern about them--why should
   your children fare better? You never opened a Ragged School for the
   poor, why should I bless you? There were men in your employment by whom
   you gained your living, but you never spoke to them about their souls,
   nor cared whether they were saved or damned. And I am not going to look
   after your family when you have no concern for Mine." "Be sure your sin
   will find you out."

   I do not know how this warning may come home to any Brother or Sister
   here who has been idling, but it is better that my warning should find
   him out than that his sin should find him out! I do not know whether
   there are any idlers here, though I have a pretty shrewd guess that
   there are. Friends, neglect of the Lord's work will come home to you
   and I will tell you when it will come to you, if it does not do so
   before. When you are sick and ill, your faith in Christ will

   bring you great comfort, but you will be sorrowful if you have to say
   to yourself, "Oh, that I had served God while I was young!"

   A friend said to me not long ago, "My dear Sir, you are often laid
   aside will illness and, no doubt, the reason is the imprudent manner in
   which you worked away in your youth. You preached 10 times in a week
   almost all the year round, year after year, and of course you wore
   yourself out." "Oh, yes," I said, "it may be so, but I do not regret it
   in the least! Thank God, I preached with all my might all over the land
   when I could do so. And I would, again, if I could only get renewed
   strength!" If I cannot work so much as in earlier days, I have not the
   misery of saying, "I wasted my opportunities and spent my best days in
   ease." I do say to myself, "Would God I had done more, or had done it
   better, but I am thankful to be able to exonerate myself from all
   charge of sloth." If those of us who do much have to whip ourselves a
   bit, what should those do who practically do nothing at all and
   discourage others? What can idlers do but fear that their sin will find
   them out?

   Thus far have I spoken to God's people and if you think that this is
   rather rough upon them, what shall I say to you who do not love the
   Lord at all? O Sirs, if the fan that is in Christ's hand purges His own
   floor in this stern way, what will that fan do with you who are as
   chaff to the wheat? If He sits here as a Refiner and purifies the sons
   of Levi, and puts even the gold into the fire, what will become of the
   dross? "If the righteous scarcely are saved, where shall the ungodly
   and the sinner appear?" If the language of God is sharp, even, to His
   own Beloved because He says, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten:
   be zealous therefore, and repent," what will His language be to those
   who are not His children, but are living in open rebellion against Him?

   Tremble, you that forget God! Hear His own Words--they are none of
   mine--"Now consider this, you that forget God, lest I tear you in
   pieces, and there be none to deliver." God help you to flee from the
   sin of doing nothing! The Lord Jesus Christ, Himself, lead you into the
   Father's service! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

In Christ No Condemnation

   (No. 1917)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, AUGUST 29, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ
   Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Romans 8:1.

   You are well aware, dear Friends, that the division into chapters has
   only been made for convenience sake and is not a matter of Inspired
   arrangement. I may add that it has been clumsily made and not with
   careful thoughtfulness, but as roughly as if a woodman had taken an axe
   and chopped the book to pieces in a hurry! It was a very unfortunate
   thing that the axe dropped down just here, so as to divide a passage
   which ought to have been kept entire. We once heard a friend say, "I
   have got out of the seventh of Romans into the eighth." Nonsense! There
   is no getting out of one into the other, for they are one. The field is
   not divided by hedge or ditch. I thank God with all my heart that since
   my conversion I have never known what it is to be out of the seventh of
   Romans, nor out of the eighth of Romans, either--the whole passage has
   been solid Truth of God to my experience. I have struggled against
   inward sin and rejoiced in complete justification at the same time.

   Our Apostle, after having said, "So then, with the mind I myself serve
   the Law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin," goes on to say,
   without any break, "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who
   are in Christ Jesus." The fact is, that Believers are in a state of
   conflict, but not in a state of condemnation and at the very time when
   the conflict is hottest, the Believer is still justified! When the
   Believer has to do his utmost even to hold his ground. When he feels
   that he cannot advance an inch without fighting for it. When he has to
   cry out in the agony of his spirit because of the vehemence of
   temptation, he may still lay his hand upon the Word of God and say,
   "And yet there is no condemnation to me, for I am in Christ Jesus!"

   The man who never strives against the sin which dwells in him, who,
   indeed, is not conscious of any sin to strive against--that is the man
   who may begin to question whether he knows anything at all about the
   spiritual life. He who has no inward pain may well suspect that he is
   abiding in death--abiding, therefore, under constant condemnation. But
   that man who feels a daily striving after deliverance from evil, who is
   panting, pining, longing and agonizing to become holy even as God is
   holy, he is the justified man! The man to whom every sin is a misery,
   to whom even the thought of iniquity is intolerable, he is the man who
   may with confidence declare, "There is therefore now no condemnation to
   those who are in Christ Jesus." Souls that sigh for holiness are not
   condemned to eternal death, for their sighing proves that they are in
   Christ Jesus!

   Observe that the text is written in the present tense. You will lose
   much of its force and beauty if you leave out that word, "now," or
   regard it as a mere term of argument. This, "now," shows how distinctly
   the statement of non-condemnation is consistent with that mingled
   experience of the seventh chapter which certain good people do not
   appear to understand. The passage describes a conflict which the
   unregenerate cannot feel, for they neither delight in God after the
   inward man, nor do they agonize to be set free from the presence of
   sin. Every child of God must know this conflict if he knows himself. If
   it had not been for the fierce debates of former ages, this passage
   would have been accepted as an accurate picture of the inner life of
   the struggling Believer--and it would have been held up to admiration
   as a sure proof of the Divine Inspiration of the Epistle--that with
   such amazing accuracy it records the secret experiences of a soul
   struggling after purity--an experience which often puzzles the very
   people who are the subjects of it.

   Reading my text in that connection, with an emphasis upon the, "now,"
   my heart sings for joy! With all my watching and warring--yes, with all
   my fears and trembling--yet will I rejoice in the Lord even now, for,
   "there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ
   Jesus."

   I would have you carefully observe our Apostle's change of expression.
   When he is speaking about the inward contention he writes in the first
   person and speaks of himself--"I find then a law, that, when I would do
   good, evil is present with me." That which might seem humiliating and
   derogatory, he imputes to himself most distinctly, crying out, "O
   wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this
   death?" But when he comes to write upon the privileges of the children
   of God, he does not write in the first person, but he speaks of them in
   general terms--"There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are
   in Christ Jesus." His deep humility thus displayed itself. His very
   self-remembrance is a self-annihilation--he uses himself as lead sinker
   with which to sink his nets, but his Brethren he puts into the place of
   honor and esteem. His is the confession and theirs is the
   confidence--he extols the glorious company of Believers, but he lowers
   himself!

   This is the style of his language and the style often reveals the man.
   He might have said, "There is therefore now no condemnation to me, for
   I am in Christ Jesus," and it would have been true. But it would not
   have been after the manner of the lowly Apostle. After these wanderings
   upon the shores of the text, let us now plunge into its depths and may
   the Holy Spirit, from whom it proceeded, bless it to our hearts!

   I. I would say, first of all, that this verse contains A REFUTATION OF
   THE OLD SERPENT'S GOSPEL. "The serpent's gospel," you ask, "what is
   that?" It is another name for the gospel of modern thought--that gospel
   which casts a doubt upon the threats of the Law and even denies them
   altogether. Quote the first few words of the text and stop there, and
   this false gospel is before you--"There is therefore now no
   condemnation." The serpent promulgated this gospel in the Garden of
   Eden when he said, "You shall not surely die." With what greediness,
   our first parents received that highly advanced teaching which
   contradicted the declaration of God--"You shall surely die!" The
   doctrine of no punishment for any man is popular at this day and
   threatens to have even greater sway in the future. Generally it comes
   in the serpent's favorite form of, "honest doubt"--"Yes, has God said?"
   Can it be so? Is He not far too merciful? Is it possible that a God of
   Love should condemn and punish His creatures?"

   The denial of the penalty attached to sin comes out in different ways,
   but when put into a nutshell, it amounts to this--"There is therefore
   now no condemnation to any man, however he may live." Some teach that
   you may live in sin and die impenitent, but it will not matter, for at
   death that is the end of you--the soul is not immortal, men are only
   cooking animals. Others tell us that if you die unforgiven, it will be
   a pity, but you will come round, in due time, after a purgatorial
   period--you may take a little longer road, but you will come to the
   same end in the course of time. In other words, it does not matter how
   you live, or what you do, you will become perfectly happy in the long
   run--therefore trouble not yourselves with the exploded notion that
   there is a Heaven to be lost or a Hell to be feared! The wrath of God
   and the Judgment to come are mere bugbears according to the teaching of
   our new apostles. This is the gospel according to Satan--a Gospel which
   has already ruined thousands of souls and is now sealing up millions in
   a stony-hearted unbelief which enables them to sin without fear! Though
   these evil doctrines have done incalculable mischief in many places so
   as to almost paralyze the energies of the Church, yet some professed
   Christians, boastful of their "culture," would move Heaven and earth to
   spread these delusions!

   Here is Paul's refutation of this doctrine of a general amnesty--"There
   is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus."
   They would be condemned, every one of them, if it had not been that
   they are in Christ Jesus! And there is now no condemnation to them
   solely because they are in Christ Jesus. Their being in Christ Jesus is
   the great method by which, alone, they have escaped condemnation. If
   Paul had only stopped when he had got as far as "there is now no
   condemnation," every drunk, swearer and whoremonger would have cried,
   "Bravo, Apostle! That is the gospel for us! Now you speak like a man of
   thought! You have broken loose from the horrible old doctrine of Jesus
   of Nazareth and have found for us a 'larger hope.' Hurrah for Paul! He
   is in advance of his age--he is the man for the times!" But Paul was
   too honest to court popularity by pandering to man's desire of immunity
   in sin. He believed the terrible Truth of God that the impenitent
   sinner is under condemnation and, believing that Truth, he spoke it
   plainly. He did not deal out comfort head over heels, catch it who can,
   but he put it thus--"There is therefore now no condemnation to those
   who are in Christ Jesus."

   It is a work of Almighty and Sovereign Grace to put men into Christ
   Jesus--by this method they escape condemnation, but by no other. I
   understand Paul tacitly to tell us that those who are not in Christ
   Jesus are under condemna-tion--and this is a terrible Truth of God. "He
   that believes not shall be damned" is as much the declaration of our
   Lord Jesus as that other Divine sentence, "He that believes and is
   baptized shall be saved." As many as believe not in Christ Jesus and
   repent not of sin have, before them, at this moment, "a fearful looking
   for judgment and of fiery indignation."

   It is no pleasant task to us to have to speak of this matter, but who
   are we that we should ask for pleasant tasks? What God has witnessed in
   Scripture is the sum and substance of what the Lord's servants are to
   testify to the people. If you are not in Christ Jesus and are walking
   after the flesh, you have not escaped from condemnation!

   One alarming fact I must not fail to mention here--the word, "now," is
   as applicable to these condemned ones as to those who are freed from
   condemnation. It would be true if I were to say, "There is therefore
   now condemnation to all them that are not in Christ Jesus." Hear these
   words, they are the words of John the Tender, who leaned his head on
   the gentle bosom of his Master--"He that believes not is condemned
   already, because he has not believed upon the Son of God." We are said,
   by common talk, to be in a state ofprobation, but that is not true--we
   are, all of us, in a state of present condemnation if we are not in
   Christ Jesus. If you felt the true force of words, some of you would
   fall off your seats at the sound of that sentence--"He that believes
   not is condemned already." The sentence has gone out against you if you
   have not believed in the Lord Jesus Christ! "Condemned already!" Think
   of it, I pray you. You have called God a liar because you have not
   believed His testimony concerning His Son and He, on the other hand,
   has already judged you and condemned you! This is the most conclusive
   of all evidence as to the blackness of your hearts--that you have not
   believed upon the Son of God! There is condemnation for unbelievers and
   that condemnation is now.

   I must also add that to as many as believe not in the Lord Jesus
   Christ, who walk after the flesh and not after the Spirit, there is
   nothing but condemnation so long as they remain in that state. It is
   written, "He that believes not shall not see life, but the wrath of God
   abides on him." That is a terrible text! It is not as though wrath
   flashed upon you now and then, with the glare of momentary
   lightning--but a black cloud charged with destruction and tempest
   continues over your guilty heads till you fly away to Christ! O Sirs, I
   must tell you these things! It is as much as my soul is worth to be
   silent about them! If you think that I find any pleasure in them, you
   misjudge me. I appeal to those who know me-- am I morose? Am I without
   tenderness? No, it is because I love you that I warn you! You shall not
   perish through any flattering words of mine. I will be clear of your
   blood!

   It is idle for me to sew without a needle. There are many new sewing
   machines, but none that can dispense with the needle! You cannot take
   silk and sew with that, alone--you must have a sharp needle to pierce
   the fabric so that the soft silk may follow afterwards. These words of
   warning are meant to be my needle. May God the Holy Spirit use them as
   such--to go right through your hearts with the sharp prick of
   conviction--and so prepare you for the thread of the Gospel! "There is
   now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus!" But if sin is
   not forgiven, you are under its condemnation, and if you die in your
   sins, you will die forever that death which brings with it everlasting
   woe! If you are not reconciled to God by the death of His Son, you are
   His enemies! And to be at enmity with God is to be miserable--it cannot
   be otherwise. How I wish you would feel this Truth of God and be led by
   it to escape from the wrath to come before yonder sun shall again go
   down! God grant you may! I entreat those of you who know the Lord to
   pray silently at this moment, in your hearts, that God will awaken the
   careless so that under a sense of well-deserved condemnation they may
   fly to Jesus and be reconciled to God!

   So much for Paul's refutation of the serpent's Gospel.

   II. And now, secondly, we have in the text A DESCRIPTION OF THE
   BELIEVER'S POSITION--he is "in Christ Jesus." What does that mean?

   I am not going into any deep theological discussions--I speak very
   simply and with a view to practical results. He that believes in the
   Lord Jesus Christ is in Christ. By an act of simple dependence upon
   Jesus, he realizes his position as being in Christ. By nature I am in
   myself and in sin and I am, therefore, condemned. But when the Grace of
   God awakens me to know my ruined state, then I fly to Christ. I trust,
   alone, in His blood and righteousness, and He becomes to me the cleft
   of the rock wherein I hide myself from the storm of vengeance justly
   due to me for my many offenses. The Lord Jesus is typified by the City
   of Refuge. You and I are like the manslayer who was pursued by the
   avenger--and we are never safe till we pass through the gate of the
   City of Refuge--I mean, till we are completely enclosed by the Lord
   Jesus! Inside

   the walls of the city, the manslayer was secure--and within our
   Savior's wounds, we are safe. By a humble, simple, undivided dependence
   upon Him, we are placed where we are covered by His merits and so,
   saved!

   Noah's dove out yonder, flying over the waste of waters, is outside the
   ark--she will never rest the soles of her feet till Noah puts out his
   hand and pulls her in to him. Then is she secure and restful, but not
   till then. Judge, then, my Hearer, whether you are in Christ. Do you
   stand before God on your own footing, or do you rest upon Christ and
   find your all in Him? This is not a baffling problem, but a plain
   question. Say, is your righteousness one which you have worked out
   yourself, or is the righteousness of Christ imputed to you? Do you look
   for salvation by self, or for salvation by Christ? If you can truly
   say, "I hide in Christ," then this text plays sweeter music than ever
   fell from angel lips-- "There is therefore now no condemnation to those
   who are in Christ Jesus." Inasmuch as you have believed in Him, you are
   in Him. "He that believes on Him has everlasting life and, "shall not
   come into condemnation"--these are our Lord's own dear words--treasure
   them up in your spirits and rejoice in them forevermore!

   Let us go a little deeper. That which faith thus realizes by coming
   unto Christ for shelter was true before, in a blessed sense. I
   understand my text, when it says, "therefore," to refer to all that the
   Apostle had argued before in the previous part of his Epistle. But even
   if I did not think so, I could understand his, "therefore," for I
   believe that the text carries its own argument within itself. "There is
   therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." Why,
   "therefore"? Because they are in Christ Jesus! Therefore there is no
   condemnation to them because they are in Him who can never be
   condemned. Though it is quite correct to fetch your argument from the
   preceding part of the Epistle, yet it seems to me it is a
   self-contained verse and carries its argument within itself. If you are
   in Christ, there is, for that very reason, no condemnation in you.

   Still, there are other arguments near at hand. Will you, at home,
   kindly read the fifth chapter? There you will perceive that Believers
   are in Christ as their federal Head. By one transgression, Adam
   introduced death into the race, "and so death passed upon all men, for
   that all had sinned." But Jesus came to bring life by His obedience.
   "As by the offense of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation,
   even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men
   unto justification of life." By Christ's righteous life and
   substitutionary death, justification has come upon all who are in Him.
   As you were in Adam you sinned and, therefore, you fell and were
   condemned. And as you were in Christ through the Divine Covenant of
   Grace and Christ fulfilled the Law for you, you are justified in Him.
   His righteousness and Sacrifice have been of use for you--"There is
   therefore now no condemnation." Because we are viewed by Divine Justice
   as under the Headship of the perfect Man, who, on our behalf, has
   magnified the Law and made it honorable, therefore we are well-pleasing
   unto God. We are accepted in the Beloved. It is written, "By the
   obedience of one shall many be made righteous"--and we enjoy the
   fulfillment of that promise! Will the Lord condemn those whom He has
   made righteous? Will He do despite to the righteousness of His own Son
   with which we are covered?

   But Paul goes on to show, in the sixth chapter, that the saints of God
   are united to Christ by a living and vital union. He says of us,
   "Therefore we are buried with Him by Baptism into death: that like as
   Christ was raised up from the dead by the Glory of the Father, even so
   we, also, should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted
   together in the likeness of His death, we shall also be in the likeness
   of His Resurrection." We are actually one with Christ by living
   experience! Beloved, if it is so, that we died in Christ, then we shall
   not be put to death, again, for the sin for which we have already died
   in Him! If we have received a new life in Christ's Resurrection, then
   that promise is true, "Because I live, you shall live also." And for
   that reason we cannot be condemned, for condemnation involves death.
   We, Beloved, who are in Christ, are justified because Christ is
   justified by His rising from the dead and by His taking the position of
   honor and Glory at the right hand of God! He is our Representative and
   we are one with Him--what He is, that are we. Our union is inseparable
   and, therefore, our condemnation is impossible!

   In the seventh chapter the Apostle mentions our mystical union with
   Christ under the figure of a marriage union-- "Therefore, my Brethren,
   you also are become dead to the Law by the body of Christ; that you
   should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead,
   that we should bring forth fruit unto God." Shall the spouse of Christ
   be condemned with the world? "Christ loved His Church and gave Himself
   for it"--shall she be condemned despite His death? This union with
   Christ is often mentioned in Scripture under the form of a marriage,
   but it is also described under other symbols--we are one with Christ as
   a branch is one with the vine; as a stone is one with the foundation
   and especially as a member of the body is one with the head. Now it is
   not possible, if I am a member of Christ, that I should be

   under condemnation until He is condemned. Is my Head acquitted? Then my
   hand is acquitted! So long as a man's head is above water you cannot
   drown his feet and as long as Christ, the Head of the mystical body,
   rises above the torrent of condemnation, there is no condemning even
   the least and feeblest member of His body!

   It has been my joy to preach to you, for many years, the blessed
   Doctrine of Substitution. Now, if Jesus became our Surety and our
   Substitute and suffered in our place, it is an inevitable consequence
   that we cannot suffer punishment-- and that the sin laid upon our
   Surety cannot now be laid upon us. If our debt was paid, it was
   paid--and that is the end of it--a second payment cannot be demanded.

   You know the story, the very excellent story, which I think was first
   told by Mr. Moody, of the man, who in the French war, was drawn in the
   draft, for a soldier, but a friend stepped in and was accepted as his
   substitute. That substitute served in the war till he was slain in
   battle. The man for whom he served was drawn a second time, but he
   declined to serve. He appeared before the court and pleaded that he had
   been drawn once, had served in the war by his substitute and must now
   be regarded as dead because his representative had been killed. He
   pleaded that his substitute's service was, practically, his
   service--and it is said that the law allowed his plea. Assuredly it is
   according to Divine equity even if it is not according to human law! No
   criminal can be hanged a second time. One death is all the law
   requires! Believers died in Christ unto sin, once, and now they penally
   can die no more.

   Our condemnation has spent itself upon our gracious Representative. The
   full vials of Divine Wrath against sin have been poured upon the head
   of the Great Shepherd, that His sheep might go free and in it is our
   joy, our comfort, our security. "There is therefore now no condemnation
   to those who are in Christ Jesus." Bow your heads in worship, you that
   are in Him. Render an ascription of blessing and praise and glory unto
   Him who took you unto Himself and then bore your sins in His own body
   on the tree, so that you might be delivered from condemnation through
   His sufferings and death!

   Thus, by faith, we are in Christ Jesus and the assurance of our safety
   is enlarged by a consideration of His federal Headship, our vital
   oneness with Him, our mystical marriage to Him and His finished work on
   our behalf.

   III. Now we come to the third point, upon which we shall speak briefly,
   because this part of my text is not a true portion of Holy Scripture.
   We have before us in this verse A DESCRIPTION OF THE BELIEVER'S
   WALK--"who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." You who
   have the Revised New Testament will kindly look at it. Do you see this
   sentence there? To your surprise it is omitted and very rightly so. The
   most learned men assure us that it is no part of the original text. I
   cannot, just now, go into the reasons for this conclusion, but they are
   very good and solid. The oldest copies are without it--the versions do
   not sustain it and the fathers who quoted abundance of Scripture do not
   quote this sentence! We must admit that it is an opinion inserted in
   later copies by some penman who was wise enough, in his own conceit, to
   think that he could mend the Bible!

   Do you ask me, "How did it get into the text?" Remember that there
   always have been many divines who have been afraid of the Doctrine of
   free Justification. They have been half afraid that sinners should get
   comfort by faith and should not see the necessity of a change of life.
   They have questioned the wisdom of ascribing salvation wholly to a
   man's being in Christ and so they have guarded the more open passages
   whenever they have seen a chance of so doing. In so doing they stated
   Truth, but they stated it out of season and from motives which were
   unsound. Probably the sentence now before us was put in and allowed to
   remain, by general consent, in order that the great Truth of the
   non-condemnation of those who are in Christ Jesus might be guarded from
   that Antinomian tendency which would separate faith from good works.
   But the fear was groundless and the tampering with Scripture was
   unjustifiable.

   We are greatly obliged to our revisers for leaving out the sentence,
   since it should not be there and, without it, the Doctrine of
   Justification in Christ is made more clear than in the Authorized
   Version. In the last chapter of the Book of Revelation, service of the
   same kind is most properly rendered, for instead of, "Blessed are they
   that do His commandments, that they may have right to the Tree of
   Life," the Revisers have given us a more accurate text--"Blessed are
   they that wash their robes." In these two cases we have proof that the
   more nearly the text of Scripture is restored to its original purity,
   the more clearly will the doctrines of Grace be set forth in it. The
   more we get back to true Scripture, the more shall we escape all
   interference with the complete and perfect salvation which comes of our
   being in Christ. We are not justified by the manner of our walk, but by
   our being in Christ Jesus!

   Again, you ask me, "From where did the man who added this opinion get
   his words? The words are so good and true that they read like
   Inspiration." Just so. The words are borrowed from the fourth verse.
   The Holy Spirit meant to say this very thing a little further on, in
   its proper place, but the good men who felt it right to tamper a little
   with the document made Him say it sooner and, therefore, they copied
   the last sentence of the fourth verse and placed it here--"who walk not
   after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Truly, there was not much hurt
   done, for the words are true, but no man has a right to add to Holy
   Scripture or take from it, and I fear that many may have been brought
   into needless bondage by this sentence being inserted where the Holy
   Spirit did not place it. Beloved, when you desire to know your state,
   be content with this question--"Am I in Christ?" And if you can answer
   it from your heart, let it satisfy you--"There is therefore now no
   condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." Others may better judge
   your walk than you can judge it yourself, but your union with Christ is
   best known to yourself!

   Still, the interpolated sentence is true--the man who is in Christ
   Jesus does not walk after the flesh, but after the Spirit. I will now,
   for a little while, preach upon verse four.

   We notice that such a man in Christ has received the Holy Spirit, for
   he walks according to His guidance. All honor and worship be unto the
   third most blessed Person of the Divine Trinity, that He should deign
   to dwell in our poor hearts and sanctify our spirits to Himself! Every
   Believer has the Holy Spirit!

   Secondly, every Believer has been quickened into the possession of a
   new nature called the spirit. He has a right spirit within him, a new
   spirit, a holy spirit--the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. He is a new
   creature. He is no longer in the flesh, but in the spirit and so he has
   become a spiritual man.

   Observe carefully that the flesh is there--he does not walk after it,
   but it is there. It is there striving and warring, vexing and grieving,
   and it will be there till he is taken up into Heaven! It is there as an
   alien and detested force, but not there so as to have dominion over
   him. He does not walk after it, nor practically obey it. He does not
   accept it as his guide, nor allow it to drive him into rebellion. The
   man who is in Christ Jesus commits himself to the guidance of the Holy
   Spirit.

   What a wonderful power is that which dwells in every Believer, checking
   him when he would do wrong, encouraging him to do right, leading him in
   the paths of righteousness for Christ's name's sake! Happy men to have
   such a Conductor!

   Judge yourselves in which way you are walking. Are you walking
   according to the flesh? Do you do whatever you like to do? Do you
   believe whatever you like to believe? Do you say to yourself, "I am not
   going to be limited by Scripture, nor by rules of holiness--these are
   too old-fashioned and strait-laced for me"? Then, you walk after the
   flesh--you are your own guide, your own wisdom and righteousness--and
   vain desires conduct you where they will. You are blind and your guide
   is blind--and you will soon fall into the Pit. You may no think so, but
   time will prove my words.

   Blessed is that man who no longer follows the devices and desires of
   his own heart and no longer trusts to his own understanding! Blessed is
   he who bows his mind to the mind of God! My own desire is not to
   believe what I may imagine, or invent, or think out, but I would
   believe what the Lord God has taught us in the Inspired Scriptures. I
   submit myself to the guidance of the Spirit of God in connection with
   the written Word of God. This is safe walking.

   Combine the two descriptive clauses of my text. On the one hand look to
   Christ alone and abide in Him. And then, on the other hand, look for
   the guidance of the Holy Spirit who is to be in you. By faith we are in
   Christ and the Holy Spirit is in us. All who can go with me in this are
   delivered from condemnation, for how shall he be condemned that is in
   Christ? And how shall he be condemned that has the Holy Spirit within
   him? "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ
   Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

   IV. And so I come, in closing, to notice THE ABSOLUTION OF THE
   BELIEVER--"There is therefore now no

   condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." What a grand sentence!
   I call upon you to notice it. You may have seen a well-painted picture
   called, "Waiting for the Verdict." What interest is displayed on every
   face! What fear and trembling upon the countenance of the prisoner! In
   his wife and the friends around him, what anxiety is seen! "Waiting for
   the Verdict" is a sad picture, but what another might be drawn of, "The
   Favorable Verdict Received." The prisoner is acquitted! Oh what joy! It
   is not possible to bring in a verdict of, "Not Guilty," for you and for
   me, for we are undoubtedly guilty, but yet it is possible, by the
   processes of Substitution and Divine Grace to bring in a just verdict
   by which it is witnessed that, "There is now no condemnation."

   Notice, first, that this is a bold speech. "There is no condemnation."
   "But you said just now that the thing you would not, you did." Yes, but
   there is no condemnation! The same lips which made such a humble
   confession and revealed such a troublesome experience now assert
   positively and joyfully, "There is no condemnation!" Free Grace makes
   men speak bravely when their faith has a clear view of Jesus! Though it
   is a bold assertion, it is proven. Whenever a man has a, "therefore,"
   at the back of what he has to say, he may say it without stammering.
   "There is therefore now no condemnation." Paul is always a reasoner and
   a great logician. Here he seems to declare his certainty. "What I say I
   can prove. There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus
   and I can prove it to a demonstration." Brothers and Sisters, the
   demonstrations of mathematics are not more clear and certain than the
   inference that if we are in Christ and Christ died in our place, there
   can be no condemnation for us! Cool calculation may be used here. This
   is no raving of fanaticism, but the unquestionable deduction of fair
   argument--if Jesus was condemned in my place, there can be no
   condemnation for me!

   What a broad assertion it is!--"There is no condemnation." No
   condemnation on account of original sin, though the Believer was an
   heir of wrath even as others. No condemnation for actual sin, though he
   greatly transgressed and came far short of the Glory of God. He is in
   Christ and there is no condemnation of any sort possible to him! No
   condemnation, no, though he humbles himself and weeps and groans before
   God because in thought and word and deed he still offends. No
   condemnation, though he feels that he has not yet attained to the
   excellence which he labors after.

   The devil says there is condemnation and, therefore, he accuses us day
   and night. He was a liar from the beginning and the father of lies!
   Conscience sometimes censures us, for even conscience, itself, needs to
   be enlightened and to be purged from dead works. But when conscience
   understands the plan of Free Grace and sees things in the light of the
   Truth of God, it, also, bears witness and the Spirit of God bears
   witness with it, that we are the children of God! "No," says the
   Apostle, "there is no condemnation." What a broad sweep these words
   take! If you read to the end of the chapter you see how unreserved Paul
   was in his statement, for there he mounts the high horse and cries,
   "Who shall say anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that
   justifies. Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died, yes rather,
   that is risen again." Paul makes all Heaven and earth and Hell to ring
   with his daring challenge, "Who is he that condemns?" In the broadest
   imaginable terms he declares that there is no condemnation to them that
   are in Christ Jesus! Where there is no condemnation there is no wrath,
   no guilt, no punishment! On the contrary, there is acceptance, favor,
   and bliss!

   This, Beloved, is an abiding statement, a standing assertion. It was
   true of me, 30 years ago, as a Believer, and it is just as true of me
   now. It was true in Paul's day and though centuries have passed away,
   it is just as true at this moment. If you are in Christ Jesus, there is
   now no condemnation. That living "now" goes singing down the
   centuries--in life, in death, in time, in eternity--there is no
   condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus!

   What a joyful statement it is! It makes one laugh for joy of heart. If
   you have ever been burdened with a sense of sin, you will know the
   sweetness of the text. You that are not sinners--you good respectable
   people who are sailing to Heaven in your own ship--there is nothing in
   it for you! Gospel assurances are not for you--you would not prize them
   and, therefore, you have neither part nor lot in them. For Jesus Christ
   came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

   But you that have been whipped of the devil and dragged at the heels of
   your sins--you that have been broken and crushed as in a mortar, with a
   pestle, till you are ground fine under the hand of conviction--you are
   the people that will leap for joy as you hear the silver trumpet ring
   out the note of "no condemnation!" Come, let us be glad! Let us rejoice
   together because there is now no condemnation to us! When Giant
   Despair's head was cut off, Mr. Bunyan says that the pilgrims
   danced--and well they might! Mr. Despondency and Miss Much-Afraid took
   a turn and even Ready-to-Halt, with his crutches, joined in! I
   guarantee you he footed it well! When he saw the monster's head upon
   the pole, he could not help being merry!

   This text sticks the giant's head up on the pole for us. "There is
   therefore now no condemnation." Oh for the loud sounding cymbals! Now
   for the maidens and their timbrels! Let us have holy merriment over
   this! Poor prodigal sinners have fled to Jesus and hidden in Him and
   there is now no condemnation to them! Poverty? Yes, but no
   condemnation. Depression of spirit? Yes, sometimes, but no
   condemnation. Infirmities and weaknesses and things to grieve over?
   Yes, plenty of them, but no condemnation! "O come, let us sing unto the
   Lord: let us make a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation!"

   "All very well," says one, "but we would like something practical."
   Practical? This is the most practical thing that ever was because the
   moment a man receives this assurance into his soul, his heart is won to
   his loving Lord and the neck of his sinfulness is broken with a blow!
   There never was, no, never can be, a man that has realized, by the
   witness of the Holy Spirit that he is free from condemnation, who will
   ever go to love sin and live in it. While I am condemned I say, "Well,
   if I am to be sent to Hell for my sins, I may as well be hung for a
   sheep as a lamb and, therefore, I will continue in sins and get what
   pleasure I can out of them." Do you not know how the guilty man often
   feels, that since there is no hope for him, he may as well harden his
   heart and enjoy himself? A mouse was caught in a trap, the other day,
   by its tail, and the poor creature went on eating the cheese. Many men
   are doing the same--they know that they are guilty and they dread their
   punishment--but they go on nibbling at their beloved sins!

   They remind me of the soldier in the old classic story. The army
   marched through a certain country and the commander-in-chief ordered
   that there should be no plundering. Not a man must touch a bunch of
   grapes in going through the vineyards, or he should die for his
   disobedience. One soldier, tempted by a bunch of grapes, plucked it and
   begin to eat it. He was brought before the captain who declared that
   the law must be carried out and the thief must die. He was taken out to
   die and though he knew his head would be cut off, he went on eating the
   grapes as he walked along. A comrade wondered that he should do this,
   but the condemned man answered that no one ought to grudge him his
   grapes, for they cost him dearly.

   Such are the bravados of sinners. The breasts of wicked men are steeled
   rather than softened by a sense of condemnation, but once let the Holy
   Spirit remove the burden of their guilt and they will be dissolved by
   love! Free pardon is a great conqueror. The love of Jesus soon makes
   men turn from sin with burning hatred. Forgiving love is a main
   instrument in transforming men from rebels into friends. You may preach
   the demands of the Law as long as you like and tell men that they must
   merit salvation--and you will only make them worse and worse. But go
   and proclaim the dying love of Jesus! Tell them that Free Grace reigns
   and that undeserved mercy saves the sinner through faith in Christ--and
   that the moment he believes in Jesus there is no condemnation to
   him--and you shall see miracles accomplished!

   In the experience of Free Grace you have something to work upon. You
   have put a new affection into the man and it will drive out his base
   affections. A life force is communicated to him which will cause him to
   forsake his old ways and turn unto the Lord. "How do you know?" asks
   one. I know by experience and by observation. I could point you out
   many specimens of the power of Divine Grace in this assembly, but I
   will not do so. If I were to say, "Brothers and Sisters, you who once
   lived in sin but have escaped from it through Free Grace and dying
   love, stand up!"--What an exceedingly great army would start to their
   feet!

   Yes, we know it is true, for the lips of many witnesses declare it!
   They say, "Jesus saved us from the worst of sins and made us His
   friends by His Free Grace, and now we rejoice to love and serve Him."
   So shall it be with you, dear Hearer, if you, also, believe in Jesus.
   The text shall be true of you, also--"There is therefore now no
   condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." God bless you! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

               The Abiding of the Spirit the Glory of the Church

   A Sermon

   (No. 1918)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, September 5th, 1886, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the [11]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord; and be strong, O
   Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest; and be strong, all ye people
   of the land, saith the Lord, and work: for I am with you, saith the
   Lord of hosts: according to the word that I covenanted with you when ye
   came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you: fear ye
   not."--Haggai 2:4-5.

   SATAN is always doing his utmost to stay the work of God. He hindered
   these Jews from building the temple; and to-day he endeavours to hinder
   the people of God from spreading the gospel. A spiritual temple is to
   be builded for the Most High, and if by any means the evil one can
   delay its uprising he will stick at nothing: if he can take us off from
   working with faith and courage for the glory of God he will be sure to
   do it. He is very cunning, and knows how to change his argument and yet
   keep to his design: little cares he how he works, so long as he can
   hurt the cause of God. In the case of the Jewish people on their return
   from captivity he sought to prevent the building of the temple by
   making them selfish and worldly, so that every many was eager to build
   his own house, and cared nothing for the house of the Lord. Each family
   pleaded its own urgent needs. In returning to a long-deserted and
   neglected land, much had to be done to make up for lost time; and to
   provide suitably for itself every family needed all its exertions. They
   carried this thrift and self-providing to a great extreme, and secured
   for themselves luxuries, while the foundations of the temple which had
   been laid years before remained as they were, or became still more
   thickly covered up with rubbish. The people could not be made to bestir
   themelves to build a house of God, for they answered to every
   exhortation, "The time is not come, the time that the Lord's house
   should be built." A more convenient season was always looming in the
   future, but it never came. Just now it was too hot, further it was too
   cold; at one time the wet season was just setting in, and it was of no
   use to begin, and soon the fair weather required that they should be in
   their own fields. Like some in our day, they saw to themselves first,
   and God's turn was very long in coming; hence the prophet cried, "Is it
   time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lie
   waste?"

   By the mouth of His servant Haggai stern rebukes were uttered, and the
   whole people were aroused. We read in verse twelve of the first
   chapter, "Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of
   Josedech, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed
   the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet,
   as the Lord their God had sent him, and the people did fear before the
   Lord." All hands were put to the work; course after course of stone
   began to rise; and then another stumbling-block was thrown in the way
   of the workers. The older folks remarked that this was a very small
   affair compared with the temple of Solomon, of which their fathers had
   told them; in fact, their rising building was nothing at all, and not
   worthy to be called a temple. The prophet describes the feeling in the
   verse which precedes our text. "Who is left among you that saw this
   house in her first glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your
   eyes in comparison of it as nothing?" Feeling that their work would be
   very poor and insignificant, the people had little heart to go on.
   Being discouraged by the humiliating contrast, they began to be slack;
   and as they were quite willing to accept any excuse, and here was an
   excuse ready made for them, they would soon have been at a standstill
   had not the prophet met the wiles of the arch-enemy with another word
   from the Lord. Nothing so confounds the evil one as the voice of the
   Eternal. Our Lord Himself defeated Satan by the word of the Lord; and
   the prophet Haggai did the same. The subtle craft of the enemy is
   defeated by the wisdom of the Most High, which reveals itself in plain
   words of honest statement. The Lord cuts the knots which bind His
   people, and sets them at liberty to do His will. He did this by
   assuring them that He was with them. Twice the voice was heard--"I am
   with you, saith the Lord of hosts." They were also assured that what
   they builded was accepted, and that the Lord meant to fill the new
   house with glory; yea, He meant to light it up with a glory greater
   than that which honoured the temple of Solomon. They were not spending
   their strength for nought, but were labouring with divine help and
   favour. Thus they were encouraged to put their shoulders to the work:
   the walls rose in due order, and God was glorified in the building up
   of His Zion.

   The present times are, in many respects, similar to those of Haggai.
   History certainly repeats itself within the church of God as well as
   outside of it; and therefore the messages of God need to be repeated
   also. The words of some almost-forgotten prophet may be re-delivered by
   the watchman of the Lord in these present days, and be a timely word
   for the present emergency. We are not free from the worldliness which
   puts self first and God nowhere, else our various enterprises would be
   more abundantly supplied with the silver and the gold which are the
   Lord's, but which even professing Christians reserve for themselves.
   When this selfish greed is conquered, then comes in a timorous
   depression. Among those who have escaped from worldliness there is apt
   to be too much despondency, and men labour feebly as for a cause which
   is doomed to failure. This last evil must be cured. I pray that our
   text may this morning flame from the Lord's own mouth with all the fire
   which once blazed about it. May faint hearts be encouraged and drowsy
   spirits be aroused, as we hear the Lord say, "My spirit remaineth among
   you: fear ye not."

   I shall enter fully upon the subject, by the assistance of the Holy
   Spirit, by calling your attention to discouragement forbidden. Then I
   shall speak of encouragement imparted; and, having done so, I shall
   linger with this blessed text, which overflows with comfort, and shall
   speak, in the third place, of encouragement further applied. Oh that
   our Lord, who knows how to speak a word in season to him that is weary,
   may cheer the hearts of seekers by what shall be spoken under this last
   head of discourse!

   I. To begin with, here is DISCOURAGEMENT FORBIDDEN. Discouragement
   comes readily enough to us poor mortals who are occupied in the work of
   God, seeing it is a work of faith, a work of difficulty, a work above
   our capacity, and a work much opposed.

   Discouragement is very natural: it is a native of the soil of manhood.
   To believe is supernatural, faith is the work of the Spirit of God; to
   doubt is natural to fallen men; for we have within us an evil heart of
   unbelief. It is abominably wicked, I grant you; but still it is
   natural, because of the downward tendency of our depraved hearts.
   Discouragement towards good things is a weed that grows without sowing.
   To be faint-hearted and downcast happens to some of us when we are half
   drowned in this heavy atmosphere, and it also visits us on the wings of
   the east wind. It takes little to make some hands hang down: a word or
   a look will do it. I do not, therefore, excuse it; but the rather
   condemn myself for having a nature prone to such evil.

   Discouragement may come and does come to us, as it did to these people,
   from a consideration of the great things which God deserves at our
   hands, and the small things which we are able to render. When in
   Haggai's days the people thought of Jehovah, and of the temple for Him,
   and then looked upon the narrow space which had been enclosed, and the
   common stones which had been laid for foundations, they were ashamed.
   Where were those hewn stones and costly stones which, of old, Solomon
   brought from far? They said within themselves, "This house is unworthy
   of Jehovah: what do we by labouring thus?" Have you not felt the
   depressing weight of what is so surely true? Brethren, all that we do
   is little for our God; far too little for Him that loved us and gave
   Himself for us. For Him that poured out His soul unto death on our
   behalf the most splendid service, the most heroic self-denial, are all
   too little; and we feel it so. Alabaster boxes of precious ointment are
   too mean a gift. It does not occur to our fervent spirit to imagine
   that there can be any waste when our best boxes are broken and the
   perfume is poured out lavishly for Him. What we do fear is that our
   alabaster boxes are too few, and that our ointment is not precious
   enough. When we have done our utmost in declaring the glory of Jesus,
   we have felt that words are too poor and mean to set forth our adorable
   Lord. When we have prayed for His kingdom we have been disgusted with
   our own prayers; and all the efforts we have put forth in connection
   with any part of His service have seemed too few, too feeble for us to
   hope for acceptance. Thus have we been discouraged. The enemy has
   worked upon us by this means, yet he has made us argue very wrongly.
   Because we could not do much, we have half resolved to do nothing!
   Because what we did was so poor, we were inclined to quit the work
   altogether! This is evidently absurd and wicked. The enemy can use
   humility for his purpose as well as pride. Whether he makes us think
   too much or too little of our work, it is all the same to him as long
   as he can get us off from it.

   It is significant that the man with one talent went and hid his Lord's
   money in the earth. He knew that it was but one, and for that reason he
   was the less afraid to bury it. Perhaps he argued that the interest on
   one talent could never come to much, and would never be noticed side by
   side with the result of five or ten talents; and he might as well bring
   nothing at all to his Lord as bring so little. Perhaps he might not
   have wrapped it up if it had not been so small that a napkin could
   cover it. The smallness of our gifts may be a temptation to us. We are
   consciously so weak and so insignificant, compared with the great God
   and His great cause, that we are discouraged, and think it vain to
   attempt anything.

   Moreover, the enemy contrasts our work with that of others, and with
   that of those who have gone before us. We are doing so little as
   compared with other people, therefore let us give up. We cannot build
   like Solomon, therefore let us not build at all. Yet, brethren, there
   is a falsehood in all this; for, in truth, nothing is worthy of God.
   The great works of others, and even the amazing productions of Solomon,
   all fell short of His glory. What house could man build for God? What
   are cedar, and marble, and gold as compared with the glory of the Most
   High? Though the house was "exceeding magnifical," yet the Lord God had
   of old dwelt within curtains, and never was His worship more glorious
   than within the tent of badger's skins; indeed, as soon as the great
   house was built, true religion declined. What of all human work can be
   worthy of the Lord? Our little labours do but share the insignificance
   of greater things, and therefore we ought not to withhold them: yet
   here is the temptation from which we must pray to be delivered.

   The tendency to depreciate the present because of the glories of the
   past is also injurious. The old people looked back to the days of the
   former temple, even as we are apt to look upon the times of the great
   preachers of the past. What work was done in those past days? What
   Sabbaths were enjoyed then! What converts were added to the church!
   What days of refreshing were then vouchsafed! Everything has declined,
   decreased, degenerated! As for the former days, they beheld a race of
   giants, who are now succeeded by pigmies. We look at one of these great
   men, and cry,

   "Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world

   Like a Colossus; and we petty men

   Walk under his huge legs, and peep about

   To find ourselves dishonourable graves."

   But, brethren, we must not allow this sense of littleness to hamper us;
   for God can bless our littleness, and use it for His glory. I notice
   that the great men of the past thought of themselves even as we think
   of ourselves. Certainly they were not more self-confident than we are.
   I find in the story of the brave days of old the same confessions and
   the same lamentations which we utter now. It is true that in a
   spiritual strength we are not what our fathers were; I fear the
   Puritanic holiness and truthfulness of doctrine are dying out, while
   adherence to principle is far from common; but our fathers had also
   faults and follies to mourn over, and they did mourn over them most
   sincerely. Instead of being discouraged because what we do is unworthy
   of God, and insignificant compared with what was done by others, let us
   gather up our strength to reform our errors, and reach to higher
   attainments. Let us throw our heart and soul into the work of the Lord,
   and yet do something more nearly in accordance with our highest ideal
   of what our God deserves of us. Let us excel our ancestors. Let us
   aspire to be even more godly, more conscientious, and more sound in the
   faith than they were, for the Spirit of God remaineth with us.

   Brethren, it is clear that discouragement can be produced by these
   reasons, and yet they are a mere sample of a host of arguments which
   work in the same direction: hence discouragement is very common. Haggai
   was sent to speak to Zerubbabel, the governor, and to Joshua, the high
   priest, and to all the remnant of the people. The great man may become
   discouraged: he that leads the van has his fainting fits; even Elijah
   cries, "Let me die!" The consecrated servant of God whose life is a
   priesthood is apt to grow discouraged, too: standing at God's altar, he
   sometimes trembles for the ark of the Lord. The multitude of the people
   are all too apt to suffer from panic, and to flee at the sight of the
   enemy. How many are they who say, "The old truth cannot exceed: the
   cause of orthodoxy is desperate; we had better yield to the modern
   spirit"! This faith-heartedness is so common that it has been the
   plague of Israel from her first day until now. They were discouraged at
   the Red Sea, at the mere rattling of Pharaoh's chariots; they were
   discouraged when they found no water; they were discouraged when they
   had eaten up the bread which they brought out of Egypt; they were
   discouraged when they heard of the giants, and of the cities walled to
   heaven. I need not lengthen the wretched catalogue. What has not
   cowardice done? The fearful and unbelieving have brought terrible
   disasters upon our camps. Discouragement is the national epidemic of
   our Israel. "Being armed and carrying bows" we turn back in the day of
   battle. This is as common among Christians as consumption among the
   inhabitants of this foggy island. Oh that God would save us all from
   distrust, and cause us to quit ourselves like men!

   Wherever discouragement comes in it is dreadfully weakening. I am sure
   it is weakening, because the prophet was bidden to say three times to
   the governor, high priest, and people, "Be strong." This proves that
   they had become weak. Being discouraged, their hands hung down, and
   their knees were feeble. Faith girds us with omnipotence, but unbelief
   makes everything hang loose and limp about us. Distrust, and thou wilt
   fail in everything; believe, and according to thy faith so shall it be
   unto thee. To lead a discouraged people to the Holy War is as difficult
   as for Xerxes' commanders to conduct the Persian troops to battle
   against the Greeks. The vassals of the great king were driven to the
   conflict by whips and sticks, for they were afraid to fight: do you
   wonder that they were defeated? A church that needs constant exhorting
   and compelling accomplishes nothing. The Greeks had no need of blows
   and threats, for each man was a lion, and courted the encounter,
   however great the odds against him. Each Spartan fought con amore; he
   was never more at home than when contending for the altars and the
   hearths of his country. We want Christian men of this same sort, who
   have faith in their principles, faith in the doctrines of grace, faith
   in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost; and who
   therefore contend earnestly for the faith in these days when piety is
   mocked at from the pulpit, and the gospel is sneered at by professional
   preachers. We need men who love the truth, to whom it is dear as their
   lives; men into whose hearts the old doctrine is burned by the hand of
   God's Spirit through a deep experience of its necessity and of its
   power. We need no more of those who will parrot what they are taught,
   but we want men who will speak what they know. Oh, for a troop of men
   like John Knox, heroes of the martyr and covenanter stock! Then would
   Jehovah of hosts have a people to serve Him who would be strong in the
   Lord and in the power of His might.

   Discouragement not only weakens men, but it takes them off from the
   service of God. It is significant that the prophet said to them, "Be
   strong, all ye people of the land, saith the Lord, and work." They had
   ceased to build: they had begun to talk and argue, but they had laid
   down the trowel. They were extremely wise in their observations, and
   criticisms, and prophecies; but the walls did not rise. One person knew
   exactly how big the former temple was; another declared that their
   present architect was not up to the mark, and that the structure was
   not built in a scientific manner: one objected to this, and another to
   that; but everyone was wiser than all the rest, and sneered at
   old-fashioned ways. It is always so when we are discouraged: we cease
   from the work of the Lord, and waste time in talk and nonsensical
   refinements. May the Lord take away discouragement from any of you who
   now suffer from it! I suppose some of you do feel it, for at times it
   creeps over my heart and makes me go with heaviness to my work. I
   believe that God's truth will come to the front yet, but it hath many
   adversaries to-day. All sorts of unbeliefs are being hatched out from
   under the wings of "modern thought." The gospel seems to be regarded as
   a nose of wax, to be altered and shaped by every man who wishes to show
   his superior skill. Nor is it in doctrine alone, but in practice also,
   that the times are out of joint. Separateness from the world, and holy
   living, are to give place to gaiety and theatre-going. To follow Christ
   fully has gone out of fashion with many of those from whom we once
   hoped better things. Yet are there some who waver not, some who are
   willing to be in the right with two or three. For my own part, even
   should I find none around me of the same mind, I shall not budge an
   inch from the old truth, nor sweat a hair of fear of its overthrow; but
   I shall abide confident that the eternal God, whose truth we know and
   hold, will vindicate Himself ere long, and turn the wisdom of the world
   into babble, and its boasting into confusion. Blessed is the man who
   shall be able to stand fast by his God in these evil days. Let us not
   in any wise be discouraged. "Be strong; be strong; be strong," sounds
   as a threefold voice from the Triune God. "Fear not" comes as a sweet
   cordial to the faint: therefore let no man's heart fail him. Thus much
   about the discouragement.

   II. Secondly, here is THE ENCOURAGEMENT IMPARTED, which is the grand
   part of our text. "According to the word that I covenanted with you
   when ye came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you: fear ye
   not." God remembers His covenant and stands to His ancient promises.
   When the people came out of Egypt, the Lord was with them by His
   Spirit; hence He spoke to them by Moses, and through Moses He guided,
   and judged, and taught them. He was with them also by His Spirit in
   inspiring Bezaleel and Aholiab, as to the works of art which adorned
   the tabernacle. God always finds the workmen for His work, and by His
   Spirit fits them for it. The Spirit of God rested upon the elders who
   were ordained to relieve Moses of his great burden. The Lord was also
   with His people in the fiery cloudy pillar which was conspicuous in the
   midst of the camp. His presence was their glory and their defence. This
   is a type of the presence of the Spirit with the church. At the present
   day, if we hold the truth of God, if we live in obedience to His holy
   commands, if we are spiritually-minded, if we cry unto God in believing
   prayer, if we have faith in His covenant and in His Son, the Holy
   Spirit abideth among us. The Holy Ghost descended upon the church at
   Pentecost, and He has never gone back again: there is no record of the
   Spirit's return to heaven. He will abide with the true church evermore.
   This is our hope for the present struggle. The Spirit of God remaineth
   with us.

   To what end, my brethren, is this Spirit with us? Let us think of this,
   that we may be encouraged at this time. The Spirit of God remaineth
   among you to aid and assist the ministry which He has already given.
   Oh, that the prayers of God's people would always go up for God's
   ministers, that they may speak with a divine power and influence which
   none shall be able to gainsay! We look too much for clever men; we seek
   out fluent and flowery speakers; we sigh for men cultured and trained
   in all the knowledge of the heathen: nay, but if we sought more for
   unction, for divine authority, and for the power which doth hedge about
   the man of God, how much wiser should we be! Oh, that all of us who
   profess to preach the gospel would learn to speak in entire dependence
   upon the direction of the Holy Spirit, not daring to utter our own
   words, but even trembling lest we should do so, and committing
   ourselves to that secret influence without which nothing will be
   powerful upon the conscience or converting to the heart. Know ye not
   the difference between the power that cometh of human oratory, and that
   which cometh by the divine energy which speaks so to the heart that men
   cannot resist it? We have forgotten this too much. It were better to
   speak six words in the power of the Holy Ghost than to preach seventy
   years of sermons without the Spirit. He who rested on those who have
   gone to their reward in heaven can rest this day upon our ministers and
   bless our evangelists, if we will but seek it of Him. Let us cease to
   grieve the Spirit of God, and look to him for help to the faithful
   ministers who are yet spared to us.

   This same Spirit who of old gave to His church eminent teachers can
   raise up other and more useful men. The other day, a brother from Wales
   told me of the great men he remembered: he said that he had never heard
   such a one as Christmas Evans, who surpasses all men when he was in the
   hwyl. I asked him if he knew another Welsh minister who preached like
   Christmas Evans. "No," he said, "we have no such man in Wales in our
   days." So in England we have neither Wesley nor Whitefield, nor any of
   their order; yet, as with God is the residue of the Spirit, He can
   fetch out from some chimney-corner another Christmas Evans, or find in
   our Sunday-school another George Whitefield, who shall declare the
   gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Let us never fear for
   the future, or despair for the present, since the Spirit of God
   remaineth with us. What if the growing error of the age should have
   silenced the last tongue that speaks out the old gospel, let not faith
   be weakened. I hear the tramp of legions of soldiers of the cross. I
   hear the clarion voices of hosts of preachers. "The Lord gave the word;
   great was the company of those that published it." Have faith in God
   through our Lord Jesus Christ! When He ascended on high He led
   captivity captive, and received gifts for men. He then gave apostles,
   teachers, preachers, and evangelists, and He can do the like again. Let
   us fall back upon the eternal God, and never be discouraged for an
   instant.

   Nor is this all. The Holy Spirit being with us, He can move the whole
   church to exercise its varied ministries. This is one of the things we
   want very much--that every member of the church should recognise that
   he is ordained to service. Everyone in Christ, man or woman, hath some
   testimony to bear, some warning to give, some deed to do in the name of
   the holy child Jesus; and if the Spirit of God be poured out upon our
   young men and our maidens, each one will be aroused to energetic
   service. Both small and great will be in earnest, and the result upon
   the slumbering masses of our population will surprise us all. Sometimes
   we lament that the churches are so dull. There is an old proverb which
   says of So-and-so, that he was "as sound asleep as a church." I suppose
   there is nothing that can sleep so soundly as a church. But yet the
   Spirit of God still remaineth, and therefore churches go to be
   awakened. I mean that not only in part but as a whole, a church may be
   quickened. The dullest professor, the most slovenly believer, the most
   captious and useless member of a church, may yet be turned to good
   account. I see them like a stack of faggots, piled up, dead and dry. Oh
   for the fire! We will have a blaze out of them yet.

   Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove, brood over the dark, disordered
   church as once thou didst over chaos, and order shall come out of
   confusion, and the darkness shall fly before the light. Only let the
   Spirit be with us, and we have all that is wanted for victory. Give us
   His presence, and everything else will come in its due season for the
   profitable service of the entire church.

   If the Spirit be with us, there will come multitudinous conversions. We
   cannot get at "the lapsed masses," as they are pedantically called. We
   cannot stir the crass infidelity of the present age: no, we cannot, but
   He can. All things are possible with God. If you walk down to our
   bridges at a certain hour of the day you will see barges and vessels
   lying in the mud; and all the king's horses and all the king's men
   cannot stir them. Wait until the tide comes in, and they will walk the
   water like things of life. The living flood accomplishes at once what
   no mortals can do. And so to-day our churches cannot stir. What shall
   we do? Oh, that the Holy Spirit would come with a flood-tide of His
   benign influences, as He will if we will but believe in Him; as He must
   if we will but cry unto Him; as He shall if we will cease to grieve
   Him. Everything will be even as the saints desire when the Lord of
   saints is with us. The hope of the continuance and increase of the
   church lies in the remaining of the Spirit with us. The hope of the
   salvation of London lies in the wonder-working Spirit. Let us bow our
   heads and worship the omnipotent Spirit who deigns to work in us, by
   us, and with us.

   Then, brethren, if this should happen--and I see not why it should
   not--then we may expect to see the church put on her beautiful
   garments; then shall she begin to clear herself of th errors which now
   defile her; then shall she press to her bosom the truths which she now
   begins to forget; then will she go back to the pure fount of
   inspiration and drink from the Scriptures of truth; and then out of the
   midst of her shall flow no turbid streams, but rivers of living water.
   If the Holy Ghost will work among us we shall rejoice in the Lord, and
   glory in the name of our God.

   When once the Spirit of God putteth forth His might all things else
   will be in accord with Him. Notice that in the rest of the
   chapter--which I shall read now, not as relating to that temple at all,
   but to the church of God--there is great comfort given to us. If the
   Holy Spirit be once given, then we may expect providence to co-operate
   with the church of God. Read verse 6: "Yet once, it is a little while,
   and I will shake heaven and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land. I
   will shake all nations." Great commotions will co-operate with the Holy
   Spirit. We may expect that God will work for His people in an
   extraordinary fashion if they will but be faithful to Him. Empires will
   collapse, and times will change, for the truth's sake. Expect the
   unexpected, reckon upon that which is unlikely, if it be necessary for
   the growth of the kingdom. Of old the earth helped the woman when the
   dragon opened his mouth to drown her with the floods that he cast
   forth: unexpected help shall come to us when affairs are at their
   worst.

   Specially do I look for a shaking among the hosts of unbelief. How
   often did the Lord of old rout His enemies without Israel drawing
   sword! The watchword was, "Stand ye still, and see the salvation of the
   Lord." The adversaries of old fell out among themselves; and they will
   do so again. When Cadmus slew the dragon with his javelin, he was
   bidden to sow its teeth in the earth. When he did so, according to the
   classic fable, he saw rising out of the ground nodding plumes, and
   crested helmets, and broad shoulders of armed men. Up from the earth
   there sprang a host of warriors; but Cadmus needed not to fly; for the
   moment they found their feet, these children of the dragon fell upon
   each other till scarcely one was left. Error, like Saturn, devours its
   own children. Those that fight against the Lord of hosts are not agreed
   among themselves; they shall sheathe their swords in each other's
   bosoms.

   I saw in the night vision the sea, the deep and broad sea of truth,
   flashing with its silver waves. Lo, a black horse came out of the
   darkness and went down to the deep, threatening to drink it dry. I saw
   him stand there drinking, and swelling as he drank. In his pride he
   trusted that he could snuff up Jordan at a draught. I stood by and saw
   him drink, and then plunge further into the sea, to drink still more.
   Again he plunged in with fury, and soon he lost his footing, and I saw
   him no more, for the deep had swallowed him that boasted that he could
   swallow it. Rest assured that every black horse of error that comes
   forth to swallow up the sea of divine truth shall be drowned therein.
   Wherefore be of good courage. God, who maketh the earth and the heavens
   to shake, shall cause each error to fall like an untimely fig.

   And next, the Lord in this chapter promises His people that they shall
   have all the supplies they need for His work. They feared that they
   could not build His house, because of their poverty; but, saith the
   Lord of hosts, "The silver and the gold are mine." When the church of
   God believes in God, and goes forward bravely, she need not trouble as
   to supplies. Her God will provide for her. He that gives the Holy Ghost
   will give gold and silver according as they are needed; therefore let
   us be of good courage. If God is with us, why need we fear? One of our
   English kings once threatened the great city of London that if its
   councillors talked so independently, he would--yes--he would, indeed he
   would--take his court away from the city. The Lord Mayor on that
   occasion replied, that if his majesty would graciously leave the river
   Thames behind him, the citizens would try to get on without his court.
   If any say, "If you hold to these old-fashioned doctrines you will lose
   the educated, the wealthy, the influential," we answer: But if we do
   not lose the godly and the presence of the Holy Ghost we are not in the
   least alarmed. If the Holy Ghost remaineth with us, there is a river
   the streams whereof make glad the city of God. Brethren, my heart leaps
   within me as I cry, "The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is
   our refuge." "Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed,
   and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea."

   The best comfort of all remained: "The desire of all nations shall
   come." This was in a measure fulfilled when Jesus came into that latter
   house and caused all holy hearts to sing for gladness; but it was not
   wholly fulfilled in that way; for if you notice, in the ninth verse it
   is written, "The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of
   the former; and in this place will I give peace," which the Lord did
   not fully do to the second temple, since that was destroyed by the
   Romans. But there is another advent, when "the desire of all nations
   shall come" in power and glory; and this is our highest hope. Though
   truth may be driven back, and error may prevail, Jesus comes, and He is
   the great Lord and patron of truth: He shall judge the world in
   righteousness, and the people in equity. Here is our last resource;
   here are God's reserves. He whom we serve liveth and reigneth for ever
   and ever; and He saith, "Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with
   me, to give every man according as his work shall be." "Therefore, my
   beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the
   work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain
   in the Lord."

   III. I should have done if it had not been that this text seemed to me
   to overflow so much, that it might not only refresh God's people, but
   give drink to thirsty sinners who are seeking the Lord. For a moment or
   two I give myself to ENCOURAGEMENT FURTHER APPLIED.

   It is at the beginning of every gracious purpose that men have most
   fear, even as these people had who had newly begun to build. When first
   the Holy Spirit begins to strive with a man to lead him to Jesus, he is
   apt to say--"I cannot; I dare not; it is impossible. How can I believe
   and live?" Now I want to speak to some of you here who are willing to
   find Christ, and to encourage you by the truth that the Spirit lives to
   help you. I would even like to speak to those who are not anxious to be
   saved. I remember that Dr. Payson, an exceedingly earnest and useful
   man of God, once did a singular thing. He had been holding inquiry
   meetings with all sorts of people, and great numbers had been saved. At
   last, one Sunday he gave out that he should have a meeting on Monday
   night of those persons who did not desire to be saved; and, strange to
   say, some twenty persons came who did not wish to repent or believe. He
   spoke to them and said, "I am sure that if a little film, thin as a web
   of the gossamer, were let down by God from heaven to each one of you,
   you would not push it away from you. Although it were almost invisible,
   you would value even the slightest connection between you and heaven.
   Now, your coming to meet me to-night is a little link with God. I want
   it to increase in strength till you are joined to the Lord for ever."
   He spoke to them most tenderly, and God blessed those people who did
   not desire to be saved, so that before the meeting was over they were
   of another mind. The film had become a thicker thread, and it grew and
   grew until the Lord Christ held them by it for ever. Dear friends, the
   fact of your being in the Tabernacle this morning is like that filmy
   thread: do not put it away. Here is your comfort, the Holy Ghost still
   works with the preaching of the word. Do I hear you say, "I cannot feel
   my need of Christ as I want to feel it"? The Spirit remaineth among us.
   He can make you feel more deeply the guilt of sin and your need of
   pardon. "But I have heard so much about conviction and repentance; I do
   not seem to have either of them." Yet the Spirit remaineth with us, and
   that Spirit is able to work in you the deepest conviction and the
   truest repentance. "O sir, I do not feel as if I could do anything":
   but the Spirit remaineth with us, and all things that are needful for
   godliness He can give. He can work in you to will and to do of His own
   good pleasure. "But I want to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ unto
   eternal life." Who made you want to do that? Who but the Holy Spirit?
   Therefore He is still at work with you; and though as yet you do not
   understand what believing is, or else I am persuaded you would believe
   at once, the Spirit of God can instruct you in it. You are blind, but
   He can give you sight; you are paralyzed, but He can give you
   strength--the Spirit of God remaineth.

   "Oh, but that doctrine of regeneration staggers me: you know, we must
   be born again." Yes, we are born again of the Spirit, and the Spirit
   remaineth still with us; He is still mighty to work that wondrous
   change, and to bring you out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom
   of God's dear Son. The Spirit remaineth with us, blessed be His name!
   "Ah, dear sir," says one, "I want to conquer sin"! Who made you desire
   to conquer sin? Who, but the Spirit that remaineth with us? He will
   give you the sword of the Spirit and teach you how to use it, and He
   will give you both the will and the power to use it successfully.
   Through the Spirit's might you can overcome every sin, even that which
   has dragged you down and disgraced you. The Spirit of God is still
   waiting to help you. When I think of the power of the Spirit of God, I
   look hopefully upon every sinner here this morning. I bless His name
   that He can work in you all that is pleasing in His sight. Some of you
   may be very careless, but He can make you thoughtful. Coming up to
   London to see the Exhibition, I hope you may yourselves become an
   exhibition of divine grace. You think not about things, but He can make
   you feel at this moment a sweet softness stealing over you, until you
   long to be alone and to get home to the old arm-chair and there seek
   the Lord. You can thus be led to salvation.

   I thought when I came in here that I should have a picked congregation;
   and so I have. You are one of them. Wherever you come from, I want you
   now to seek the Lord. He has brought you here, and He means to bless
   you. Yield yourselves to Him while His sweet Spirit pleads with you.
   While the heavenly wind softly blows upon you open wide every window.
   You have not felt that you wanted it; but that is the sure proof that
   you need it; for he that does not know his need of Christ, is most in
   need. Open wide your heart that the Spirit may teach you your need;
   above all, breathe the prayer that He would help you this morning to
   look to the Lord Jesus Christ, for "there is life in a look at the
   Crucified One--there is life at this moment for you." "Oh," you say,
   "if I were to begin I should not keep on." No; if you began perhaps you
   would not; but if He begins with you He will keep on. The final
   perseverance of saints is the result of the final perserverance of the
   Holy Spirit; He perseveres to bless, and we persevere in receiving the
   blessing. If He begins, you have begun with a divine power that
   fainteth not neither is weary. I wish it might so happen that on this
   fifth day of the ninth month, not the prophet Haggai, but I, God's
   servant, may have spoken to you such a word by the witness of the Holy
   Ghost, "From this day will I bless you"! Go away with that promise
   resting upon you. I would like to give a shake of the hand to every
   stranger here this morning, and say, "Brother, in the name of the Lord
   I wish you from this day a blessing." Amen and amen.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Haggai 1; 2:1-9.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--956, 957, 451.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Very Bold Prophecy

   (No. 1919)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 12, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I was sought by those who did not ask for Me; I was found by those who
   did notseek Me: I said, Behold Me, behold Me, to a nation that was not
   called by My name" Isaiah 65:1.

   this is the passage which was quoted by the Apostle Paul in the 10th
   chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. At the 20th verse of that chapter
   he says--"Isaiah is very bold, and says, I was found of them that
   sought Me not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after Me.
   But to Israel He says, All day long I have stretched forth My hands
   unto a disobedient and gainsaying people." The Apostle followed the
   Septuagint translation, but altered the position of the clauses.

   We learn on Inspired authority that this is a very bold passage. It
   required much courage to utter it at the first and, in Paul's day, it
   needed still more to quote it and press it home upon the Jews around
   him. He who protests against a self-righteous people and angers them by
   showing that others whom they despised are saved while they,
   themselves, are being lost, will have need of a dauntless spirit. The
   Israelite people thought that they had a monopoly on the Grace of God,
   that the Lord who had chosen their fathers and had indulged them with a
   Divine Revelation, would never deprive them of their advantages, nor
   advance others to the same privileges. They dreamed that God was almost
   bound to bless them above all the nations that were upon the face of
   the earth.

   To meet this national conceit with plain rebuke needed one who was very
   bold. When Paul spoke of his own mission to the Gentiles, the Jews
   lifted up their voices and cried out, "Away with such a fellow from the
   earth: for it is not fit that he should live." The Apostle, therefore,
   knew that Isaiah was very bold when, in former ages, he made Israel
   know that God would save a people who were not called by His name while
   the favored people would die in their sins because they would not
   listen to the entreaties of their God. It becomes the servants of God
   to be bold in rebuking sin and protesting against pride--indeed, in all
   their messages it behooves them to be fearless. They do not deliver
   their own words, otherwise they might apologize for their speech. They
   speak the words of the living God and it is not for them, for fear of
   feeble men, to soften their words and smooth their tongues. Ah, no! He
   that is ashamed to speak the Truth of God has need to be ashamed of
   himself! It is treason against the King of Kings to tone down the Word
   of the Lord. Surely, among all cowards, he is the worst who is afraid
   to be true to God. Such preachers must be especially pointed at in the
   text--"But the fearful and unbelieving shall have their part in the
   lake which burns with fire and brimstone: which is the second

   death."

   This text has the clear ring of Free Grace about it and, for this
   reason, it may be called bold. He had need be bold who, in this day,
   would preach fully and plainly the Doctrine of the Sovereign Grace of
   God. This cultured age repudiates the Doctrines of Grace which are the
   heart of evangelical teaching! Men are vexed when we declare that God
   is first in human salvation and seeks men before they seek Him. Many
   grow red in the face if we testify that the Lord, in His gracious
   Sovereignty, meets with persons who have never sought Him and brings
   them to Himself, changing their hearts by His own eternal Spirit--while
   He leaves others to perish in their sins because they resist His Spirit
   and refuse the invitations of His mercy. Yet we shall not cease most
   joyfully to sing unto our God--

   "No sinner can be beforehand with Thee-- Your Grace is most sovereign,
   most rich, and most free."

   While many who have heard the Gospel from their childhood continue to
   hear it in vain, others, who have never heard it before, are brought by
   what are commonly called accidental circumstances to hear the
   quickening Word of God and at once they embrace it and live! My prayer
   has been that this morning our text may be again fulfilled! May the
   Lord

   be sought by those who, until now, have not enquired for Him! May many
   who have strayed into this place thoughtlessly find Jesus this day! It
   may be you are unused to Divine things, unaccustomed to the gracious
   commands of love which bid you trust in Jesus. Oh, that you may at once
   be convicted, converted, renewed and saved! While the Lord Jesus, at
   this hour, calls to you, "Behold Me, behold Me," I trust you will be
   made to long, to look, to live and to love! Truly it will be a wonder
   of Grace, but our Lord is the God of wonders, His name is Wonderful!
   May He get to Himself great renown throughout eternity by being found,
   this day, by those who sought Him not! While I am preaching I shall be
   praying in the Holy Spirit that this Word of the Lord may be carried
   out most evidently in the midst of this assembly.

   I shall ask your earnest attention, at once, to the text in which there
   are four notable things--the personality of God in the work of Grace;
   His delight in it; the description which He gives of it and the
   purposes which He would serve by that description. May the Holy Spirit
   help us in this four-fold meditation!

   I. The first point for your consideration is THE PERSONALITY OF GOD IN
   THE WORK OF HIS GRACE. This is remarkably prominent in the words before
   us. Let me read them and lay the emphasis upon the personal pronouns
   which relate to God. "I was sought by those who did not ask for Me; I
   was found by those who did not seek Me; I said, Behold Me, behold Me,
   to a nation that was not called by My name." Is not the Lord here, not
   only as Speaker, but as the theme of His own speech? It is most surely
   and emphatically true that God is present in the works of His Grace. He
   operates upon the heart, personally--not only by second causes. He
   works in us to will and to do of His own good pleasure. He is
   personally operative as well as personally observant of everything
   gracious.

   The philosophy now in vogue labors to shut God out of His own creation.
   They inform us that by some means this world and all that is in it were
   evolved. Even this will not long content the men of progress--they care
   nothing for evolution in itself, but only so far as it may serve their
   purpose of escaping from the thought of God! If, by some method or
   other, vain men could scheme a world without God, they would be
   delighted--and that philosopher who comes nearest to the invention of a
   subtle lie which will justify their forgetfulness of God--is the prince
   of the hour, the favorite of his age! Yes, God must be obliterated
   somehow, for, "the fool has said in his heart, There is no God."

   These wise men would have done with God, also, in the ruling and
   overruling of Providence. According to the modern notion, the universe
   is like a watch which goes because it has been wound up long ago. It is
   not even admitted that there was a God to wind it up, but anyway, if
   there is such a great personal Power, He has put the watch under His
   pillow and has gone to sleep while the machine goes on ticking without
   Him. Certain fixed laws operate without any force at their back and the
   world is so self-contained that it goes on by itself without God--this
   is the modern idea. They have no one to wind up this watch, again, when
   it runs down--no prospect of new heavens and a new earth, wherein
   righteousness shall dwell. Those who would get rid of God out of Nature
   and Providence have tried their hands at making a religion without God
   and a pretty religion it is--it is too small a business to need
   consideration!

   Those of us who rejoice to see the Lord both in Creation and in
   Providence know assuredly that He is most conspicuous in the Kingdom of
   Grace. There He is the First and the Last, the Alpha and Omega, the
   Beginning and the End. The Lord God in Christ Jesus is the sum and
   substance of salvation--to Him we look, in Him we find all things, by
   Him we come to Him and He is our All in All. God gives freely to those
   who have, until now, been far off from Him, that salvation of which
   Jonah said, "Salvation is of the Lord." Human salvations are the wages
   of works--Divine salvation is the gift of Grace.

   Notice that in the text the personality of God comes forth in that He
   Himself is observant of all that is done. Do any seek Him?--He says, "I
   am sought." Do any find Him?--he says, "I am found." Is there any
   preaching of the Gospel?-- the Lord declares, "I said, Behold Me,
   behold Me." God takes note of it all! Not a prayer is breathed, nor a
   sigh heaved, nor a note of praise uttered from the heart, but what the
   Omniscient Lord has noted every thought. Those eyes which behold
   microscopic life in the lowest depths of the sea and trace the flight
   of the condor in its utmost height, spy out the most sorrowful anguish
   of seeking souls and observes the most elevated joy of souls that find
   their God! Grace in its beginnings, its growth, its declining, its
   increasing and its struggles is always under the Divine observation. At
   this moment, God's Omnipresent heart beats in sympathy with all our
   hearts if we are seeking His love. You have not to advise Him that you
   are seeking--He perceives your secret thoughts and meets you in your
   return to Him. "Behold he prays" is God's immediate expression
   concerning you if you begin to pray at this hour! If you dart a glance
   of faith to the Lord Jesus, He will at once yield to you and say, "I am
   found." The Lord's eyes are on the heart which feels His Grace.

   Further, God's personality in the work of Grace is conspicuous because
   He Himself is the great Object of desire where Grace is in operation.
   When men are savingly awakened, they seek--what? Religion? By no means!
   They seek God if they seek aright! We hear, sometimes, the saying that
   such a one has "found religion." Do not use the expression! It is a
   vain one. That which men find when they find peace and eternal life is
   God Himself! The Lord says, "I am found." If men do not find God, they
   have found nothing.

   God Himself fills the vision of faith. Observe the words, "Behold Me,
   behold Me." We look to God in Christ and find all that our soul needs.
   If any man is saved, it will be through looking to God, as it is
   written, "They looked unto Him and were lightened and their faces were
   not ashamed." O my Hearer, behold your God! Would you have pardon for
   sin? Seek God in Christ Jesus! Would you have renewal of heart? Seek
   God the Holy Spirit, by whom, alone, we are born again! Would you be
   God's child? Receive Jesus, for, "to as many as received Him, to them
   gave He power" (or authority) "to become the sons of God, even to them
   that believe on His name!" God is the sum of our necessities. God we
   seek as sinners. God we find as saints!

   I have sometimes put it thus to you--Here is a little child picked from
   the gutter. It is starved, unclothed, unwashed and deathly sick. What
   does it need? Well, it would take me a long time to write out a list of
   all its needs. It needs washing, clothing, warming, feeding, nursing,
   loving--no, I will not attempt to complete the catalog, but I will tell
   you all in a word--this little child needs its mother! If it finds a
   loving and capable mother, it has all that it needs at once. Every lost
   soul of man needs a thousand things, but no soul needs more than it
   will find in God! The lost prodigal needs bread and a host of other
   things--and he finds all when he carries out the resolve, "I will arise
   and go to my Father." It is therefore beautifully evident that God
   displays His personality in Grace since He is, Himself, that which the
   soul seeks, finds and rejoices in. "He that is our God is the God of
   salvation." Yes, more, as Isaiah puts it in his 12th chapter, "Behold,
   God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the Lord
   Jehovah is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation."

   The loving personality of God comes out in the work of Grace, in that
   He Himself is the Speaker of that call by which men are saved. Here are
   the words: "I said, Behold Me, behold Me." The Lord, Himself, speaks
   the effectual Word! Did not Isaiah proclaim the Gospel? Yes, he did,
   and this was the result of Isaiah's speech--"Who has believed our
   report?" But when God's arm is revealed, so that God speaks through His
   Prophet, then a very different result follows, for God's Word shall not
   return unto Him void, but it shall prosper in the thing whereto He sent
   it. Dear Soul, if you have looked to Christ, it is because Christ has
   looked at you and influenced you to look to Him! If there is any
   glancing of the eyes, even, of the feeblest faith towards God, it is
   because He has said, by His Spirit, "Look unto Me and be you saved, all
   the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else."

   I like to think of the Gospel as not only prepared and revealed by God,
   but as actually spoken by Himself into the ear and heart of the man to
   whom it becomes the power of God unto salvation. You have never heard a
   living word yet, my Brother--a really living, quickening word from my
   lips, alone--it may have come, perhaps, through my mouth as the vocal
   organ, but if it is a quickening word, it must have come from God
   Himself! Man's words are mere breath, but the Word of the Lord is
   spirit and life! "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made" and
   all heavenly things come from the same Source. Praise, then, the
   blessed God who thus personally appears in the conversion of everyone
   who is led to seek and find his God! It is no wonder that He is found
   of those who sought Him not, when He, Himself, comes forth to reveal
   Himself to men.

   Moreover, God is seen in the work of Grace, for He Himself is the
   Director of the message. "I said, Behold Me, behold Me, to a nation
   that was not called by My name" Not only does God speak the Gospel, but
   He speaks it home to those whom He appoints to hear it. We who preach
   know not to whom the Truth will be applied. I speak unto this crowd
   this day as I am called to do--in so doing I scatter handfuls of
   heavenly Seed--but how do I know where it shall fall? God's eternal
   purpose carries every single grain of the good Seed into the furrow
   which He has prepared for it. Very marvelous is it how the Lord
   prepares the ground for the Seed and the Seed for the ground!

   Of late, Thursday night after Thursday night I have had singularly
   striking proofs of this. Letters have come again and again of this
   sort--"I felt drawn to attend the Tabernacle from a notice in the
   paper, but I shall never forget the words which I then heard, for they
   were evidently meant for me." Then the person goes on to detail certain
   circumstances of his life which have corresponded, with remarkable
   minuteness, to observations made in the sermon. How is this? The

   preacher knew nothing of the matter and yet the Word of God fitted like
   a glove to the hand! Nor is this all, for, strange to tell, the message
   has seemed equally personal to another individual whose circumstances
   were of another order. God's Word has many operations and what, to one,
   is an appropriate word of encouragement, may be to another an equally
   suitable word of rebuke! He can kill and cure by the same Word! This is
   the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes! If the preaching of
   the Gospel were but a human act, it would produce human results and
   there it would end. But if God, Himself, speaks by His servant and
   directs His Word by His own power, then the Divine agency will produce
   Divine results to the praise of the Glory of His Grace! In the Kingdom
   of Grace, the Word of God is a manifestation of God--by it He works in
   the new creation even as He did in the old. "Faith comes by hearing,
   and hearing by the Word of God." "The preaching of the Cross is to them
   that perish, foolishness, but unto us who are saved, it is the power of
   God." I call upon you, therefore, Beloved, to rejoice that God comes
   very near to us in the work of Grace and is made known to us as our
   God.

   This surrounds the Gospel with a strange solemnity. If the Gospel
   blesses us, it is not it, but God that blesses--God Himself has come to
   us! Yet remember that this fact has another aspect to it, for if the
   Gospel is rejected, it is God that is rejected. Read the next verse--"I
   have spread out My hands all the day unto a rebellious people." Yes, if
   you accept the Gospel, you have found your God, but if you reject the
   Gospel, you have rejected God Himself! The Gospel may be brought to you
   by the poorest of my Master's servants, but since it is God's own
   message of love--in refusing it you refuse your God. It is true that
   the hands which were stretched out to you were human hands and,
   therefore, you criticized the style of the invitation and, perhaps,
   refused it with scorn--but at the back of the feeble ambassador stood
   the great King--and behind the simple invitation was the sublime mind
   of God! He takes it ill that you refuse His message, seeing that in so
   doing you refuse Him who spoke from Heaven! Oh, how differently would
   some of you hear if you did but remember that in the Gospel, God,
   Himself, comes to you! Father, Son and Holy Spirit have come to
   pleading terms with you--will you, can you, turn a deaf ear to the
   Sacred Trinity?

   II. But now, secondly, dear Friends, in the text I see THE DELIGHT
   WHICH GOD TAKES IN THE WORK OF

   GRACE. The text is the utterance of delight! God is glad to be sought
   and found by those who once were negligent of

   Him.

   It is evident that He rejoices in contrast to the complaint of the next
   verse. It is with joy that God says, "I was sought by those who did not
   ask for Me; I was found by those who did not seek Me," for it is placed
   in opposition to the mournful notes in which the Lord says, "I have
   spread out My hands all the day unto a rebellious people." We speak of
   God after the manner of men, for so God speaks of Himself. It is true,
   then, that He is hurt and grieved when He stretches out His hands in
   vain. We read of some of old that, "They vexed His Holy Spirit."
   Frequently are similar expressions used in Scripture. When His kindness
   is rejected, God is grieved. Listen to His cry--"Hear, O heavens, and
   give ear, O earth: for the Lord has spoken, I have nourished and
   brought up children and they have rebelled against Me." As a relief to
   such a lamentation, this verse has in it a true joy, an intensity of
   satisfaction because some are coming to peace and love. God speaks it
   with pleasure--"I was found by those who did not seek Me." Do not
   forget that utterance, "As I live, says the Lord, I have no pleasure in
   the death of him that dies, but that he turn unto Me and live." It
   gives God pleasure to see men turn to Him. Infinitely happy as He must
   be from His own glorious Nature, yet there is a joy which only He feels
   when He is sought after and found by the sons of men--and this becomes
   special when the most unlikely ones are seeking and finding. God is
   most glad when He says, "Behold Me, behold Me," unto a nation that was
   not called by His name.

   The Lord rejoices in each step of the process. There is a poor soul
   beginning to cry, "Oh that I knew where I might find Him!" And lo, the
   Lord says, "I am sought." A man has only just begun to attend the House
   of Prayer; he has only lately commenced the earnest study of the Bible.
   The Lord sees it and He says, "I am sought." As when a fisherman smiles
   because a fish has begun to nibble at the bait, so the Lord notes the
   first moves of the heart towards Himself and He says, "I am sought." It
   was but a poor little prayer you prayed last night. You started up from
   your knees astonished to find that you had actually been attempting to
   pray! But your heavenly Father saw you and He said with pleasure, "I am
   sought." "When he was yet a great way off his Father saw him." Behold
   the infinite compassion of the all-observing

   God!

   The very next sentence is, "I am found." What a delight it must be to
   God's heart when, at last, the poor sinner cries, "Lord, I believe;
   help my unbelief!" Then Jesus says, "I am found." Do not imagine that a
   soul ever found the great

   Father without the great Father's knowing it. There is a consciousness
   ofjoy in us when we can say, "I found Him whom my soul loves." But
   there is a greater and fuller consciousness on the part of Him whom we
   have found when He declares, in the words of the text, "I am found."
   God rejoices when He is sought and when He is found! Oh do not think
   that you seek an unwilling God! He comes to meet you! He falls upon
   your neck and kisses you! Whatever you do in coming to God, He views it
   with infinite joy.

   The Lord also rejoices in the persons who seek Him. He says, "I was
   sought by those who did not ask for Me." God takes special joy in being
   sought by those who formerly did not seek Him. He will be glad for any
   heart to keep on seeking that has begun to seek, but He is best pleased
   when non-seekers become seekers. You that were taught to pray at your
   mother's knee, God is glad to hear your sincere petitions, but if there
   is a man or woman here who has never prayed before in their life, let
   them begin at once and the Lord will rejoice to hear them! Has your
   mind never thrilled with the holy desire to seek your Creator,
   Preserver and Friend? Have you been careless and godless? Then turn to
   Him at once and He will delight in having mercy upon you. Oh come, you
   giddy ones, and seek Him whom you have never asked for! Come, you
   thoughtless ones, and find Him whom you have never sought! Come, you
   who have never called upon the sacred name and behold your God, your
   Savior! This is the good pleasure of God, His purpose and His promise
   to His Son, "Behold, You shall call a nation that You know not, and
   nations that knew You not shall run unto You because of the Lord Your
   God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for He has glorified You."

   "Alas," says one, "I have never sought Him!" Yet you may find Him, for
   the Word of the Lord is, "I was found by those who did not seek Me."
   Our Savior tells us of a merchant of earnest spirit who went out to
   seek goodly pearls. He traversed many lands inspecting a variety of
   jewels that he might find one especially precious pearl and, at last,
   he found it and bought it. They that seek the Lord shall find Him! But
   there was another man whose mind sought after less ambitious
   matters--he was of the earth, earthy. He yoked his bullocks, one
   morning, to the plow and he was thinking only of his clods and of his
   fields, when, all of a sudden, the plow made a stop--there was
   something in the way. He stopped the oxen; he examined the ground; he
   dug in the earth. He came to an old crock and in that crock he found a
   treasure of gold and of silver. He had found what he never looked for
   and, the moment he found it, he decided to sell all that he had and buy
   the field, that he might possess the treasure.

   My Hearer, you came to London on pleasure, or on business, or to see
   the Exhibition [The International Exhibition of Navigation, Commerce
   and Industry in Liverpool, England, was opened by Queen Victoria on 11
   May 1886]--you certainly did not come with the expectation of finding
   Christ and eternal life! I hope you have stumbled on full salvation at
   this moment. Happiness and Heaven lie before you--will you not have
   them? The plow has struck on the hidden treasure of the blessed Gospel
   and if you will stoop down and look, here are riches such as you never
   dreamed of! I pray that God the Holy Spirit may so sweetly influence
   your heart that you may resolve to have Jesus at any price and give up
   all that you have of sin or self-righteousness in order to possess Him.
   Come to Jesus just as you are and receive, at once, His full salvation!
   If you do that, God will rejoice over you! Not only will we be glad,
   who are His servants on earth, and the angels who are His servants in
   Heaven, but Father, Son and Holy Spirit will rejoice over you! The Lord
   will say, "I was found by those who did not seek Me."

   I rejoice to have such a text to preach from! Oh that many of you who
   are wicked, careless, graceless men may find God at once and thus set
   all Heaven's bells a-ringing for joy!

   The Lord rejoices in the numbers who seek Him and find Him. "I said,
   Behold Me, behold Me, unto a nation." When shall the day come that
   nations shall be born at once? We want to see tens of thousands brought
   to Jesus! If you all come, the gate of mercy is wide enough for you and
   God will be glorified in your coming--yes, His sacred heart will be
   glad as He sees you running to Him. Draw them, sweet Spirit! Draw all
   London to Jesus! Draw all England to Jesus! Draw the world to Jesus!
   For Your love's sake do this, we beseech You.

   III. Now we have a third matter to consider and that is--THE
   DESCRIPTION WHICH GOD HIMSELF GIVES

   OF THE WORK OF GRACE. Time flies too quickly, therefore let me give you
   only rough hints instead of full instructions. This verse is a little
   Bible. Here you have the experience of salvation described.

   The Lord tells us where He finds the objects of His Grace. He says,
   "They asked not for Me; they sought Me not; they were not called by My
   name." In the Book of Hosea we read that they were not His people.
   These are the careless and senseless beings whom the Lord called by His
   Grace! He manifested great love to us when we were dead in trespasses
   and

   sins. By nature we are so much worthless clay and we must owe all to
   the Potter's hands if we ever become vessels fit for the Master's use.
   When there is no good thought, nor wish, nor desire in us, then God
   comes to us in abounding love. What a mercy it is that He comes to us
   in our sin and misery, for assuredly we should not otherwise come to
   Him! Remember the description which the Lord gives of His Israel as a
   helpless infant which had never been washed, nor swaddled, nor cared
   for, but was cast out in the open field with no eyes to pity it? Then
   it is written, "And when I passed by you and saw you polluted in your
   own blood, I said unto you when you were in your blood, Live! Yes, I
   said unto you when you were in your blood, Live." Beloved, we are in
   the same condition by nature--without life, or power, or goodness, or
   anything that can commend us to God--and it is then that the Lord comes
   to us and deals with us in Grace, causing us to seek and find Him! Oh,
   the splendor of the Grace of God!

   Having told us where we were, He next describes that Gospel which comes
   to them as the power of God. Here are His own Words--"I said, Behold
   Me, behold Me." If anybody were to ask me to state the Gospel in a few
   words I should answer--the Lord says, "Behold Me, behold Me." The way
   of salvation is, "Look unto Me and be you saved, all the ends of the
   earth." Christ on the Cross cries to the guilty sinner, "Behold the
   Lamb of God." To encourage a trembling soul to behold Him with
   steadfast hope, the Lord says twice, "Behold Me, behold Me." Does any
   sinner exclaim, "But Lord, I am so filthy?" Do not look at
   yourself--"Behold Me; for I can cleanse you." "But Lord, I am death,
   itself." Do not look at your own death. Behold Me, for I am the
   Resurrection and the Life, "But, Lord, the more I look at myself, the
   more I despair." Then do not look at yourself, but look to Me alone.
   Behold Me and then behold Me again and again--and keep on beholding Me
   till your heart finds perfect rest. Look to Jesus, as God is in Him
   revealed as your Savior and your All! Behold your King is also your
   Sacrifice. You can be justified through Him by whom you shall be judged
   at the Last Great Day. In this verse our Lord seems delighted to
   declare that blessed Gospel which is the two-edged sword of His Grace.
   Hear it, you sinners! Hear it, and obey it at once! What? Will you not
   look? Do you deny your Lord a look? Shall God cry, "Behold Me," and
   will you hide your faces from Him? I trust that some who never knew the
   Gospel will, at this instant, behold the Lamb of God! Look to your
   bleeding Savior, your forgiving God. Look and live!

   Then the Lord goes on to mention the converts which the Gospel makes.
   The careless become seekers, the ungodly become finders, the prayerless
   behold their God and live. Sinners who never sought Him hear this
   Gospel and rejoice in its glad tidings. Herein is joy!

   The Lord also describes the experience of the saved. They asked not for
   Him before, but now they seek after God. This is the first work of
   Grace--to make us seek Grace. God comes to us that we may come to Him.
   Under a sense of need, driven by a gracious hunger, men seek for God as
   for bread and water. Are any of you eager for the living God? This is
   God's finger upon you! He has made you to desire, now, that which once
   you had no care for--and you ought to praise Him for this. Quick upon
   the seeking comes the finding. There is only a semicolon in our text
   between "I am sought," and, "I am found." If you truly seek the Lord,
   you shall soon find Him, even though, for years, you have been
   negligent of the great salvation. I say not that if you seek this or
   that, you shall find it--but if you seek the Lord, He will be found of
   you. He has promised it and He will make it good. He is to be found of
   all them that earnestly desire Him--and the finding frequently follows
   quick upon the seeking!

   I think I may say of this description of the way of salvation, how
   simple it is! God seeks the sinner, the sinner seeks his God. The
   sinner finds his God because God has found the sinner and it is all
   done! Intricacies and difficulties are at an end--believe and live is
   simplicity itself. "Oh, but," says one, "there must be a deal of
   preparation before I who seek God can hope to find Him." There needs no
   preparation. He says, "Seek you My face" and if your heart says, "Your
   face, Lord, will I seek," the Lord is near unto you at once! "But
   surely, Sir, I shall have to feel, I shall have to learn, I shall have
   to do." Oh, yes, you shall have all that, by-and-by, but as to
   salvation, you may have it at once--there is no need of an hour's
   delay--behold your God and live! Salvation lies in your finding Him who
   now displays Himself in the Gospel of His Son. Seeking and finding are
   wrapped up together in these four words--"Behold Me, behold Me."

   Looking is a kind of blended seeking and finding. We look for salvation
   by looking to Jesus. Looking to Christ, we have Christ! We seek Him by
   an act of faith which finds Him. The desire and its fulfillment dwell
   together in that one word, "look." Oh, I wish I knew how, this morning,
   to speak as I should speak about this plain way, this road which the
   wayfaring man may so readily follow, this method which is as gracious
   as the blessing to which it leads! Before I knew the Lord Jesus and His
   Cross I used to fancy that there was some great mystery about faith
   and, poor soul that I was, I feared

   that I should never be able to understand and enjoy it. But I heard a
   simple working man say, "Look to Jesus, look and live," and I was not
   disobedient to the message! I trusted Jesus and I lived! I gave up
   trying to understand--I believed and I lived! I would to God that I
   could slay all the artful doubts and questions which disturb poor
   sinners' brains and harden their hearts. O Friends, be wise enough to
   be fools and accept Jesus to be your wisdom! Be children and sit down
   and let the Lord Jesus teach you! Take what He tells you to be true and
   never doubt again. TRUST! That is all. Look to God for everything and
   you are saved.

   See how God, who delights in the Gospel of His Grace, thus gives us, in
   this verse, a clear and succinct account of the whole process of
   salvation? May He write it out in large letters on our hearts by His
   Spirit!

   IV. I conclude with the fourth point which is this--THE USE WHICH GOD
   MAKES OF ALL THIS. You see, dear Friends, the Lord here took care that
   when He said, "I was sought by those who did not ask for Me," His Words
   should be written down and that they should be made known to us. It is
   not everything that God may say to Himself that He will afterwards
   repeat to us, but here these private utterances of the Divine heart are
   spoken out to us by Isaiah and left on record in this Inspired Book. To
   what end do you think it is so?

   I think, first, that He may excite in us wonder and admiration. What a
   wonder it is that men and women who never had a thought about God but
   an aversion to Him, should, nevertheless, be turned into seekers! It is
   often so. There can be no doubt about it. Sudden conversions have not
   ceased. I knew a man, a singular person, but a sincere Christian, who,
   in his early days, never thought of going to any place of worship. One
   Sunday morning he set out to visit a comrade, intending to conclude a
   bargain which had been talked over the day before about a pair of
   ducks. He stepped into a Meeting House because it began to rain and
   there he found what he had never sought! He never bought that pair of
   ducks. He forgot them, as the woman of Samaria forgot her water pot!
   The Lord met with him, then and there, and he beheld his Savior!

   Many such things have happened in this house and some such will occur
   this morning. Remember the famous Colonel Gardiner? He had made an
   appointment to commit a deed of wickedness, but reached the spot too
   soon and, while he waited, he thought he saw the Savior on the Cross
   and heard Him say, "I have done all this for you; what have you ever
   done for Me?" He fled the place; he sought his own chambers; he cried
   to God--and Colonel Gardiner, from being a wild soldier--became a saint
   of God! Surely this is meant to make us reverently adore the Lord of
   Grace! Oh to see the same today! Then shall we wonder and sing for joy!
   The Lord's Grace is like the dew "that tarries not for man, nor waits
   for the sons of men." His effectual Grace takes us by surprise and
   captures us by force of love--

   "Thus the eternal council ran-- Almighty Grace, arrest that man!" And
   then the man is arrested! He had no intent of being so, but the Divine
   Sheriff's officer laid his hand upon his shoulder and said, "You go no
   further, Sir. You have been the enemy of God but you shall now become
   His friend"--and it is so.

   "Well," says one, "have not men a free will?" Certainly! And the wonder
   is that Free Grace does not violate it and yet the purpose of God is
   accomplished! Free will, alone, ruins men, but free will guided by Free
   Grace is another matter! Lead free will captive to Free Grace and then
   it is freer than ever! And yet the will of the Lord is done. But it is
   God that converts the sinner and He does so that we may believe in the
   exceeding greatness of His Grace. Many a time have the Churches
   rejoiced because of great persecutors who have bowed before the Cross
   and become Believers. I need not mention Saul of Tarsus, for he is only
   one among many. Among the chief of sinners the Lord has found earnest
   heralds of the Gospel, who, by the very fact of their change, have been
   powerful living witnesses to the purifying power of the Doctrine of
   Faith.

   Why does the Lord thus declare the conversion of those who were out of
   the way? I think it is to destroy pride and self-esteem. Some of you
   who are not converted are, in your own esteem, a cut above others. You
   have sittings in the Tabernacle, or else you attend at some thoroughly
   evangelical Church and you say to yourselves, "If anybody will get to
   Heaven we shall, for we hear the pure Word of God." You postpone
   repentance and put off the consideration of eternal things because you
   feel that you can secure salvation when it pleases you. What does God
   do? Why, He sends His Gospel to the abandoned and fallen--and brings
   outcasts to Himself! He saves those whom you thought He had given over
   to their sins, while you Church-going and Chapel-going people, who
   dream that you have a monopoly of privileges, are left

   to your own willfulness! God will pay no regard to caste. He is no
   respecter of persons, but calls whomever He wills, according to His
   royal Word, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy." Pride of
   birth and education He thus casts to the ground.

   He does it, next, to encourage you who are seeking Him, for if those
   who do not seek Him often find Him, why, you that do seek Him are sure
   to find Him! If He is found of those who seek Him not, He will surely
   be found of those who are daily agonizing for Him. Do not believe that
   He will let you seek His face in vain! Come and believe on Him today
   and He will then be found of you.

   I think He does this to encourage workers. Go to work among the worst
   of the worst, for since God is found of those that seek Him not, there
   is hope for the vilest! None of your people are worse than those
   described in the text. O worker, you will gather precious pearls if you
   have but the courage to dive deep for them! Doubtless the choicest
   pearls are hidden in the deepest seas. The Lord can bring to Himself
   infidels, thieves, harlots, blasphemers and such--let us not hesitate
   to go after them, nor fear that our labor will be lost.

   The Lord magnifies His Grace that He may convict those who do not come
   to Him of the greatness of their sin. Look, says He, those who never
   heard of Me, before, have found salvation while you who have been
   instructed, invited and impressed, have still held out and resisted My
   Spirit! You have been persuaded, entreated, prayed over, wept over and
   yet you have not come to Me. Who is to blame for this but yourselves?
   Your own hard hearts have robbed you of mercy! Publicans and harlots
   enter the Kingdom of Heaven before you because of your willful
   unbelief. Take heed, my Hearers! Take heed lest you perish in sight of
   Heaven. I pray you, for God's sake and your own soul's sake, awake to
   righteousness!
     __________________________________________________________________

Believers as Blessed as the Blessed Virgin

   (No. 1920)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 19, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And it came to pass, as He spoke those things, a certain woman of the
   company lifted up her voice, and said to Him, Blessed is the womb that
   bore You and the breasts which nursed You. But He said, More than that,
   blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it!" Luke 11:27,28.

   You do not wonder that this enthusiastic woman lifted up her voice in
   admiration of our Lord. I sometimes wonder when the Gospel is
   preached--whose message is so sweet, so charming, so enchanting--that
   we do not more often observe earnest persons breaking the cold rules of
   propriety and uttering exclamations of delight. Few are the hosannas of
   the multitude today. Is the blood of the world growing colder as the
   ages tell upon it? Perhaps our western constitution is too cool and
   self-contained to allow us to copy the demonstrative manners of the
   East. Assuredly this woman is not to be blamed, but to be commended for
   pouring out her heart's love in honor of the Lord! The wonder is not
   that she spoke as she did, but that men who hear the teaching of Jesus
   do not more often speak in His praise! Of our blessed Lord, His enemies
   said, "Never man spoke like this Man." His very tone was melody and His
   language was the Truth of God set to music! The doctrines which He
   taught were more than golden--they were light to the head and joy to
   the heart. He revealed the inmost heart of God and taught as never
   Prophet or sage had taught before. Oh, "certain woman of the company,"
   though we do not know your name and cannot guess at your history, we
   are in harmony with your outburst of affection! We thank you for giving
   utterance to that feeling of delight and admiration with which we are
   filled. We also cry unto the Lord with you--"Blessed is the womb that
   bore You and the breasts which nursed You."

   This earnest woman did not mean, in the first place, to praise Christ's
   mother. I do not know that she had even seen Mary, or that she would
   have entered into her mind, apart from her matchless Son. It is often
   the way in the East--if they want to insult a man, they speak vilely of
   his mother and, on the other hand--if they wish to honor him, they laud
   his mother to the skies! Yet they may have neither dislike nor esteem
   for the mother--they only reach the son through her. It was while Jesus
   was preaching that this cry was raised--"It came to pass, as He spoke
   these things." It was because He spoke so well that this woman could
   not withhold her words of praise. After her fashion as a woman and, as
   an Eastern woman, she praised the Lord Jesus by extolling His mother.

   But lest such an expression, commendable enough in itself, should in
   later years lend any kind of countenance to that Mariolatry which our
   Savior foresaw, Jesus said, "Yes, she is doubtless blessed, but still
   more blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it!" Our
   Divine Savior, with all the love of His Manhood towards His mother,
   acted towards her in such a way as forever to forbid any degree of
   religious worship being rendered to her. He gave no countenance to the
   superstitious titles of, "Our Lady," "Mother of God," and so forth,
   but, on the contrary, He taught that the nearest fleshly relationship
   to Himself was as nothing compared with spiritual union to Him.
   Remember how it is written-- "Then one said to Him, Behold, your mother
   and your brethren stand outside, desiring to speak with you. But He
   answered and said unto him that told Him, Who is My mother? And who are
   My brethren? And He stretched forth His hand towards His disciples and
   said, Behold My mother and My brethren! For whoever shall do the will
   of My Father which is in Heaven, the same is My brother, and sister,
   and mother."

   Worship is due only to the Lord and, if rendered to the most blessed
   among women, it is idolatrous! This superstition robs God of His Glory
   and ensnares the souls of men! I come back to what I said before--the
   woman's speech, though it needed to be guarded against erroneous use,
   was a true speech and a holy speech.

   Moreover, to do this woman further justice, it was a brave speech for
   her to make, for the Savior had been confronted by the Pharisees and
   scribes, those teachers of the period, those persons of authority. They
   had spoken ill words of Him--they had even dared to say that He cast
   out devils through Beelzebub, the prince of devils! When He had
   answered them discreetly, this woman did, as it were, proclaim His
   victory. She lifted up her voice, so shrill, so loud, so passionate in
   its eagerness that it seemed to cut through all other sounds and
   reached the ears of the Preacher, the ears of all the multitude and, of
   course, the ears of the proud revengeful priests! She cared not--she
   felt that she must declare her feelings and she did so right boldly.
   Oh, if there is a time when not only enthusiasm suggests, but when
   affection compels us to speak for Christ, it is when others are
   opposing His name and cause! If they dare to say evil things against
   our glorious Lord, let us lift our voices, feeble though they are, and
   bless His sacred name! Though we may, as a rule, be silent and shun all
   public observation, yet when occasion requires, let us be loud and
   vehement in the defense of His righteous cause!

   "A certain woman of the company lifted up her voice." Let us determine
   to be heard on our Lord's behalf, for surely if we should hold our
   speech, the very stones would cry out! Do they curse Him? He is
   blessed, yes, and He shall be blessed! Do they dare to deny the eternal
   Truth of God which He proclaimed? He is the same yesterday, today and
   forever--let Him be forever blessed. We cannot be silent when He is
   decried. We must and will declare, in the teeth of His adversaries,
   that, "He has done all things well." O woman, your courage deserves our
   praise and our imitation! We will go to school to you to learn your
   bravery. Oh that we had a fire in our hearts burning as it did in
   yours--then would it consume the bonds which hold our stammering
   tongues! Let us believe that when the current of thought around us runs
   in a wrong direction, such is the power of enthusiasm that one earnest,
   impassioned voice may turn it and our Lord may yet win Glory where now
   He is despised!

   Our Lord, when He was thus interrupted by this woman's hearty
   testimony, did not reprove her speech, but He improved it. Thus
   possibly He did gently rebuke her, but it was done so delicately that I
   scarcely dare concede that it was a rebuke at all. Our Lord averted the
   wrong interpretation which might be put upon it and then made an
   addition to it, but He did not at all deny that she had spoken the
   truth, for He said, "Yes," before He added, "rather, blessed are those
   who hear the Word of God and keep it!" He did as good as say, "What you
   have said is certain, but yet there is a higher truth--she was blessed
   who bore Me--but more surely blessed, still, are those who hear the
   Word of God and keep it!" Notice the humility which hides in this
   language. He says not, "Blessed are those who hear My Word and keep
   it," though that would have been quite true. At the moment, our Lord
   was being praised and He, therefore, shrank out of sight. "As the
   fining pot for silver and the furnace for gold; so is a man to his
   praise." Many a man is taken off his balance when he is loudly
   extolled, but not so our humble Savior--then it was that He peculiarly
   shone forth as "meek and lowly in heart." The Word which He had
   preached He speaks of as His Father's Word and thus casts a veil over
   that very beauty which had caused the woman's rapture.

   This morning I shall invite your attention, first, for a little time,
   to a blessedness which is not to be denied--blessed was that holy woman
   who bore the Savior. Secondly, in the text there is mention made of a
   blessedness which is to be preferred. When we have spoken upon this
   theme, we shall have something to say of that blessedness as one which
   is now to be enjoyed. My prayer shall be--and I hope yours will be the
   same--that we may enjoy that blessedness this very morning and
   throughout all the rest of our lives. I see the Redeemer's outstretched
   hands as He pronounces this benediction upon you at this hour--"Blessed
   are those who hear the Word of God and keep it!" Divine Beatitude, be
   you fulfilled in each of us!

   I. First, then, here is A BLESSEDNESS NOT TO BE DENIED. The Virgin
   Mother was blessed among women. I have sometimes thought that in our
   great eagerness to keep clear of anything like superstitious reverence
   of Mary, we have scarcely given to her, her due. We cannot blame the
   Reformers that when they forbid her spoken of as the, "Queen of
   Heaven," and worshipped with Ave Marias and so forth, they recoiled
   from such idolatry. Every enlightened mind ought to revolt from such
   superstition! "You shall have no other gods before Me" is a precept
   which puts only God into the place of worship and forbids us to worship
   any other person or thing. To God alone be worship! "Hear, O Israel:
   The Lord our God is one Lord." But when we have borne this protest, it
   does not follow that Mary, herself, suffers in our esteem--on the
   contrary, we revere the memory of this saintly woman! The angel made no
   mistake when he said, "Hail,

   you that are highly favored: blessed are you among women." Nor was she
   in error when she said, "From this day on all generations shall call me
   blessed." We call her blessed most heartily, for so she was!

   The blessing which she received had been the desire of ages. The
   promise given at the Garden of Eden--"the Seed of the woman shall
   bruise the serpent's head"--had awakened the desires of all the godly
   women of Israel. They longed to behold this promised One, the great
   Messiah, the restorer of the race--and they desired children in the
   hope that among those children might appear the promised Seed. It is
   probable that mother Eve, herself, thought that her first-born was the
   promised Deliverer, for, according to some readings, she said, "I have
   gotten a man, the Lord." Though she was greatly mistaken, yet still it
   showed her faith and her hope. All the families of Israel watched for
   the appearing of the Desire of all nations, the Glory of His people.

   When at last the Gift was bestowed upon the humble virgin of Nazareth,
   who was of the house of David, it came as a great favor. Since angels
   rejoiced over that birth; since shepherds hastened to do homage at the
   manger and since wise men from the further East came with their gold,
   frankincense and myrrh to adore the new-born King, Mary cannot be
   thought of as being less than the most blessed among women. All the
   circumstances of the annunciation and all the homage paid to the Infant
   Savior show that her visitation from on high had made her greatly
   blessed. The angel, when he addressed her, said, "Hail, you that are
   highly favored, the Lord is with you: blessed are you among women." We
   cannot suppose that since, in God's eyes and in the eyes of His angelic
   messenger this was a great favor, we are to treat it as a light thing.
   The Savior's, "yes," was emphatic when the woman spoke of His mother as
   highly blessed.

   She, herself, received this honor as a great blessing. She bowed
   herself humbly and said, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto
   me according to Your Word." She believed the Word of the Lord--her
   spirit rejoiced in God, her Savior. She treasured up all the holy Words
   in her heart. It was no vain thing to her to have charge of the Infancy
   of our Lord. She felt it to be great blessedness to be placed in such a
   relation to the Holy Child Jesus. We can scarcely imagine the holy
   ecstasy, or the profound joy which filled her spirit. She was an
   eminently gracious woman and, therefore, she never boasted of her
   relationship, nor misused it for her own purpose. But what a pleasure
   it must have been to have nursed Jesus in His Childhood; to have cared
   for Him in His Youth! She treasured up His little speeches and pondered
   in her heart what they could all mean.

   Happy were her fingers that made His garments and that tended to His
   infant and boyish needs. In His adult life she must have been among
   those who heard Him with delight. Was she not one of the most charmed
   of His hearers? What joy that her Son should speak in that way and
   bring such a salvation to the sons of men! Awe mingled with the
   mother's delight, deepening it, but not forbidding it. When He had
   risen from the dead, I think her heart must have been filled with a
   holy exultation, that He whom she had mourned, now lived again! When
   she knew that He was ascended, though it left a blank in her heart, yet
   she rose above the sorrow natural to her motherhood and learned, though
   she had known Him after the flesh, now after the flesh to know Him no
   more. She could not but rejoice in all the Glory with which the Man who
   was born of her was now surrounded!

   She was, she must have been, blessed among women and this woman who
   spoke of her as such made no mistake. For think, my dear Friends, what
   blessings have come to all the world through the Virgin's wondrous
   Child. In Him shall all the nations of the earth be blessed! If all
   generations call Mary, blessed, it is only because she brought into the
   world One who is a blessing to us all! Have you not tasted of the
   blessedness which is scattered by both the hands of Jesus? Do you not
   know that life and healing stream from His garments? If you have not
   enjoyed the blessedness which He bestows, it is because you have denied
   it to yourselves--cruelly denied it to yourselves! His blessedness is
   free to you if your hearts desire it. Oh, what a Christ is He! His
   Words unlock prison doors! The glance of His eyes is the light of men!
   The tread of His feet turns deserts into Gardens of Eden. Our faith is
   in His First Advent--our hope is in His Second Advent. In Him we live
   and if in Him we sleep, we shall in Him awake from the dead to live
   forever in His Glory. He has made us kings and priests unto God and we
   shall reign with Him forever and ever! And it was, it must have been, a
   great blessedness to Mary's heart to think that, "that Holy Thing"
   which was born of her was the channel of such blessedness to all
   mankind!

   I must, however, remind you that whatever the blessedness which this
   holy woman derived from being the mother of our Savior's humanity, she
   needed it all, for she was called to a great fight of affliction
   because of it. Usually all special blessings involve special trials.
   The thorn in the flesh attends the abundance of Revelations. Weight of
   Glory is balanced with a weight of tribulation. Lest the favored one
   should be exalted above measure, there is given a measure of down-

   casting with the lifting up. When you ask to drink of His cup and to be
   baptized with His baptism, you know not what you are asking--for in
   that cup there is bitterness as well as sweetness--and His baptism is a
   baptism of suffering as well as a baptism of honor!

   Mary had her supreme sorrows. At the very first this woman, so pure and
   holy, had to bear the darkest suspicion. She could hardly confront her
   espoused one--he could hardly be expected to believe her extraordinary
   story. Faith, alone, helped her to see the bright light which lined the
   cloud. The Lord delivered her! Her trials in escaping from Herod by
   flight into Egypt were not small. Oh what sorrow often hovered over her
   when she saw how her Son was "despised and rejected of men, a Man of
   Sorrows, and acquainted with grief!" Once, at least, her faith
   well-nigh failed her, as I read it, and she trembled for Him, for we
   find that His mother and His brethren (and of this I will speak another
   day), somewhere about this very time, stood outside, desiring to speak
   with Him. Mark tells us that His friends sought to lay hands on Him,
   for they said, "He is beside Himself."

   He dared such peril--He so boldly opposed established authorities--He
   spoke such mysterious Truths and He was altogether so unearthly that
   His relatives began to think that His mind had failed Him! And it would
   seem that His mother was almost agreed with them! Her heart must have
   sunk very low with all her blessedness when she could not understand
   her Son and could not save Him from reproach and ill will. In fact, she
   never had fully understood Him--did He not, Himself, say to her in His
   early days, "Know you not"--do you not understand--"that I must be
   about My Father's business?" She could not comprehend Him and could not
   protect Him--and, therefore, she must have been often sorrowful.

   When Jesus came to die, of all that wept for Him, surely none could
   have been more full of lamentations than the sorrowful mother. Mater
   dolorosa. Do you not see her fainting at the foot of the Cross? Then
   was fulfilled the text, "Yes, a sword shall pierce through your own
   soul, also." John, with gentle tenderness, took her to his own home, in
   obedience to those Words of the dying Lord, "Son, behold your mother,"
   and, "Woman, behold your son." But never a more sorrowful woman was
   ever housed under Heaven than she who was "highly favored." She needed
   to have the blessedness abundantly ministered to her to sustain her
   heart and mind. She might have well said, "Call me not Mary, but call
   me Marah," so bitter was her grief.

   Call her "Blessed among women," but do not sigh because this
   unattainable blessedness is not yours. Her tribulations abounded in
   full proportion to her joys. Only one, from the necessity of the case,
   could partake of such peculiar blessedness. This gate of honor is shut
   to all but that virgin of David's lineage. With full and honest
   emphasis we pronounce her blessed this day--but no trace of envy rests
   in our heart. We hear the enthusiastic voice which said, "Blessed is
   the womb that bore You and the paps which You have sucked," but it is
   overpowered by the Divine utterance--"Yes rather, blessed are those who
   hear the Word of God and keep it!" We do not take away the first, but
   we establish the second!

   II. That brings us to our second head--to hear the Word of God and keep
   it is A BLESSING PREFERABLE to having been the mother of our Lord.

   We are sure of this because, in the weighing of the blessings, the
   blessed Master of Beatitudes holds the balances. Jesus Himself adjusts
   the scales of blessedness. He who began His ministry with the word,
   "Blessed," so often repeated, knows best which blessing is the best. We
   accept without a question and even without am argument this statement
   of our Lord and we firmly believe, upon His authority, that though Mary
   is greatly blessed, yet even more emphatically are those blessed who
   hear the Word of God and keep it! We yield our ready assent to what
   Jesus says, for His Word is Truth.

   Happily this preference so truly given by the Master puts the highest
   blessedness within the reach of all of us who are here this morning. We
   are, at this moment, in a position to "hear the Word of God and keep
   it!" If Grace is given, there are only these two steps to blessedness.
   I feel most happy to be addressing a congregation to whom I may say
   that the highest blessedness conceivable is to be attained by all who
   "hear the Word of God," for if they further receive and keep that Word
   they are already blessed and the lips of the Lord Jesus have declared
   them to be so! Remember that this made up the soul of Mary's
   blessedness, for she was more blessed as a Believer than as the mother
   of Jesus. Elizabeth said to her, "Blessed is she that believes." So,
   dear Friend, Mary's blessedness lay mainly in the fact that she
   believed and, therefore, quietly acquiesced in the Divine will. She was
   blessed because her faith enabled her to rejoice in God her Savior! It
   was not an easy thing to believe that He, whom she nursed in her arms
   and nourished from her breast, was also the Son of the

   Highest. He must have seemed to her more truly an Infant than, perhaps,
   He may ever appear to us. Nevertheless she worshipped Him as in union
   with the Infinite One and magnified the name of the Lord. Oh yes, it
   was her faith that made her blessed and the same faith may be in us!

   When the Savior uttered this text, He meant to say to the woman who had
   pronounced His mother blessed--"You, too, are blessed if you hear the
   Word of God and keep it! You, good woman, have said, Blessed is My
   mother; but to you I reply, No, blessed are you, also, if, hearing the
   Word that has been spoken to you this day, you place it in your heart
   and keep it in your soul as a hidden treasure." This blessing is open
   to all of us who, by Divine Grace, hear the Gospel with our hearts.
   Dear Friends, let me congratulate you on your position. Blessed are
   your ears, for they hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ! Blessed are you
   that you may sing today, "Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is
   given, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty
   God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." Blessed are you if
   you lay up the witness of God in your hearts, remembering it,
   treasuring it and living upon it! You are truly favored if the Word of
   God dwells in you richly. Christ in you, the Hope of Glory, is your
   heart's delight!

   I now ask you to notice that this preferable blessing is found in a
   very simple manner. "Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and
   keep it!" The process is stripped of all ambiguity or mystery--there is
   nothing about it that is hard or difficult--"Hear the Word of God and
   keep it"--that is all.

   By the Grace of God the most uneducated, the most sinful, the most
   despairing may still hear the Word of God and keep it! "Faith comes by
   hearing and hearing by the Word of God"--and by faith comes salvation.
   To hear God's Word is the privilege of the poor. Yes, of all to whom
   the Word is spoken. As it is written, "He that has ears to hear, let
   him hear." Beloved, if you would attain to blessedness, hear God's Word
   as God's Word. Receive it, not as the word of man, for in that way it
   cannot bless you. But accept it as being the Word of God to your own
   souls. Hear it, therefore, with a reverent credence which does not
   quibble at it, nor question it, but which sweetly yields to it. You
   shall be blessed if you hear it as the Word of God ought to be heard.
   Be silent while God speaks! Let judgment, imagination and desire all
   bow before Jehovah's voice!

   Let the Word of God fully operate upon you, while your soul sits meekly
   at Jesus' feet. Be receptive. Receive the Truth of God with no wish but
   to understand it and retain it. Hear it with your understanding.
   Endeavor to know what it means, that you may be nourished by it. Do not
   let it come in one ear and go out the other, otherwise it may leave
   condemnation behind it. But hear it as a man would hear who was
   listening to a father whom he loved and reverenced. Listen as a man
   listens who is eagerly catching at news--news which concerns himself
   and his highest interests. Hear, in fact, as though God spoke! Israel
   stood trembling at the foot of Sinai because the Lord spoke in tones of
   thunder--you should hear with the same reverence, though not with the
   same alarm. As much reverence is due to God's Word out of His Inspired
   Book as to that same Word thundered out of the thick darkness and the
   flames of fire! God, in these last days, has spoken to us by His Son,
   Jesus, who is the express Image of His Person and the brightness of His
   Glory. Hear this incomparable Word with all your powers and faculties!
   Let heart and mind and thought and memory and reason attend to that
   which the Lord says to us! So listening, you shall live. "Blessed are
   those who hear the Word of God."

   But we must keep it, too. Now, to keep a thing you must first get it.
   Blessed are they that grasp at what they hear, saying, "That means me."
   Blessed are they who take home to themselves the Truths revealed, who,
   when they hear that Jesus died, say, "He loved me and gave Himself for
   me." Hug the Truth of God to your souls! Grapple it to your hearts with
   hooks of steel! When you have laid hold upon it, keep it against all
   comers. "Skin for skin, yes, all that a man has will he give for his
   life"--and let the Word of God be life to you. Hold the Word of God as
   more dear than this mortal life and sooner part with all things upon
   earth than yield a syllable of this priceless Word! So hold it as to
   remember it, to meditate upon it, to feed upon it.

   So hold it as to assimilate it--as when a man gets bread into himself
   and it builds up his frame, becoming one with himself, so that there is
   no getting him away from it, nor it from him. Read, mark, learn and
   inwardly digest the Word of God! Hold it, also, by obeying it. Yield
   yourself up to its sway--obey the precept, catch its spirit, follow out
   the will of God. If we thus hear and keep the Word of God, our Master
   declares that however blessed may be the virgin of whom He was born,
   still more are we blessed because we are hearing the Word of God and
   keeping it! I again cannot help saying, happy are the lips that have to
   speak this morning and to tell you of a blessing not shut up to a few,
   nor long ago spent upon one favored person, but open to all such as
   joyfully hear and willingly retain the Word of God!

   But why is this blessing so very remarkable? It is, my dear Friends,
   because it is spiritual. Everything that is of the flesh must die. All
   relationships to Christ that were carnal passed away. Those who had
   known Him after the flesh, before long, after the flesh knew Him no
   more. When He had risen from the dead, He said to the holy woman,
   "Touch Me not." He was not, now, to be known in an outward fashion.
   Today no one is rated high in the Kingdom of God because, like James,
   he was, "the Lord's brother," or like the Apostles, the Lord's
   attendants, or like Mary, the Lord's mother. In the spiritual Kingdom,
   relationship is not of blood or of birth. All external distinctions of
   place, race and descent are abolished. "God is a Spirit: and they that
   worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." The Father seeks
   such to worship Him and such He finds--nothing else is precious in His
   sight. To hear the Word of God aright is a spiritual act. To keep that
   Word is a spiritual operation, affecting the heart, the conscience and
   the whole man and, therefore, it is lasting, yes, everlasting, and for
   this reason it stands high above everything else in the estimation of
   the Savior as a ground of blessedness.

   Now listen to me for a moment while I set forth the excellence of this
   blessedness. If those who hear God's Word and keep it are more blessed
   than even was Mary who was the mother of our Lord, then any other form
   of blessedness must be very secondary to the hearing of the Word of God
   and keeping it! For instance, do you happen to be rich? Say not that
   the rich are blessed--"blessed are those who hear the Word of God and
   keep it!" Are you endowed with talent? Do not wrap yourselves up in
   conceit! Do not say, "Blessed are we because we have great gifts."
   "Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it!" Are you a
   person held in high esteem and justly beloved? Yet do not make an idol
   of man's regard, for, "Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and
   keep it!" Have you attained to considerable influence? Then thank God
   for it and use it rightly, but remember that this is not
   blessedness--but, "Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep
   it!" Are you enjoying good health? That is one of the greatest of
   earthly blessings--whatever else you miss, you certainly have a great
   favor in being free from pain and disease--but health is not
   blessedness. "Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it!"
   If you were on a sickbed in the most poverty stricken attic in this
   city and if you had no gifts and had even lost your sight, yet if
   inwardly you heard the Word of God and kept it, you would be blessed
   amid all your poverty!

   I am going a step further--if any of you possess high religious
   privileges, do not pride yourselves on them as though these, alone,
   were blessedness. Equally blessed are any who hear God's Word and keep
   it! Somebody might have said the Apostles were blessed, for they cast
   out devils and healed the sick. Did they not go back to the Master and
   say, "even the devils are subject unto us through Your name"? "Yes,"
   Jesus said, "notwithstanding in this rejoice not; but rather rejoice,
   because your names are written in Heaven." Perhaps you will say,
   "Blessed is the man who can preach to a multitude. Blessed is the man
   who can lead thousands to Christ." It is so, but yet, "Blessed are
   those who hear the Word of God and keep it!" Blessed is the Sunday
   school teacher who sees her children saved. Yes, the successful worker
   is blessed, but even more certainly is he blessed who hears and keeps
   the sacred Word of God! This blessing rises above all others and shines
   with a more heavenly radiance! Again I add, what a mercy that it is
   within our reach!

   This should warn you against priding yourselves upon your relationship
   to good or great men. Do not say, "My father was a minister." Or, "My
   mother is a saint in Heaven." Yes, there is an honor about such a
   pedigree, but true blessedness comes not in that way or else Ishmael,
   Esau and Absalom had been blessed. Not he that is born after the flesh,
   but he that is according to promise, is truly blessed. There is no form
   of blessedness which exceeds this of hearing the Word of God and
   keeping it. This seems a commonplace business, but it is not common in
   the sight of God. This which appertains to the whole family of Hearers
   and Believers is, after all, the gem of the casket, the Kohinoor among
   the jewels! Since to hear the Word of God and keep it is a higher
   blessing than to bring forth the Babe of Bethlehem, it is superior to
   all other imaginable blessings which can be found beneath the skies!

   III. So now we close by considering this as A BLESSEDNESS TO BE AT ONCE
   ENJOYED. I breathe to Heaven

   this earnest prayer that we may now enter into this blessedness. Let us
   see if we cannot sit still in our seats, for a while, and drink in this
   wine on the lees well refined.

   This blessedness belongs to the present. Blessed are they that are
   hearing the Word of God and keeping it! It is not a remote, but an
   immediate blessedness. While you are hearing and keeping God's Word,
   you are then blessed. The blessedness is for this world and for you.
   "But I am so cast down." Yes, but you are blessed! "Alas! I bear such a
   burden of afflictions." Yes, but you are blessed! "Alas! I have not
   known a good time of late." No, but you are blessed! Your bless-

   edness does not depend upon your fancies and feelings. If you hear the
   Word of God and keep it, you are, at this moment, blessed. But says
   one, "If an angel appeared to me and said, 'Blessed are you among
   women,' I would be very happy." Behold, the angels' Lord and King
   appears to you this morning in this blessed Book and speaks out of it
   with living loving tones, saying, "Blessed are those who hear the Word
   of God, and keep it!" You are blessed! Does not that assurance make you
   happy? It ought to. It ought to fill you with a calm, serene delight.
   Jesus says I am blessed and though, just for the moment, sense does not
   confirm the declaration, yet faith believes it! "Blessed is she that
   believes: for there shall be a performance of the things that are
   spoken." Faith finds a present blessedness in the Word of God which she
   hears and keeps.

   That blessedness lies, in a great measure, in the very act of hearing
   and keeping God's Word. I can speak experimentally in this instance. I
   bear my witness that whenever God speaks to me, I feel, in listening to
   His voice, a blessedness. The act of bowing the mind to receive
   communications from God is most pleasurable and the actual sense of
   those communications is supremely so. When I sit down with my opened
   Bible and let the Divine Truth enter my mind and permeate my thoughts
   and my affections, I would not change places with the angel Gabriel! To
   hear the voice of God as Truth spoken home to my heart by the Holy
   Spirit is better music to my soul than could be yielded by harps of
   angels or songs of shining ones! I hope that sometimes in this House of
   Prayer, when the Gospel has been preached and God has spoken through
   me, you have felt an exceeding joy in hearing His Word. You have felt
   "Oh, that these services could last forever!" and you have sighed for
   the place--

   "Where congregations never break up, And Sabbaths have no end."

   Hearing the Word of God is, in itself, an intense delight. I do not
   mean the bare hearing of sermons, nor the reading of good books, nor
   even the reading of the Bible in the letter--but when the inner ear is
   really affected by God's own Word, oh, then we know life and light and
   Heaven! The primeval darkness passed away when God sent forth His Word.
   He said, "Light be," and light was. The entrance of His Word gives
   light. All other lights seem dim candles compared with this Divine sun.
   If the Lord's Word has ever said, "Peace be unto you," then the Lord
   has breathed His own calm into your heart and you have felt that you
   are truly blessed.

   This blessedness lies also in the retaining of God's Word in the soul,
   in the laying it up and storing it and especially in the obeying of it.
   When I feel I am doing God's will, I am supremely happy. Active
   obedience is present enjoyment to the spiritual mind--in keeping His
   Commandments there is great reward. Whenever you have a question about
   a course of conduct, you are unhappy in it. But when you feel, "This
   which I am about to do is according to God's mind, I have Scriptural
   warrant for it and I am called to it"--why then, you are perfectly at
   ease! If everybody were to quibble, you would not mind and if you,
   yourself, suffered in consequence of doing it, you would take joyfully
   the spoiling of your goods. Assured obedience to the Word of God is the
   most sure road to a present happiness.

   When a man has once broken the shell of carnality and has burst forth
   into the new world where God can be heard, he has entered the Kingdom
   of Heaven! God cannot be heard in this carnal nature of ours, which is
   like the adder which cannot be charmed. While we are ruled by the
   flesh, we are in a silent land as to God. But when we break loose of
   the flesh and enter into the new world of spiritual life and peace,
   then we are conscious that God has communications with us, for that is
   what is meant by His "Word," and this fact blesses us. When the Lord
   manifests Himself to us as He does not unto the world--this is Heaven!
   Whether we are in the body or out of it, the reception of
   communications from God to our hearts and the storing up of those
   communications is a blessedness which excels all that Mary could have
   known merely as being, after the flesh, the mother of Jesus! Beloved, I
   do not need to expatiate here, for this is a matter for experimental
   test rather than for verbal description. Blessed are they, yes,
   infinitely blessed are they who hear the Word of God and keep it! The
   hearing of it and the keeping of the Word are, in themselves,
   blessedness!

   This blessing is not dependent upon outward circumstances. If you hear
   God's Word and keep it, you may be very ill and, yet, in spirit you
   will be well. You may be very feeble and, yet, in spirit you will be
   strong. You may be dying and, yet, you shall not die, for he that hears
   the Word of God shall never see death. In listening to the Lord, you
   have reached a region from which you look down upon the dust and smoke
   of time and sense! The things which are visible are transient dreams
   which have small power over you, now that the word of the Lord has
   brought you out of the grave of the visible into the living world of
   the invisible! "We walk by faith, not by sight," and though, now, we
   see not our God, yet in our

   hearts we hear him and this hearing fills us with joy unspeakable and
   full of joy! It is a matter of experience and, therefore, though I
   should speak 10,000 words, I could not set it forth. I exhort you to
   try it for yourselves.

   Behold, my Hearer, there lies at your feet the most precious jewel that
   ever sparkled before a monarch's eyes! Neither earth nor Heaven can
   produce its superior! You are a hearer, be a hearer, a real hearer! But
   be you not a hearer, only, but a doer of the word, for that man is
   blessed in his deed. The blessedness of hearing and keeping the Word of
   God--will you prize it, or will you scorn it? What do you say, will you
   trample this pearl under your feet? I pray you, do not! Oh take this
   peerless, priceless blessedness! It lies so near you, do not miss it!
   If you are wise, you will listen to the voice of ancient prophecy which
   says, "Incline your ear, and come unto Me: hear, and your soul shall
   live." Every man desires happiness and here it is. Blessedness is the
   aspiration of us all--lo, it lies before you! Wise men strive for
   blessedness and even fools wish for it. My Hearer, will you have it?
   You have not to climb to Heaven to win it, nor dive to Hell to earn it.
   You need not wait for ecstasies, nor stop till you have acquired great
   learning, or suffered severe trials--the Word of God is near you, in
   your mouth and in your heart!

   If with your heart you will believe on the Lord Jesus and with your
   mouth make confession of Him, you shall be saved! Or, to put it in the
   words of the text, "Hear the Word of God and keep it!" As soon as you
   have done this, while you are doing it and as long as you do it, in
   hearing and in keeping God's Word, there shall come to you a double
   blessing. God has blessed you and you shall be blessed! Did you come in
   here, this morning, under a conscious curse? Come, then, hear the Word
   of the Lord and the curse is turned into a blessing! Has the blessing
   of former days seemed to fade of late? Then, again, hear and keep the
   good Word of God! All other doctrine will cause your blessedness to
   dwindle.

   If you are faint and weary, plunge into the Word of God as a man does
   into a bath when he desires to be refreshed. You shall rise out of the
   waves of the Truths of God revived, refreshed, happy, blessed! O my
   Hearers, the blessedness of my own soul lies, at this moment, in
   listening to the Word of the living God! How I wish you all knew this
   sweetness! Then shall you young women be blessed virgins and you
   mothers, blessed matrons and all of us blessed men and blessed women.
   "You are the seed of the blessed of the Lord and your offspring with
   you." God says, "Surely blessing I will bless you." May you never lose
   a sense of that blessing! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Cleansing--a Covenant Blessing

   (No. 1921)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Then will I sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean: from
   all your filthiness and from all your idols, I will cleanse you."
   Ezekiel 36:25.

   THIS is one of the opening words of the glorious Covenant of Grace.
   Ezekiel's copy of the Covenant is full and clear and deserves to be
   written in letters of gold and hung up in the best chamber of every
   Believer's dwelling This is the Magna Charta of saints--the title deed
   of the land of our inheritance! Glorious Covenant of Grace, our heart
   delights in every line of promise wherewith you are enriched!

   You perceive that this promise deals with sin and it deals with sin
   because sin broke the first Covenant and thus ruined us all. Sin must
   be removed before Covenant relationship can be reestablished. Sin must
   be purged from the conscience before Covenant communion can be enjoyed.
   Sin must be abhorred before Covenant union can be consummated. Blessed
   be God, sin shall be washed away, for thus it is written in the
   Everlasting Covenant!

   Sin is the great plague and pest of our lives, now that we are awakened
   to discern between good and evil, and now that the new heart and the
   right spirit have been put within us. Is it not well that this cause of
   misery should be destroyed? It is sin, my Brothers and Sisters, that
   keeps us away from God. Should not this barrier be utterly broken down
   and swept out of the way? It was because of sin that we needed to be
   reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Should not that atoning
   death effectually kill sin? Sin has done all the mischief. At first it
   withered Paradise and sowed the earth with thorns and thistles. And
   ever since it has brought forth the same painful crop. Still it saps
   our strength; it destroys our comfort; it robs us of usefulness--it is
   the foe of all good--it is all evils in one. O curse of curses,
   fountain of Hell and father of the devil, you unutterably horrible
   monster, Sin! Shall we not be doubly blessed when we are rid of you? We
   certainly should never fear death if we had no sin--neither need we
   even fear the devil, himself, for, if there were no traitor within the
   city, Mansoul might laugh to scorn all the attacks of her enemies
   outside.

   Sin, to the awakened sinner, is his burden, his misery, his horror. It
   is a nightmare which haunts him! He can never escape from it. Like
   David, he cries, "My sin is ever before me." Even when sin is forgiven,
   the memory of it often makes a man go softly all his days. We could
   bear disease if we were cured of sin. We could bear the world's
   troubles if there were not these spiritual sorrows. We could be content
   to pine in prison on bread and water all the rest of our natural lives
   if we could be clear from sin. Yes, I guarantee you that the darkest
   dungeon would be a bright paradise to a Believer, if there he could be
   exempt from the temptation, from the remembrance and from the presence
   of sin! It is, therefore, a very blessed thought on the part of our God
   to make the Covenant to bear so much upon our sin and our
   sinfulness--and especially to make it open with this unconditional
   promise of infinite love--"Then will I sprinkle clean water on you and
   you shall be clean: from all your filthiness and from all your idols, I
   will cleanse you." As the laver at the Tabernacle door, so stands this
   promise at the entrance of the Covenant. Let us wash and be clean.

   I. Our first remark at this time shall be that GOD BEGINS TO DEAL WITH
   HIS PEOPLE WHILE THEY ARE YET IN SIN. The text evidently implies this.
   He does not wait until they are clean before He bestows His love and
   pity upon them. He does not wait till they have saved themselves and
   then comes to them with a nominal salvation. He does not make promises
   of purification to them upon condition that they cleanse themselves,
   but He comes to them according to the riches of His Grace, even when
   they are dead in trespasses and sins! He finds them in all their
   defilement, rebellion and iniquity--and He deals with them just as they
   are. Jesus saves sinners! God's love comes to those who in no degree
   merit it. His Grace stoops to the ruin of the Fall and lifts us up from
   it.

   These are very simple words, you say, but there are those here to whom
   these plain sentences will sound like the ringing of the silver
   trumpets of jubilee! I know them, for I once was one of them--they are
   a people sighing because of their defilement which they mourn over, but
   cannot remove. Dear Hearts, you have not to look for any good in
   yourselves when you come to God--you are to come just as you are.
   However filthy, however enslaved by idols you may have been, however
   much your own heart condemns you, you are to come to Jesus on terms,
   not of merit, but of Grace! And you are to approach Him as sinners,
   without any further qualification. Christ is a Savior who came to save
   His people from their sins. And His salvation, therefore, begins with
   them while they are yet in their sins. He does not wait till He spies
   out some sound spot in the patient, but when he is covered all over
   with leprosy from head to foot--and there is not one sound speck on him
   as big as the point of a pin--then it is that the Great Physician comes
   and makes the leprous one to be clean!

   This is plain enough, if you will look at the text, for, first, it is
   clear that those to whom God makes His promise of His Covenant are
   unclean and unfit for fellowship with Him. He speaks of their
   filthiness, yes of, "all their filthiness," so that there was much of
   it, for God's "alls" are, by no means, trifles. There were also idols
   about and many of them, for He speaks of "all your idols." These are
   abominations unto the Lord, but there they are, and they must be put
   out of the way. He says, "Then will I sprinkle clean water on you and
   you shall be clean." Not, "You are clean and, therefore, you may come
   to Me," but, "I will come to you and make you clean."

   Some time ago we explained the type of the ashes of the red cow, how
   they were kept in water, ready to be used and applied to all persons
   who became ceremonially unclean. After this water had been sprinkled
   upon them, they were permitted to return to the camp and go up to the
   Lord's Tabernacle. But until that purification had been applied, they
   were shut out from fellowship with God and His people. The people of
   God could not converse with them. The priest of God could not commune
   with them. God, Himself, would have nothing to do with them. They were
   unclean and so were set aside under a kind of quarantine not to come
   near the camp lest the rest of the people should be polluted by them.

   Now that is just where God finds His people when He begins with them.
   They are not fit for communion. They are not fit that the saints of God
   should associate with them, nor that they should stand in the Holy
   Place of the Most High. They are not fit for any service, for the Lord
   will not have the unclean to bear His vessels. Their prayers are
   defiled; their praises are defiled; there is nothing about them but
   what is unclean. In such a condition the man could do nothing
   acceptable to God--his uncleanness put him out of court and rendered
   him altogether incapable of pleasing the pure and holy God. He that was
   unclean made everything unclean that he touched--the pollution was most
   contagious. If he sat upon a chair, no one else might sit there, for
   the seat was unclean. If he touched a vessel in the tent, the vessel
   was unclean and the tent was unclean! He was a source of defilement and
   wherever he went, he spread pollution. Such is every sinner in the
   sight of God. He is a well of foul waters, a fountain of bitterness. He
   is defiled and defiling. The God of all Grace visits His people at the
   first when they are in this terrible condition!

   I may be speaking to one who is ready to cry out, "I am not fit to be
   in the House of God tonight. I am not worthy to lift my eyes to the
   place where His honor dwells." That is where He finds you--just
   there--and it is to you in this sad position that the Covenant of Grace
   refers. Our Redeemer comes to us in our very worst estate! As I was
   speaking to an aged Brother in Christ, who is, probably, very near
   Home, he said, "I feel what a blessed thing it is to still come to
   Christ with the cry, 'God be merciful to me, a sinner.' I do not rest
   upon past experience, nor upon anything else, but I constantly begin at
   the beginning. I come to Jesus even as I did at the first, only more
   humbly and with a more intense sincerity than I ever knew before."

   I am sure there is wisdom in this course and in no other. If the
   Covenant of Grace did not deal with sinners as sinners, I should be
   afraid to come to Christ. But because it opens its mouth wide to me
   while I am yet unclean and polluted by sin, I feel that it meets my
   case. The Free Grace of the Covenant does not come half way and say to
   me, when I am nearly dead, "Get up and take what I give you and I will
   deliver you." But it comes, like the good Samaritan, where I am. It
   sees me to be unconscious and it awakens me. When it sees me conscious
   of my wounds, it pours in the oil and the wine. When it sees my
   weakness to be so great that I cannot stir a step, it sets me on its
   own beast and takes me to the inn. When it marks my utter poverty, so
   that I am not worth so much as two pence, it does not ask me to pay my
   own way, but discharges everything for me and leaves its promise that
   whatever more is needed shall be freely given! O blessed charity of

   Covenant Love! It will not be turned aside by our abominable
   filthiness, nor will it leave us because of our idols! Glorious Grace,
   which begins with us where sin and death have left us!

   You may notice in the text, or gather it from it by clear
   inference--that these people with whom God dealt were not only unclean,
   but they could not cleanse themselves. It is a rule with miracles, as
   well miracles of the Spirit as miracles of the body, that God never
   does what others can do. As long as there is strength left in the
   natural laws, God does not go beyond them, but our extremity is God's
   opportunity. Now, inasmuch as the text brings in God saying, "then will
   I sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean," it is clear that
   this evil could not be cleansed without the Divine interposition. There
   was no other way for the purging of the chosen ones but by the direct
   interposition of the Lord! Oh, but divines have fine notions nowadays!
   It appears, according to the latest information, that children are not
   now born in sin as they used to be! They say that certain highly
   favored children commence life in a most extraordinary way--they are
   born gracious! They do not need any degeneration or conversion, for the
   stock is so superior that the branches naturally bring forth good
   fruit!

   I have never read of such people in the Scriptures, but I am often told
   that there are such, nowadays. At least their parents and their parsons
   say so. Of old it used to be, "That which is born of the flesh is
   flesh," and only, "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." That,
   of course, is very old-fashioned doctrine! Well, when we have a
   new-fashioned god, I dare say we shall have new-fashioned truth--but at
   present, the Truth of God seems to me to be as Immutable as God
   Himself! If it is true, today, it was true yesterday and will be true
   even to the end, even as God, Himself, changes not. As for myself, I
   know that I was born in sin and I know that in me, that is in my flesh,
   there dwells no good thing. I know, also, that I once tried to purge
   and cleanse my own heart and labored at it, I believe, as honestly as
   any person that lived. I went about to seek a righteousness of my own
   and I endeavored to stop all sin--and my failure was complete!

   I do not advise any other person to try self-healing. It brought me to
   despair. It drove me, almost, to the loss of reason. The more I
   scrubbed and cleansed, the blacker I became. I washed my Hottentot self
   and he was more of a Hottentot after I had bathed him than he was
   before! I only saw how black the black man was when I had whitened him,
   for the moment, with my soap. Job said, "If I wash myself with snow
   water and make my hands never so clean; yet shall You plunge me in the
   ditch and my own clothes shall abhor me." And it was so with me.
   Therefore I speak of my own experience and, taught by my own failure, I
   cannot urge any man to seek cleansing by his own doings or efforts, but
   I urge him to accept that cleansing which God has promised in the
   Covenant of Grace.

   Cleansing cannot come from any other place, therefore seek it of the
   Lord who says, "I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be
   clean." If you go about through Heaven, earth and Hell, you shall find
   no other detergent that shall take away sin but the precious blood of
   Jesus Christ, the Son of God. You shall sooner redden every wave of the
   Atlantic as you plunge your hands in it than you shall take away one
   spot of condemnation from off your soul! There is your sin and there it
   must eternally be unless Jehovah, Himself, shall blot it out! He that
   is filthy shall be filthy still, throughout the ages, unless the Divine
   One interpose. Our only hope lies in this faithful Word of God, "I will
   sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean." The Lord begins to
   save His people when as yet they have no strength and cannot cleanse
   themselves.

   More than that, when God begins to deal with His people, many of them
   have a special filthiness. "From all your filthiness and from all your
   idols, I will cleanse you." When He begins with them, they are given up
   to their idols. Other lords have dominion over them and these lords
   lead them into filthiness. Some upon whom God has looked with
   everlasting love have become, before their conversion, openly,
   manifestly, loathsomely filthy--and yet He begins in His Grace with
   them! The harlot--she strays into the House of God and feels that she
   has no right to be there--and yet the day comes when she stands behind
   the Master, washing His feet with her tears and wiping them with the
   hairs of her head because she has had much forgiven. The man who has
   been guilty of foul vices, of which we say but little, but which he
   would gladly weep over with tears of blood at their remembrance--when
   the Lord of Love comes to such a horrible offender in a way of mercy,
   He says to him, even to him, "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud,
   your transgressions, and, as a cloud, your sins."

   I am afraid I do not always speak plainly enough, though I try to do
   so. Let me try again to cast in the big net. The Lord Jesus Christ
   forgives thieves and robbers, liars and drunks and criminals of all
   sorts. The Lord Jesus has mercy upon those who have been blasphemers.
   "All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men." I have
   seen, with great

   joy, cases of infidels who have mocked at the Scriptures, denied the
   Deity of Christ and persecuted God's people--they have stepped in and
   heard the Gospel and they have been melted down by it--rescued from
   their obstinacy and cleansed from their iniquity! In fact, there are
   such here tonight! "Such were some of you: but you were washed." Oh, it
   is not for me to tell all that I know of how the Lord has taken some of
   the ringleaders in the service of Satan, first in all manner of
   mischief, and has cast the devil out of them and made them to sit at
   His feet, clothed and in their right mind! We believe in a sinners'
   Gospel. To the guilty we preach remission!

   The heathen of old once reported that ours was the religion of the most
   abandoned. They laughed at Christianity, for they said it was like the
   building of Rome when Romulus received everybody that was in debt and
   discontented--and all the criminals from all the towns round about came
   to make the city of Rome! There is much truth in the statement-- it is
   a very good figure, though meant to be a slander. The Lord does receive
   the devil's runaways. If there is one here that is servant to that
   black master, I would recommend him to run to Christ tonight and not
   give his master five minutes' notice. Quit the tyrant's employment and
   run for it at once!

   But then look at this--the Lord receives sinners to cleanse them. He
   does not receive them that they may remain as they were! The Lord Jesus
   receives sinners just as teachers receive children into a Ragged
   School. It is their glory that it is a Ragged School! The more ragged
   and the more dirty, the more welcome the child! But why do they receive
   the ragged child? Why, to wash him, to teach him, to clothe him, to
   instruct him! We do not receive ragged children for the love of their
   rags, nor to keep them in their rags--but that they may be taught,
   cleansed and elevated. Such is my Master's house of mercy! It is a
   hospital--sick folk are always welcome. It is not a place for spreading
   disease, nor for treating it light-ly--it is the place where disease is
   discovered, set apart and made to appear in all its horror--in order
   that it may be conquered and destroyed! Nobody speaks so sternly
   against sin as Jesus and those who believe His Gospel, but yet it
   forever stands true, "This Man receives sinners." You may come to
   Jesus, dear Friend, whoever you are! Into whatever sin and iniquity you
   have plunged, you may come right now without any hesitation or
   deliberation, for the gate stands wide open and the blessed Lord, with
   His nail prints still in His hands, stands there to welcome you and
   say, "Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will
   give you rest. Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white
   as snow."

   Still is that declaration grandly true, "All manner of sin and
   blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men." Still does God meet men while
   they are yet in the blackness and filth and degradation of their sin
   and then and there, just as they are, He says concerning them, "I will
   sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean: from all your
   filthiness and from all your idols, I will cleanse you." O poor
   wretched sons of Adam, how earnestly would I invite you to Christ! I
   preach a Savior for the worst and vilest of you! Oh that you would come
   to Him! I know your house. It is stuffed full with idols of one sort or
   another. You delight in strong drink! That is your Moloch, or, perhaps,
   some sin of the flesh has fascinated you and carried you away--and your
   house is ruled by Venus and Bacchus and other dunghill deities! Ah me,
   what chambers of imagery there are in this city! Notwithstanding all
   that, the Lord of Love will come to your house with His salvation, turn
   those idols out and reign in their place! Your life, it may be, is full
   of filthiness and as you sit here you are remembering it to your
   heart's sorrow. Be of good cheer, you broken down ones, for the Lord
   Jesus will come to you just as you are and put your filthiness away!

   Do not think that I am talking, now, only to those who have been
   grossly immoral, though I do speak to them most certainly in literal
   terms. But even to those who have never sinned after that similitude I
   speak at this time. Thank God, there are some who have been kept by the
   restraints of education from ever going into the more outwardly filthy
   sins. It was so in my case. I might claim as to most actual sins to be
   blameless, but, oh, if there ever was a wretch on earth that felt his
   filthiness more than I did, I pity him! I loathed myself--utterly so.
   How often I wished that I had never been born! It seemed horrible to me
   that such a being should have lived at all. To have lived so long in
   sin and unbelief seemed still more a marvel--and though I was not then,
   15, it appeared horrible to have lived so long without loving Christ!
   What an awful wretch I judged myself to be to have been surrounded with
   such mercy and not to have thought of my

   God!

   Is was shocking beyond measure to have lived those years without love,
   without trust, without delight in God. I felt myself to be so foul and
   filthy a thing that I ought to be cast into the common sewer of the
   universe and swept away. But, oh, this blessed Word of God--"From all
   your filthiness and from all your idols, I will cleanse you." This is
   spoken as

   only God can speak! See, then, how God begins with us, just where we
   are, to the praise of the Glory of His own Grace. So much upon our
   first head.

   II. The second is this--that GOD PROVIDES FOR THE CLEANSING OF THOSE TO
   WHOM HE COMES IN SOVEREIGN GRACE. "I will sprinkle clean water upon
   you." He does not ask them to find the purification, but He brings it
   Himself. Where could this "clean water" be found by mortal man? Though
   he should climb up to the heights of the Alps to melt the virgin snows,
   or descend into the deep which couches beneath where come the sparkling
   springs, yet he could find no "clean water" that could take out the
   stain of sin! God Himself provides--it is His way--in the mount it
   shall be seen that He is Jehovah Jireh. The type is carried out in its
   antitype in this way--that God has provided a system of cleansing men,
   perfect in itself, just, right and effectual. Pure water is the best of
   purifiers and the Lord has provided that which is the most sure
   purification from sin. When, under the old Mosaic Law, they took water,
   scarlet wool and hyssop--and sprinkled the unclean, he was ceremonially
   cleansed--and now, under the Gospel, God has provided a wondrous way by
   which, being Himself perfectly pure, He can put away the impurities of
   our nature and the iniquities of our lives.

   It is a righteous way. Do you need that I explain to you the way in
   which God puts away our filthiness? Whether you do or not, there are
   many who do and, therefore, we must have the Gospel over again. You put
   bread and salt on your table at every meal and even so, every sermon
   should have the Gospel in it! God must be just. Even if He would
   forgive sin, He must still be just. Sin must not go unpunished. It
   would be ruinous that such a thing should be. Therefore the Lord took
   sin and laid it on His Son, that His Son might bear what was due for
   our transgressions. This, the Lord Jesus did as our Substitute and
   Savior. "He His own Self bore our sins in His own body on the tree." He
   made a full Atonement and Expiation for the guilt of men so that,
   "whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

   In addition to that, God has given the Holy Spirit as a gift of Christ
   on His Ascension--and that Holy Spirit is here to renew men in their
   hearts, to take away from them the love of sin, to give them a new
   life, to create in them a new heart and a right spirit--and so to
   change their inward longings and desires that their outward conduct
   shall become altogether different from what it was before. Here are two
   cleansings--the blood of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit--and
   these are as clean water. God can justly forgive you, my fellow sinner!
   And God can totally change you and make you to be as though you had
   been new-born, tonight, and were now to begin afresh. You see it is a
   clean way which God has devised--there is nothing in it which favors
   wrong or injustice.

   And what a simple way it is, as well as clean! "I will sprinkle clean
   water upon you." The application of the blood of Jesus Christ to the
   conscience and the coming of the Holy Spirit to the heart are as simple
   as the sprinkling of water. The wisdom of God made the rite by which
   the leper was cleansed under the Law very simple, but even more simple
   is the act by which God applies the merit of His dear Son to us. Oh,
   that we might have the blood of Jesus sprinkled on our hearts at once
   by faith! Oh to feel the Blood of Sprinkling to which every Believer in
   Christ has come--the blood that "speaks better things than that of
   Abel!" It is a very simple way.

   It is a way of universal adaptation, too, for wherever there is a soul
   on whom God has looked with love, He can apply to that soul the Blood
   of Sprinkling. Whoever you may be, you cannot cleanse yourself, but God
   can sprinkle you with this clean water! He can save you by the merit of
   His Son and by the renewing of the Holy Spirit. No one is outside of
   this possibility, for the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us
   from all sin. If you are guilty, tonight, and you cry for mercy, that
   mercy can come at you and you can come at that mercy, for so has the
   Lord put it--"Then will I sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be
   clean."

   It is a way of unfailing efficacy, for He says, "From all your
   filthiness and from all your idols, I will cleanse you." He does not
   only attempt the cleansing but He accomplishes it. You may have a
   thousand sins, but this clean water can put the thousand sins away.
   Your heart may be a very pandemonium of idols, but the power of the
   Holy Spirit can break them all to pieces and can do it for you at once.
   The, "then," of the text has to do with the time when Israel was full
   of sin. It has to do with such a time as there is with you unconverted
   men and women at this hour. Now, even now, in the midst of your
   filthiness and your idolatry, God can come with a high hand and an
   outstretched arm and commence the work by which you shall be perfectly
   delivered! Though your heart is like the Augean stable, the labors of
   Hercules shall be outdone by the wonders of Jesus! He shall cast your
   sins into the depths of the sea. Your hardness of heart, your pride,
   your lust, your unbelief, your enmity, your fickleness shall all go
   down at a stroke, as when Dagon fell before the Ark of

   God. Oh, do it, Lord! Do it, we pray You, with many that have strayed
   into the Tabernacle tonight, that Your name may have the Glory!

   Thus we have come so far and we see clearly that God begins with His
   people in their filthiness and provides the means of their cleansing.

   III. Thirdly, GOD HIMSELF APPLIES THIS MEANS OF CLEANSING. See how He
   puts it--"Then will I sprin-kle"--"I sprinkle clean water on you and
   you shall be clean; from all your filthiness and from all your idols, I
   will cleanse you."

   Ah, dear Sirs! If God had only provided the medicine, but had never
   brought it to us, we could not have found it, reached it, or applied
   it! If He had made the plaster and had left it by the side of the
   wounded man, the poor wretch would have died, for he never could have
   laid it to his own wound. The same Grace which "first devised the way
   to save rebellious man" carries out all the plan from the beginning to
   the end! Who can sprinkle clean water on the foul sinner? "I will do
   it," says the Lord. I am sure that I speak to many Brothers and Sisters
   here whose experience will bear out what I am going to say--it was the
   Lord who made us first to feel that we were filthy and that we loved
   idols. We were very fine people once--were we not? Our own
   righteousness was quite as good as that of anybody else and a little
   better. If we had sinned, we had a great many excuses for our failings
   and, besides, we always meant to be so good, by-and-by! Therefore we
   felt that we ought not to be condemned, but rather to be commended!

   The Lord fetched us down from the tree and made us lie at the bottom of
   it and cry for mercy. We would still have refused to taste of His mercy
   and we would have perished in our sin if Divine Grace had not convinced
   us of our folly. Some of you remember when the Lord first revealed to
   you how much you needed to be cleansed--that discovery was a great part
   of the cleansing. Then did it not seem to you impossible that you could
   be cleansed from so much defilement? It seemed to me--I dare say it did
   to you--the most extraordinary thing in the world to believe in Jesus!
   I could not make it out. How could I get to Christ? I could see that He
   was a Savior. I could see that He saved others and I was glad that He
   did. But the thing was, how could I ever come to be personally a
   partaker of His power to save?

   I heard about that woman touching the hem of the garment and I felt
   that if Christ were before me, I would touch the hem of His garment
   with my finger, but I could not understand how I was to touch Him
   spiritually. To this day the simplest thing under Heaven is perverted
   by our evil hearts into difficulty and mystery! Faith is as clear as
   the sun, yet many make it as dark as midnight. Our hearers are
   ingenious at misunderstanding us when we speak of faith. I tried, one
   evening, to explain faith as simply as I could and I quoted that verse
   of Dr. Watts--

   "A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, On Christ's kind arms I fall."

   A young man came to me afterwards and said that he could not fall. This
   perplexed me, for I thought such an assertion was impossible! It may be
   hard to stand, but it is easy to fall. Falling does not require
   strength, but the very reverse. I intended to express the abnegation of
   all doing and all effort and the yielding all into the hands of Christ.
   But my young friend could not see it, nor could I make him comprehend
   it. All electric light would be of no use to stone-blind eyes. O God,
   it is as much a miracle of Your Grace to give us faith as to give us a
   Savior to believe in! And he that has faith knows that it is so.
   Despite the simplicity of faith, no man ever would have savingly
   believed in Jesus Christ if the Lord had not guided him and led him
   into that faith.

   Oh yes, the clean water is provided, but the clean water must be
   sprinkled by another hand than ours if we are to be cleansed! Are we
   not witnesses of this? Do we not acknowledge that when, at last, we
   were made clean through the precious blood of Christ, the closing act
   of faith was worked in us by the Holy Spirit? That was no small thing,
   that passing from death unto life, that being washed in the fountain
   filled with blood. Neither was the faith a trifle which brought us that
   washing--all, all was of Grace! I have heard a great deal about human
   free will. I never felt any inclination to ascribe the great blessing
   of confidence in Christ and consequent full justification to any
   uncreated willingness of mine. I was "made willing in the day of His
   power"--and to God I must give the Glory! Oh, that bright, that happy
   day when I could say--

   "'Tis done! The great transaction's done! I am my Lord's and He is
   mine." At that day I could not help also saying, "He drew me"--

   "He drew me, and I followed on,

   Charmed to confess the voice Divine." Yes, it is God that applies the
   power which purifies!

   And all the way through the rest of life it is just the same. "All
   things are of God." If He that has brought me so far towards Heaven
   does not help me throughout the rest of my journey, I must die even
   within sight of the promised land! If the Lord is not with you, even if
   you should get your foot upon the diamond doorstep of Heaven and your
   finger on the golden latch--you could not enter! Without fresh Grace to
   carry us the rest of the way, all our previous journey is in vain. When
   we get to Heaven, it will be, "Glory be to God forever, and ever, and
   ever!" We shall not hum even a single note to ourselves for our own
   glory, or on account of any part of the work for which we deserved
   credit--but we shall ascribe the whole of our salvation to infinite
   love, undeserved favor and to the unceasing faithfulness and power of
   our gracious Covenant God!

   Let us come back to this blessed text and read it again--and then
   conclude our sermon with our last point--"Then will I sprinkle clean
   water on you and you shall he clean: from all your filthiness and from
   all your idols, I will cleanse you."

   ' IV. I close with this last remark--THE LORD EFFECTUALLY CLEANSES ALL
   HIS PEOPLE.

   First, He cleanses them from all their filthiness. I want to dwell on
   that for a minute. "From all your filthiness will I cleanse you." All
   of it. Oh, what a vast "all" that is! "All your filthiness." All the
   filthiness of your birth-sin; all the filthiness of your natural
   temperament, constitution and disposition. "From all your filthiness
   will I cleanse you." All the filthiness that came out of you in your
   childhood, that was developed in you in your youth, that still has
   vexed your manhood and, perhaps, even now dishonors your old age. From
   all your actual filthiness, as well as from all your original
   filthiness, will I cleanse you. From all your secret filthiness and
   from all your public filthiness--from everything that was wrong in the
   family; from everything that was wrong in the business; from everything
   that was wrong in your own heart--"From all your filthiness will I
   cleanse you."

   From all your pride. What a filthy thing that is! From all your
   unbelief. What an abominable thing that is! From all your tainted
   imaginations; from all your lusts; from all your wrong words; from all
   your covetousness; from all your murmuring; from all your anger; from
   all your malice; from all your envy; from all your distrust--"From all
   your filthi-ness will I cleanse you."

   Just read right down the Ten Commandments and then stop at each and
   say, "Lord, You have said, 'From all your filthiness will I cleanse
   you.' Lord, cleanse me in both ways--take away the evil of the sin, and
   take away my tendency to the sin--

   'Let the water and the blood,

   From His riven side which flowed,

   Be of sin the double cure,

   Cleanse me from its guilt and power.'" Oh, Beloved, that seems to me to
   be so full of richness--"From all your filthiness will I cleanse you."
   Do not believe that any filthiness need stay upon you in practice. As
   to the matter of sanctification, do not say to yourself, "I cannot
   overcome this sin." You can! You must overcome all sin through Jesus
   Christ. "From all your filthiness will I cleanse you." Do not say to
   yourself, "I always was quick-tempered and I must always remain so, for
   this is a part of my natural temperament." No! "From all your
   filthiness will I cleanse you." I know that a certain troop of our sins
   are hard to kill in battle and they need to be sharply looked after
   lest they continue to plague us. They get into the cave of our secret
   hearts and there they hide themselves away in great quietness, biding
   their time. They do not even whisper--and we half fancy that they are
   dead. They are alive enough, as we shall soon see, if we are not awake
   to them.

   If we are foolish, we are content to roll a big stone at the mouth of
   the cave, and let the rascals live in their den. This is dangerous work
   and when our Joshua comes to us, He puts an end to the perilous
   experiment! He cries, "Bring them out. Hang them up before the sight of
   the sun, for these enemies must not live." God help us to never
   tolerate any known sin. We too readily fall into evil habits, but oh,
   for Grace to keep out of them. Do not excuse sin so much as to call it
   an "infirmity"--call it, rather, an infamy, and drive it from your
   presence! We do unguardedly yield to sin but, Brothers and Sisters, we
   must not excuse ourselves--we must seek with all our might to obtain
   perfect holiness. Oh, to know the fullness of this blessing--"From all
   your filthiness will I cleanse you."

   And then it is added that we shall be cleansed "from all our idols." We
   are, all of us, idolaters by nature and by practice. The unregenerate
   man always has an idol. He will worship anything rather than his God.
   Yes, he will sooner worship himself than his Savior! Even the Christian
   may find, to his own surprise, that his dear Rachel whom he loves so
   much has managed to hide the idols away under the camel's furniture and
   she is, even now, sitting on them and concealing them. I do not know an
   idol that is more apt to escape being broken than the idol that some
   beloved Rachel protects! But it must not be--"the idols He shall
   utterly abolish." God's way is, "From all your idols will I cleanse
   you." If there is anything, Beloved, that has our love more than God,
   it is an idol and we must be purged from it.

   This is not a threat, but a promise--it is a great blessing to have our
   images of jealousy put away. If you make an idol of a child, either
   that child will die, or something else will happen which will make your
   idol to be your burden. If you want to kill your husband, idolize him.
   If you desire ill to a beloved one, set him up in Christ's place. We
   can, alas, make idols of baser things than these! We can love gold, or
   dress, or honor, or rank, or even a forbidden thing. We are so dull and
   carnal that our affections are soon captured by earthly objects.
   Whatever it is that we idolize, God says, "I will cleanse you from it."
   And I think that we can say, in response, "Lord, be it so"--

   "The dearest idol I have known, Whatever that idol be, Help me to tear
   it from its throne, And worship only Thee." We have no wish that any of
   our old lords should retain or regain dominion over us.

   Now, poor Sinner! Do you see what the Lord can do with you? He can
   break you loose from your temptations. He can set you free from every
   sin that holds you in captivity. Jesus gives pardon and purity most
   freely. Trust Him to cleanse you and the work shall be surely done.
   Trust Him that hung upon the tree to redeem His people and you are
   delivered. Trust Him to sanctify you wholly by His Spirit and He will
   purify you till every spot and wrinkle is gone. It is His work to save
   His people from their sins! Believe in Him and you shall triumph in His
   salvation!

   May the Lord add His blessing, for Jesus' sake!
     __________________________________________________________________

Concerning Death

   (No. 1922)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 26, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For I know that You will bring me to death, and to the house appointed
   for all living.'" Job 30:23.

   JOB suffered from a terrible sickness which filled him with pain both
   day and night. It is supposed that, in addition to his grievous
   eruptions upon the skin, he endured great difficulty in breathing. He
   says in the 18th verse, "By the great force of my disease is my garment
   changed: it binds me about as the collar of my coat." His clothes were
   soiled and clung to him. His skin was blackened and seemed to be
   tightened. He was like a man whose tunic strangles him--the collar of
   his garment seemed to be fast bound about his throat. Those who have
   suffered from it, know what distress is occasioned by this complaint,
   especially when they are also compelled to cry, "My bones are pierced
   in me in the night season: and my sinews take no rest." At such a time
   Job thought of death and, surely, if at any period in our lives we
   should consider our latter end, it is when the frail tent of our body
   begins to tremble because the cords are loosened and the curtain is
   torn!

   It is the general custom with sick people to talk about "getting well"
   and those who visit them, even when they are gracious people, will see
   the tokens of death upon them and yet will speak as if they were
   hopeful of their recovery. I remember a father asking me when I prayed
   with a consumptive girl to be sure not to mention death. In such cases
   it would be far more sensible for the sick man to turn his thoughts
   towards eternity and stand prepared for the great change. When our God,
   by our affliction, calls upon us to number our days, let us not refuse
   to do so! I admire the wisdom of Job, that he does not shirk the
   subject of death, but dwells upon it as an appropriate topic, saying,
   "I know that You will bring me to death, and to the house appointed for
   all living."

   Yet Job made a mistake in the hasty conclusion which he drew from his
   grievous affliction. Under depression of spirit he felt sure that he
   must very soon die. He feared that God would not relax the blows of His
   hands until his body became a ruin--and then he would have rest. But he
   did not die at that time. He was fully recovered and God gave him twice
   as much as he had before! A life of usefulness, happiness and honor lay
   before him and yet he had set up his own tombstone and reckoned himself
   a dead man. It is a pity for us to pretend to predict the future, for
   we certainly cannot see an inch before us. As it is idle with daydreams
   to fascinate the heart into a groundless expectation, so is it equally
   foolish to increase the evil of the day by forebodings of tomorrow. Who
   knows what is to be? Therefore why should I wish to lift up the corner
   of the curtain and peer into what God has hidden? Some of those who
   have been most sure that they would soon die, have lived longer than
   others. A Prophet once prayed to die and yet he never saw death. From
   the lips of Elijah, who was to be caught up by a whirlwind into Heaven,
   it was a strange prayer--"Take away my life; for I am not better than
   my fathers."

   It is the part of a brave man and especially of a believing man,
   neither to dread death nor to sigh for it--neither to fear it nor to
   court it. Possessing his soul in patience, he should not despair of
   life when harshly pressed and he should be always more eager to run his
   race well than to reach its end. It is no work of men of faith to
   predict their own deaths. These things are with God. How long we shall
   live on earth, we know not and need not wish to know. We have not the
   choosing of short or long life and if we had such choice, it would be
   wise to refer it back to our God. "Father, into Your hands I commend my
   spirit," is an admirable prayer for living as well as for dying saints.
   To wish to pry between the folded leaves of the Book of Destiny is to
   desire a questionable privilege--doubtless we live better because we
   cannot foresee the moment when this life shall reach its finis.

   Job made a mistake as to the date of his death, but he made no mistake
   as to the fact itself. He spoke truly when he said, "I know that You
   will bring me to death." Some day or other, the Lord will call us from
   our home above ground to the house appointed for all living. I invite
   you, this morning, to consider this unquestioned Truth of God. Do you
   start back? Why do you do so? Is it not greatly wise to talk about our
   last hours? "We want a cheerful theme." Do you? Is not this a cheerful
   theme to you? It is solemn, but it ought also to be welcome to you! You
   say that you cannot stand the thought of death. Then you greatly need
   it! Your shrinking from it proves that you are not in a right state of
   mind, or else you would take it into due consideration without
   reluctance. That is a poor happiness which overlooks the most important
   of facts. I would not endure a peace which could only be maintained by
   thoughtlessness. You have something yet to learn if you are a Christian
   and yet are not prepared to die! You need to reach a higher state of
   Grace and attain to a firmer and more forceful faith. That you are as
   yet a babe in Grace is clear from your admission that to depart and be
   with Christ does not seem to be a better thing for you than to abide in
   the flesh!

   Should it not be the business of this life to prepare for the next life
   and, in that respect, to prepare to die? But how can a man be prepared
   for that which he never thinks of? Do you mean to take a leap in the
   dark? If so, you are in an unhappy condition and I beseech you as you
   love your own soul to escape from such peril by the help of God's Holy
   Spirit!

   "Oh," says one, "but I do not feel called upon to think of it." Why,
   the very season of the year calls you to it. Each fading leaf
   admonishes you. You will most surely have to die--why not think upon
   the inevitable? It is said that the ostrich buries its head in the sand
   and fancies itself secure when it can no longer see the hunter. I can
   hardly fancy that even a bird can be quite so foolish! And I beseech
   you do not enact such madness. If I do not think of death, yet death
   will think of me! If I will not go to death by meditation and
   consideration, death will come to me! Let me, then, meet it like a man
   and, to that end, let me look it in the face! Death comes into our
   houses and steals away our loved ones. Seldom do I enter this pulpit
   without missing some accustomed face from its place. Never a week
   passes over this Church without some of our happy fellowship being
   caught away to the still happier fellowship above! This week a youthful
   member has melted away and her mourning parents are in our midst. We as
   a congregation are continually being summoned to remember our mortality
   and so, whether we will hear him or not, Death is preaching to us each
   time we assemble in this house! Does he come so often with God's
   message and shall we refuse to hear? No, let us lend a willing ear and
   heart and hear what God, the Lord, would say to us at this time!

   Oh, you that are youngest, you that are most full of health and
   strength, I lovingly invite you not to put away this subject from you!
   Remember, the youngest may be taken away. Early in the life of my boys
   I took them to the old churchyard of Wimbledon and bade them measure
   some of the little graves within that enclosure--and they found several
   green hillocks which were shorter than themselves. I tried thus to
   impress upon their young minds the uncertainty of life. I would have
   every child remember that he is not too young to die. Let others know
   that they are not too strong to die. The stoutest trees of the forest
   are often the first to fall beneath the destroyer's axe. Paracelsus,
   the renowned physician of old time, prepared a medicine of which he
   said that if a man took it regularly, he would never die, except it
   were of extreme old age. Yet Paracelsus himself died a young man!

   Those who think they have found the secret of immortality will yet
   learn that they are under a strong delusion. None of us can discover a
   spot where we are out of bow-shot of the last enemy and, therefore, it
   would be idiotic to refuse to think of it! A certain vainglorious
   French Duke forbade his attendants ever to mention death in his hearing
   and when his secretary read to him the words, "The late King of Spain,"
   he turned upon him with contemptuous indignation and asked him what he
   meant by it. The poor secretary could only stammer out, "It is a title
   which they take." Yes, indeed, it is a title we shall all take and it
   will be well to note how it will befit us! The King of Terrors comes to
   kings, nor does he disdain to strip the pauper of his scanty flesh--to
   you, to me, to all he comes--let us all make ready for his sure
   approach.

   I. First, then, very solemnly under the teaching of God's Spirit, I
   call your attention to a piece of PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE--"I know that You
   will bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living." A
   general Truth of God here receives a personal application.

   Job knew that he should be brought to the grave because he perceived
   the universality of that fact in reference to others. He lived on the
   verge of an age when life was longer than now and yet the Patriarch had
   never known a person who had not, after a certain age, left this
   earthly stage. Cast your eyes over every land, glance from the pole to
   the equator

   and along to the other pole, and see if this is not the universal law,
   that man must be dissolved in death. "It is appointed unto men once to
   die." Only two men entered the next world without seeing death, but
   those two exceptions prove the rule. Another great exception is yet to
   come which I would never overlook. Perhaps the Lord Jesus Christ may
   personally come before we see death--and when He comes, we that are
   alive and remain shall not fall asleep--but even then "we shall all be
   changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet,
   for the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."

   This is the great exception to the rule and we cheerfully allow it to
   dwell upon our minds, but if the Master tarries, we, ourselves, shall
   not be exempt from the common rule. We must all die. Dust to dust,
   ashes to ashes must be the last word for us among the sons of men. I
   hope nobody here is so foolish as to suppose that he shall live on and
   never be gathered with the great assembly in the house appointed for
   all living. Last week one poor fanatic who taught that she, herself,
   would never see corruption, was taken from the midst of her dupes to be
   laid in the sepulcher. A clergyman whom I well knew, lectured upon his
   having found the means of living here forever--but he, too, has gone
   over to the great majority. That we can avoid the grave is a dream, an
   idle dream, not worthy of a moment's controversy! All flesh shall see
   corruption in due time, if it is not changed at the Lord's coming.
   "What man is he that lives and shall not see death? Shall he deliver
   his soul from the hand of the grave?" In their myriads, the races of
   the past have subsided into the earth. In one endless harvest, death
   has reaped down all born of woman. Job knew that he, himself, should be
   brought to death because all others had been brought there.

   He knew it, also, because he had considered the origin of mankind. In
   our text, the Hebrew expression would run somewhat thus--"I know that
   You will bring me to death." He had never died before, yet the
   expression is constantly used, as in the following passage--"You turn
   man to destruction and say, Return, you children of men." We were never
   in the grave before--how then can we return? Was it not said to Adam,
   "Dust you are, and unto dust shall you return?" We were taken out of
   the earth and it is only by a prolonged miracle that this dust of ours
   is kept from going back to its kindred--the day will come when our
   earth shall embrace its mother and so the body shall return to its
   original. If we had come from Heaven, we might dream that we should not
   die. If we had been cast in some celestial mold, as angels are, we
   might fancy that the grave would never encase us. But being of the
   earth, earthy, we must go back to earth! Job says, "I have said to
   corruption, You are my father: to the worm, You are my mother and my
   sister." Thus we have affinities which call us back to the dust. Job
   knew this and, therefore, seeing from where men came, he inferred--and
   inferred cor-rectly--that he, himself, would return to the earth.

   Further, Job had a recollection of man's sin and knew that all men are
   under condemnation on account of it. Does he not say that the grave is
   a "house appointed for all living?" It is appointed simply because of
   the penal sentence passed upon our first parent and, in him, upon the
   whole race. "Dust you are, and unto dust shall you return," was not for
   father Adam only, but for all the innumerable sons that come of his
   loins. "Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." "In Adam
   all die." Our babes, who have not personally sinned, yet feel the
   blight of Adam's sin and wither in the bud. Our dear children who are
   nearing manhood and womanhood are cut down and gathered in their
   beauty. We, also, in the prime and flower of life, bow our heads before
   the killing wind of death. As for our Sires bending, each man, upon his
   staff, their posture salutes the tomb towards which they bend. A common
   fall and a common sin have brought on us universal death. Look on our
   vast cemeteries and say, "Who slew all these?" The only answer is,
   "Death came by sin and so death passed upon all men, for that all have
   sinned."

   Once more, Job arrived at this personal knowledge through his own
   bodily feebleness. Perhaps he had not always said, "I know that You
   will bring me to death," but now, as he sits upon the dunghill and
   scrapes himself with the potsherd and writhes in anguish and is
   depressed in spirit, he realizes his own mortality. When the tent pole
   quivers in the storm and the covering flaps to and fro in the wind--and
   the whole structure threatens to dissolve in the tempest--then the
   tenant of the habitation, chilled to his marrow, needs not to be
   instructed that his home is frail. He knows it well enough. We need
   many touches of the rod of affliction before we really learn the
   undeniable truth of our mortality. Every man, woman and child in this
   place should unite with me in saying, "I know that You will bring me to
   death." And yet it is highly probable that a large number of us do not
   know this to be so.

   "It is a commonplace matter of fact which we all admit," cries one. I
   know it is so and yet in the very commonness of the truth there lies a
   temptation to overlook its personal application. We know this as though
   we knew it not! To many,

   it is not taken into the reckoning and it is not a factor in their
   being. They do not number their days so as to apply their hearts unto
   wisdom. That poet was half inspired who said, "All men count all men
   mortal but themselves." Is it not so with us? We do not really expect
   to die. We reckon that we shall live a very considerable time. Even
   those who are very aged still think that as a few others have lived to
   an extreme old age, so may they! I am afraid there are few who could
   say with a gracious soldier, "I thank God I fear not death. These 30
   years together I never rose from my bed in the morning and reckoned
   upon living till night."

   Those who die daily will die easily. Those who make themselves familiar
   with the tomb will find it transfigured into a bed--the morgue will
   become a couch. The man who rejoices in the Covenant of Grace is
   cheered by the fact that even death, itself, is comprehended among the
   things which belong to the Believer. I would to God we had learned this
   lesson. We should not, then, put death aside among the lumber, nor set
   it upon the shelf among the things which we never intend to use. Let us
   live as dying men among dying men and then we shall truly live! This
   will not make us unhappy, for surely no heir of Heaven will fret
   because he is not doomed to live here forever. It were a sad sentence
   if we were bound over to dwell in this poor world forever! Who among us
   would wish to realize in his own person the fabled life of the
   Wandering Jew, or even of Prester John? Who desires to go up and down
   among the sons of men for twice a thousand years?

   If the Supreme should say, "Live here forever," it were a malediction
   rather than a benediction! To grow ripe and to be carried home like
   shocks of corn in their season--is not this a fit and fair thing? To
   labor through a blessed day and then, at nightfall, to go home and to
   receive the wages of Grace--is there anything dark and dismal about
   that? God forgive you that you ever thought so! If you are the Lord's
   own child, I invite you to look this Home-going in the face until you
   change your thought and see no more in it gloom and dread, but a very
   Heaven of hope and glory!

   Suffer not my text to be a dirge, but turn it into a golden Psalm, as
   you say, "I know that You will bring me to death, and to the house
   appointed for all living."

   II. Having thus discoursed upon a piece of personal knowledge, I now
   beg you to see in my text the shining of HOLY INTELLIGENCE. Perhaps,
   when I read the words in your hearing, you did not notice all they
   contain. Let me then point out to you certain hidden jewels. Job, even
   in his anguish, does not, for a moment, forget his God. He speaks of
   Him, here--"I know that You will bring me to death." He perceives that
   he will not die apart from God. He does not say his sore boils or his
   strangulation will bring him to death, but, "You will bring me to
   death." He does not trace his approaching death to chance, or to fate,
   or to second causes--no, he sees only the hand of the Lord! To Him
   belong both life and death. Say not that the wasting consumption took
   away your darling! Complain not that a fierce fever slew your father,
   but feel that the Lord, Himself, has done it! "It is the Lord, let Him
   do what seems Him good." Blame not the accident, neither complain of
   the pestilence, for Jehovah, Himself, gathers Home His own. He only
   will remove you and me. "I know that You will bring me to death." There
   is, to my heart, much delicious comfort in the language before us!

   I love that old-fashioned verse--

   "Plagues and deaths around me fly. Till He bids I cannot die-- Not a
   single shaft can hit Till the God of Love thinks fit."

   In the midst of malaria and pestilence, we are safe with God. "Because
   you have made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, your
   habitation; there shall no evil befall you, neither shall any plague
   come near your dwelling." Beneath the shadow of Jehovah's wings we need
   not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flies by
   day, nor for the pestilence that walks in darkness. We are immortal
   till our work is done! Be you, therefore, quiet in the day of evil.
   Rest peacefully in the day of destruction--all things are ordered by
   wisdom and precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His
   saints. No forces in the world are outside of His control. God suffers
   no foes to trespass on the domain of Providence. All things are
   ordained of God and specially are our deaths under the peculiar
   oversight of our exalted Lord and Savior! He lives and was dead--and
   bears the keys of death at His belt. He Himself shall guide us through
   death's iron gate. Surely what the Lord wills and what He, Himself,
   works, cannot be otherwise than acceptable to His chosen! Let us
   rejoice that in life and death we are in the Lord's hands.

   The text seems to me to cover another sweet and comforting thought,
   namely, that God will be with us in death. "I know that You will bring
   me to death." He will bring us on our journey till He brings us to the
   journey's end--He, Himself, our Escort and our Leader. We shall have
   the Lord's company even to our dying hour--"You will bring me to

   death." He leads me even to those still waters which men so much fear.
   "Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will
   fear no evil for You are with me. Your rod and Your staff, they comfort
   me." Beloved, we live with God, do we not? Shall we not die with Him?
   Our life is one long holiday when the Lord Jesus keeps us company--
   will He leave us at the end? Because God is with us, we go forth with
   joy and are led forth with peace! The mountains and the hills break
   forth before us into singing and all the trees of the field clap their
   hands. Will they not be equally glad when we rise to our eternal
   reward? It is not living that is happiness, but living with God--it is
   not dying that will be wretchedness, but dying without God!

   The child has to go to bed, but it does not cry if mother is going
   upstairs with it. It is quite dark, but what of that? The mother's eyes
   are lamps to the child. It is very lonely and still. Not so--the
   mother's arms are the child's company and her voice is its music. O
   Lord, when the hour comes for me to go to bed, I know that You will
   take me there and speak lovingly into my ear--therefore I cannot fear,
   but will even look forward to that hour of Your manifested love! You
   had not thought of that, had you? You have been afraid of death, but
   you cannot be so any longer if your Lord will bring you there in His
   arms of love. Dismiss all fear and calmly proceed on your way, though
   the shades thicken around you, for the Lord is your light and your
   salvation!

   It may not be in the text, but it naturally follows from it, that if
   God brings us to death, He will bring us up again. Job, in another
   passage, declared that he was sure that God would vindicate His
   cause--"I know," he says, "that my Redeemer lives and that He shall
   stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin, worms
   destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." Certain wise men
   who would expunge the very idea of a resurrection out of the Old
   Testament have tried to make out that Job expected to be restored and
   vindicated in this life, but he evidently did not expect any such
   thing, for, according to the text, it is clear that he feared he would
   die at once! We gather from this verse, by a negative process of
   reasoning, that the living Redeemer and the vindication which was to be
   brought to him by that living Redeemer were matters of hope in another
   life after death!

   Beloved, you and I know this Truth of God from many declarations of our
   Lord in His Divine Book. Though we die in one sense, yet in another we
   shall not die, but live! Though our bodies shall, for a little while,
   sleep in their lowly resting places, our souls shall be forever with
   the Lord. We shall spend an interval as unclothed spirits in the
   company of Him to whom we are united by vital bonds--and then the
   trumpet of the archangel shall summon our bodies from their sleeping
   places to be reunited with our souls! These bodies, the comrades of our
   warfare, shall be companions of our victory! "This mortal must put on
   immortality."

   He who raised up Jesus shall also raise us up! We shall come forth from
   the land of the enemy in fullness of joy. Therefore we ought to take
   great comfort from the words of our text and be of good courage. We
   shall die--there is no discharge in this war. We shall die--let us not
   sit down like cowards and weep tears bitter with despair. We sorrow not
   as those that are without hope! Let us view our departure in the soft
   and mellow light which is shed upon it by the words, "You shall bring
   me to death, and to the house appointed for all living."

   III. I pass on to notice the QUIET EXPECTATION which breathes in this
   text. It is my prayer that we may enjoy the same restfulness. My dear
   Brothers and Sisters, the text is full of a calm stillness of hope. Job
   speaks of his death as a certainty, but speaks of it without regret.
   No, more than that, if you read the connection--it is with a smile of
   desire, with a flush of expectancy--"I know that You will bring me to
   death, and to the house appointed for all living." Many men are unable
   to regard death with composure--they are disturbed and alarmed by the
   very hint of it.

   1 want to reason with those disciples of our Lord Jesus who are in
   bondage from fear of death. What are the times when men are able to
   speak of death quietly and happily? Sometimes they do so in periods of
   great bodily suffering. I have, on several occasions, felt everything
   like fear of dying taken from me simply by the process of weariness,
   for I could not wish to live any longer in such pain as I then
   endured--and I have no doubt that such an experience is common among
   sufferers from acute disorders. The sons and daughters of affliction
   are not only trained to wait the Lord's will, but they are even driven
   to desire to depart--they would sooner rest from so stern a struggle
   than continue the fierce conflict.

   It is well that pain and anguish should cut the ropes which moor us to
   these earthly shores, that we may spread our sails for a voyage to the
   Better Land! Oh, what a place Heaven must be to those whose bones have
   worn through their skin through long lying upon the bed of anguish!
   What a change from the workhouse or the infirmary to the New Jerusalem!
   I have stood at the bedside of suffering saints where I could not but
   weep at the sight of their pains--what a transi-

   tion from such agony to bliss! Track the glorious flight of the chosen
   one from yon weary couch to the crown, the harp, the palm branch and
   the King in His beauty! The bitter suffering of the body helps the
   Believer to look upon his translation as a thing to be desired.

   The growing infirmities of age work in the same way. Yonder venerable
   Sister has, at length, become quite deaf. Her great delight was to
   attend the House of God and she still comes, but the service is a dumb
   show to her--she cannot hear her pastor's voice which was once so sweet
   in her ears. Her eyes, after being helped with more powerful glasses,
   are, at length, unable to read that dear old Bible which remained her
   sole solace when she could not hear. Her existence, now, is but half
   life--she cannot walk far--even in crossing the room, her limbs
   tremble. She is already half gone. Do you not think that she will now
   feel happy to quit life, even as a ripe apple easily leaves the tree?
   At any rate, there will be little strength with which to resist the
   plucking of Death's hands. It will be well when the spirit breaks away
   from the dilapidated hovel of the time-worn body and rises to the
   building of God--the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens!
   Many of God's aged servants who have been spared to advanced years have
   come to look out for the setting of earth's sun without a fear of
   darkness. While they have seemed to have one foot in the grave, they
   have really had one foot in Heaven!

   Beloved, without either falling into sickness, or aging into infirmity,
   we can reach this state of mind in another way--by being filled with an
   entire submission to the will of God. When the decree of God is our
   delight, we feel no abhorrence to anything which He appoints, either in
   life or in death. If we are living as Christians ought to live, we have
   denied our self-will and we have accepted the Lord to be the Arbiter of
   all events, the absolute Ruler of our being. If your soul is truly
   married to Christ, you find your supreme bliss in the Bridegroom's
   will. Your cry is, "Your will be done!" This should be our ordinary
   condition in daily life and it is an admirable preparation for thinking
   of death with composure. Let me live, if God will be with me in life!
   Let me die, if He will be with me in death! So long as we are, "forever
   with the Lord," what matters where else we are? We will not further ask
   when or where--our when is "forever"--our where is "with the Lord."
   Delight in God is the cure for dread of death!

   Next, I believe that great holiness sets us free from the love of this
   world and makes us ready to depart. By great holiness, I mean great
   horror of sin and great longing after perfect purity. When a man feels
   sin within him, he hates it and longs to be delivered from it. He
   loathes the sin that is around him and cries, "Woe is me, that I
   sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!" Have you ever
   been cast in the midst of blasphemers? I am sure you have then sighed
   to be in Heaven. If you have been sickened by the drunkenness and
   debauchery of this city, you have cried, "Oh that I had wings like a
   dove! For then would I fly away and be at rest." Did you not wish as
   much last year when the lid was being lifted from the reeking caldron
   of London's unnatural lust? I am sure I did. I sighed for a lodge in
   some vast wilderness where rumor of such villainy might never reach me
   again. In the midst of human sin, if the trumpet were sounded, "up and
   away," you would be glad to hear it so that you might speed to the fair
   land where sin and sorrow will never assail you again!

   Another thing that will make us look at death with complacency is when
   we have a full assurance that we are in Christ and that, come what may,
   nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus
   our Lord. Doubt your salvation and you may well be afraid to die. Let
   even a shadow of doubt fall on the clear mirror in which you see your
   loving Lord and you will be disquieted. If you can say, "I know whom I
   have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I
   have committed unto Him against that day," you cannot fear! What reason
   can you have for alarm? A Christian should go to his bed at night
   without an anxious care as to whether he shall wake up in this world or
   in the next. He should so live that nothing would need to be altered if
   his last hour should strike.

   Let us imitate Mr. Wesley's calm anticipation of his end. A lady once
   asked Dr. Wesley, "Suppose that you knew you were to die at twelve
   o'clock tomorrow night, how would you spend the intervening time?"
   "How, Madam?" he replied, "why just as I intend to spend it now. I
   should preach this evening at Gloucester and again at five tomorrow
   morning. After that I should ride to Tewkesbury, preach in the
   afternoon and meet the society in the evening. I should then repair to
   friend Martin's house, who expects to entertain me, converse and pray
   with the family as usual, retire to my room at ten o'clock, commend
   myself to my heavenly Father, lie down to rest and wake up in Glory!"

   Live in such a way that any day would make a suitable top stone for
   life! Live so that you need not change your mode of living, even if
   your sudden departure were immediately predicted to you! When you so
   live, you will look upon death without fear. We usually fear because we
   have cause for fear--when all is right we shall bid farewell to terror!

   Let me add that there are times when our joys run high, when the big
   waves come rolling in from the Pacific of eternal bliss! Then we see
   the King in His beauty by the eye of faith and though it is but a dim
   vision, we are so charmed with it that our love of Him makes us
   impatient to behold Him face to face. Have you not sometimes felt that
   you could sit in this congregation and sing yourself away to
   everlasting bliss? These high days and holidays are not always with us.
   All the days of the week are not Sabbaths and all our halting places
   are not Elim. Brothers and Sisters, when we do play upon the
   high-sounding cymbals, then we are for joining the angelic chorus! When
   we feel Heaven within us and stand like the cherubim above the Mercy
   Seat with outstretched wings, then we do not dread the thought of
   speedy flight! "Now, Lord, why do I wait? My hope is in You." Yes, we
   even cry with Simeon, "Now let Your servant depart in peace, according
   to Your Word." Brethren, we shall soon be on the wing! Then will we
   rise and sing and sing as we rise! We will ascend yon blue sky and,
   within the jeweled portal, we will spend eternity in praise!

   I hope some of you are getting up, a bit, out of your notion that to
   think of death is gloomy work. I trust you will begin to view it with
   hope and confidence.

   IV. I conclude by saying that this subject affords us SACRED
   INSTRUCTION. "I know that You will bring me to death, and to the house
   appointed for all living." Brothers and Sisters, I shall not always
   have the privilege of coming here on the Sabbath to speak with you.
   Perhaps, before long, another voice will invite your attention and I
   shall be silent in the grave. Neither will you mingle in this throng
   which so happily gathers here--not much longer will you sit among those
   who frequent these lower courts. What then?

   Let us prepare for death. Let us cleave to the Lord Jesus who is our
   All. Make your calling and election sure. Believe in the Lord Jesus
   Christ and believe intensely. Repent of sin and fly from it earnestly
   and with your whole heart.

   Live diligently. Live while you live. Let every moment be spent as you
   will wish to have spent it when you survey life from your last pillow.
   Let us live unto God in Christ by the Holy Spirit. May the Lord quicken
   our pace by the thought that it is but a little while! A short day will
   not allow loitering. Do we not live too much as if we played at living?
   A man will preach a poor sermon if he thinks, "I shall preach for
   another 20 years." We must preach as though we never might preach
   again. You will teach that class very badly, this afternoon, if you
   have a notion that you can afford to be a little slovenly since you can
   make up, in the future, for the neglects of the present. Drop no
   stitches. Do all your work at your best. Do a day's work in a day and
   have no balance of debt to carry over to tomorrow's account. Soon shall
   you and I stand before the Judgement Seat of Christ to give an account
   of the things done in the body--therefore let us live as in the light
   of that day of days, doing work which may bear that fierce light which
   beats about the Great White Throne.

   Next to that, let us learn from the general assembly in the house
   appointed for all living to walk very humbly. A common tomb must
   accommodate us all in the end, therefore let us despise all pride of
   birth, rank, or wealth. There are no distinctions in the last Meeting
   House--the rich and the poor meet together and the slave is free from
   his master. I hate that pride which makes persons carry themselves as
   if they were more than mortal. "I have said, you are gods; but you
   shall die like men." A voice from the tombs proclaims a grim equality
   in death--

   "Princes, this clay must be your bed, In spite of all your towers; The
   tall, the wise, the reverend head Must lie as low as ours."

   Therefore speak no more so exceedingly proud. It is madness for dying
   men to boast! When Saladin lay a-dying he bade them take his winding
   sheet and carry it upon a lance through the camp, with the
   proclamation, "This is all that remains of the mighty Saladin, the
   conqueror of nations!" A lingerer in the graveyard will take up your
   skull, one day, and moralize upon it, little knowing how wise a man you
   were! None will then do you reverence. Therefore, be humble.

   Beprompt, for life is brief. If your children are to be trained up in
   God's fear, begin with them today. If you are to win souls, continue at
   the holy labor without pause. You will soon be gone from all
   opportunity of doing good, therefore, whatever your hand finds to do,
   do it with all your might. When the Eastern emperors were crowned at
   Constantinople, it is said to have been a custom for the royal mason to
   set before his majesty a certain number of marble slabs, one of which
   he was to choose to be his tombstone. It was well for him to remember
   his funeral at his coronation! I bring

   before you, now, the unwritten marbles of life! Which will you have,
   holiness or sin, Christ or self? When you have chosen, you will begin
   to write the inscription upon it, for your life's works will be your
   memorial. God help us to be diligent in His business, for it is not
   long that we can be at it!

   Men and women, project yourselves into eternity--get away from
   time--for you must soon be driven away from it. You are birds with
   wings, sit not on these boughs forever blinking in the dark like owls.
   Bestir yourselves and mount like eagles. Rise to the heights above the
   present. Life is a short day at its longest and when its sun goes down,
   it leaves you in eternity. Eternal woe or eternal joy will fill your
   undying spirit. Your indestructible self must swim in endless bliss or
   sink in fathomless misery! If you mean to be lost, count the cost and
   know what you are doing. If you have set your mind on sin and its
   consequences, do the deed deliberately and do not make a sport of it.
   Oh, Sirs, some of you will, one of these days, wake up as from an awful
   dream. Oh that you could foresee the scene which awaits you!

   Those were strong words, but they were the words of Jesus--"And in Hell
   he lifted up his eyes, being in torments." These words reveal none of
   that pretty nonsense which some prattle about--"a larger hope"--yet
   Jesus spoke them and His hope was of the largest. He that loved you
   better than these philosophers love you, also said, "Beside all this,
   between us and you there is a great gulf fixed so that they which would
   pass from there to you, cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would
   come from there." Our Lord put it very strongly. If you mean to dare
   the infernal terrors, I can do no less than ask you to know what you
   are doing. If you have chosen sin, you have chosen ruin! Begin to
   consider it and see whether it is worth while.

   But if you have chosen Christ, mercy and eternal life and, if by faith
   these are yours, begin to enjoy them now! Rehearse the music of the
   skies. Taste the delights of fellowship with God even here! Rejoice in
   the victory which now overcomes the world, even our faith. You will be
   in the Glory Land before long and some of you much sooner than you
   think. So, as the sermon ends, under a sense of my own frailty, I bid
   you a sincere adieu. Until the day breaks and the shadows flee
   away--fare you well.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Annual Atonement

   (No. 1923)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, OCTOBER 3, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse
   you, that you may be clean from all your sins before the Lord."
   Leviticus 16:30.

   BEFORE Adam transgressed, he lived in communion with God, but after he
   had broken the Covenant and grieved God's Spirit, he could have no more
   familiar fellowship with God. Under the Mosaic dispensation, in which
   God was pleased, in His Grace, to dwell among His people and walk with
   them in the wilderness, it was still under a reserve-- there was a Holy
   Place wherein the symbol of God's Presence was hidden away from mortal
   gaze. No man might come near to it except in one way, only, and then
   only once in the year, "The Holy Spirit this signifying, that the way
   into the Holiest of All was not yet made manifest, while as the first
   Tabernacle was yet standing." Our subject today illustrates the
   appointed way of access to God. This chapter shows that the way of
   access to God is by Atonement and by no other method. We cannot draw
   near unto the Most High except along the blood-besprinkled way of
   sacrifice. Our Lord Jesus said, "No man comes unto the Father, but by
   Me." And this is true in many senses and in this, among them, that our
   way to God lies only through the Sacrifice of His Son.

   The reason for this is that sin lies at the door. Brothers and Sisters,
   a pure and holy God cannot endure sin. He cannot have fellowship with
   it, or with those who are rendered unclean by it, for it would be
   inconsistent with His Nature to do so. On the other hand, sinful men
   cannot have fellowship with God--their evil nature could not endure the
   fire of His holiness! Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?
   Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? What is that
   devouring fire and what are those everlasting burnings, but the Justice
   and Holiness of God? The Apostle says, "Even our God is a consuming
   fire." A guilty soul would perish if it were possible for it to draw
   near to God apart from the Mediator and His Atonement. The fire of
   God's Nature must consume the stubble of our nature so long as there is
   sin in us or about us. Hence the difficulty of access, a difficulty
   which only a Divine method can remove. God cannot commune with sinful
   men, for He is holy. Sinful men cannot commune with a holy God, because
   He must destroy them, even as He destroyed Nadab and Abihu when they
   intruded into His Holy Place. That terrible judgment is mentioned in
   the opening verses of the chapter before us as the reason why the
   ordinances herein contained were first of all made.

   How, then, shall men come to God? Only in God's own way! He, Himself,
   devised the way and He has taught it to us by a parable in this
   chapter. It would be very wrong to prefer any one passage of Scripture
   beyond another, for all Scripture is given by Inspiration. But if we
   might do so, we should set this chapter in a very eminent and prominent
   place for its fullness of instruction--and its clear, yet deep
   doctrinal teaching. It treats upon a matter which is of the very
   highest importance to all of us. We are here taught the way by which
   the sin that blocks the door may be taken away, so that a seeking soul
   may be introduced into the Presence of God--and stand in His Holy
   Place--and yet live. Here we learn how we may say, with the astonished
   Prophet, "I have seen God and my life is preserved!" Oh that we might,
   today, so learn the lesson that we may enter into the fullest
   fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ, in that safe
   way, that only way, which God has appointed for us! Oh for the power
   and guidance of the Holy Spirit, that we may know and use "the new and
   living way!"

   Before I proceed to enlarge upon this chapter, I want to notice that,
   of course, this was only a type. This great Day of Atonement did not
   see an actual atonement made, nor sin really put away, but it was the
   figure of heavenly things--the shadow of good things to come. The
   substance is of Christ. If this Day of Atonement had been real and
   satisfactory, as touching God and the conscience of men, there would
   never have been another--for the worshippers once purged would

   have had no more conscience of sin! If they had lived 50 or a hundred
   years, they would never have needed another Day of Atonement--but
   because this was, in its nature, imperfect and shadowy, being only
   typical--therefore, every year, in the seventh month, on the 10th day
   of the month, a fast was proclaimed, sin was confessed, victims were
   slain and atonement was again presented.

   In the Jewish year, so often as it came round, on one special day they
   were commanded to afflict their souls, even though it was a Sabbath of
   rest. In very deed a remembrance of sin was made every year, a painful
   remembrance for them, although sweetened by a new exhibition of the
   plan by which sin is cleansed. The Lord said, "This shall be an
   everlasting statute unto you." It lasted as long as the Mosaic economy
   in the letter, but its spirit and substance last on forever. They had
   that day to remember that their sin was not put away once and for all
   and forever by all their types and ceremonies and, therefore, they had
   again to humble themselves and come before God with sacrifices which
   could never truly put away sin! Israel had to do this constantly until
   Jesus, the true High Priest appeared--and now they have no sacrificing
   priest, nor altar, nor Holy of Holies. By Jesus Christ's one offering
   of Himself, sin was put away, once and for all, effectually and
   finally, so that Believers are really clean before God.

   Now, if I should seem to run the type into the substance, you will just
   separate them in your own minds. It is not easy to speak as to keep
   shadow and substance quite clear of each other. We are apt to say,
   "This is so-and-so," when we mean, "this represents so-and-so," and we
   have our Lord's example for so doing, for He said, "this is My body and
   My blood," when He meant that the bread and wine represented His body
   and blood. We are not speaking to fools, nor to those who will wrench
   the letter from its obvious spiritual sense! I shall trust to your
   intelligence and the guidance of the Holy Spirit that you will, in this
   discourse, discern between the symbol and the substance! May the Divine
   Spirit help me and help you to a right understanding of this sacred
   type!

   I. Now, then, let us come to the text and note, first, WHAT WAS DONE on
   that particular day. The text tells us what was done symbolically--"On
   that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you,
   that you may be clean from all your sins before the Lord."

   The persons, themselves, were cleansed. If any of them had become
   unclean so as to be denied communion with God and His people, they were
   made clean, so that they might go up to the Tabernacle and mingle with
   the congregation. All the host were, that morning, regarded as
   unclean--and all had to bow their heads in penitent sorrow because of
   their uncleanness. After the sacrifice and the sending away of the
   scapegoat, the whole congregation was clean and in a condition to
   rejoice. If it happened to be the Year of Jubilee, the joyful trumpets
   rang out as soon as the atonement was complete. Every year, within four
   days after the Day of Atonement, the people were so clean that they
   kept the joyful Feast of Tabernacles. Jewish Rabbis were known to say
   that no man had ever seen sorrow who had not seen the Day of Atonement
   and that no man had ever seen gladness who had not witnessed the
   hilarity and delight of the people during the Feast of Tabernacles!

   The people, themselves, were made to be a clean people and I lay great
   stress on this, because unless you, yourself, are purged, everything
   that you do is defiled in the sight of God. When a man was unclean, if
   he went into a tent and sat upon anything, it was unclean. If a friend
   touched his garments, he was rendered unclean. The man, himself,
   needed, first, to be delivered from impurity and it is precisely the
   same in your case and mine! I have need to cry, "Purge me with hyssop,
   and I shall be clean! Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow." Your
   very person, by nature, is defiled and obnoxious to the justice of God.
   In body, soul and spirit you are, by nature, altogether as an unclean
   thing and all your righteousnesses are as filthy rags--you, yourself,
   need to be washed and renewed. It is a far simpler thing to remove
   outward stains than it is to purge the very substance and nature of
   man, yet this is what was done, typically, on the Day of
   Atone-ment--and this is what our redeeming Lord actually does for us!
   We are outlaws and His Atonement purges us of outlawry and makes us
   citizens. We are lepers and by His stripes we are so healed as to be
   received among the clean! By nature we are only fit to be flung into
   those fires which burn up corrupt and offensive things--but His
   Sacrifice makes us so precious in the sight of the Lord that all the
   forces of Heaven stand sentinel about us! Once black as night, we are
   so purged that we shall walk with Him in white, for we are worthy.

   Their persons being made clean, they were also purged of all the sins
   confessed. I called attention, in the reading of the chapter, to its
   many, "alls." I think there are seven or eight of them. The work which
   was done on that day was compre-hensive--a clean sweep was made of sin.
   I begin with that which was confessed, for it was that for which
   cleansing would

   be most desired. It is said that, "Aaron shall lay both his hands upon
   the head of the live goat and confess over him all the iniquities of
   the children of Israel." All sin that was confessed over the scapegoat
   was carried away into a land not inhabited. Sin that is confessed is
   evidently real sin and not a mere dream of a morbid conscience. There
   is a certain mythical cloud of sin which people talk about and pretend
   to deplore and yet they have no sense of the solid weight and
   heinous-ness of their actual iniquity. Certain grievous sins are
   comparable to cauldrons of foaming filth--no man will willingly
   acknowledge them, however clearly they may be his, but when he does
   admit them before God, let him remember that it is this real sin, this
   foul and essentially abominable transgression, which is put away by the
   Atonement of Christ!

   Sin confessed with tears. Sin which causes the very heart to
   bleed--killing sin, damning sin--this is the kind of sin for which
   Jesus died! Sham sinners may be content with a sham Savior, but our
   Lord Jesus is the real Savior who did really die--and died for real
   sin. Oh, how this ought to comfort you, you that are sadly bearing the
   pressing burden of an execrable life! And you, too, who are crushed
   into the mire of despondency beneath the load of your guilt! Brothers
   and Sisters, sin which you are bound to admit to as most assuredly
   committed is the sort of pollution from which Jesus cleanses all
   Believers. Sin which you dare not confess to man, but acknowledge only
   as you lay your hand upon the Divine Sacrifice--such sin the Lord
   removes from you.

   The passage is very particular to mention "all sins." "The goat shall
   bear upon him all their iniquities." This includes every form of sin of
   thought, of word, of deed, of pride, of falsehood, of lust, of malice,
   of blasphemy. This comprehends crimes against man and offenses against
   God of peculiar blackness. And it does not exclude sins of
   inadvertence, or carelessness, or of omission. Transgressions of the
   body, the intellect, the affections are all blotted out. The outrageous
   scandals which I dare not mention are yet pardonable--yes, such have
   been pardoned! There is not the same degree of virus in all sins, but
   whether or not, the Atonement is for all transgressions. The Lord Jesus
   Christ did not pour out His heart's blood to remove one set of stains
   and leave the rest-- He takes away from the soul that puts its trust in
   Him every spot and trace of sin. "Wash me," said David, "and I shall be
   whiter than snow." He looked for the extreme of cleanness and such the
   Savior brings to the soul for whom He has made effectual Atonement. I
   desire to be so plain and broad that the chief of sinners may gather
   hope from my words. I speak in very simple language, but the theme is
   full of sublimity--especially to you that feel your need of it. The
   Atonement removed all sin. I must give you the exact expression. He
   says, "all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their
   transgressions in all their sins."

   It seems that the Divine Atonement puts away the sin of sin--the
   essence and heart of sin. Sin has its core, its kernel, its mortal
   spot. Within a fruit there is a central stone, or pip--this may serve
   as the likeness of sin. Within each iniquity there seems to lie a
   something more essentially evil than the act itself--this is the kernel
   of intent, the core of obstinacy, the inner hate of the mind. Whatever
   may be the sin of the soul, or the soul of the sin, Atonement has been
   made for it all. Most sins are a conglomerate of sins. A sin may be
   compared to a honeycomb--there are as many sins within one sin as there
   are cells within a piece of comb. Sin is a swarming, hiving, teeming
   thing! You can never estimate its full vileness, nor perceive all its
   evil bearings. All sorts of sins may hide away in one sin.

   It would puzzle all the theologians in the world to tell what sin was
   absent from Adam's first offense. I could take any point you choose and
   show that Adam sinned in that direction. All sin was within that first
   sin. Sin is a multitudinous evil, an aggregate of all manner of
   filthiness, a chain with a thousand deadly links! A sinner is like a
   man possessed with a devil who cries, "My name is Legion, for we are
   many!" It is one in evil and yet countless in forms. The Atonement is
   more than equal to sin--it takes away all our transgressions in all our
   sins. It is the fullest purgation that could be imagined. The Lord
   Jesus has not left upon those for whom He has made Atonement a single
   spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, so far as their justification is
   concerned. He has not left an iniquity for which they can be condemned
   before the bar of judgement. "You are clean every whit," is His sure
   verdict and none can contradict it.

   It appears from this chapter, too, that another thing was done. Not
   only were all the sins that they had committed put away, but also all
   their holy things were purged. There stood the altar upon which only
   holy things were offered, but because imperfect men ministered there,
   it needed to be sprinkled with blood before it could be clean. There
   was the Holy Place of the Tabernacle which was dedicated solely to
   God's service, wherein the holiest rites of God's ordaining were
   celebrated--but because the priests that served there were fallible and
   unholy thoughts might cross their minds even when they handled the holy
   vessels, therefore the blood was sprinkled seven times within the Holy
   Place! Inside, within the veil, the sanctuary was called the "Holy of
   Holiest." Yes, but standing, as it did at first, in the midst of the
   camp of an

   erring people and afterwards near to it, it needed to be purged! It is
   written, "the priest shall make an atonement for the Holy Place,
   because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel." Even the Mercy
   Seat and the ground whereon it rested were sprinkled with the blood of
   the sacrifice seven times!

   O Brothers and Sisters, I feel so glad that our Lord has atoned for the
   sins of our holy things! I rejoice that Jesus forgives the sins of my
   sermons! I have preached my very soul out among you with purity of
   motive, seeking to win men for Christ, but I dare not hope to have them
   accepted in and of themselves, for I perceive that they are defiled
   with sin! I feel so glad that Jesus has purified our prayers! Many
   saints spend much time in hearty, earnest cries to God, but even on
   your knees, you sin--and herein is our comfort, that the precious blood
   has made Atonement for the shortcomings of our supplications. Sometimes
   when we get together, Beloved, we sing to the praise of our Lord with
   heart and will. I have felt in this place as if you and I and all of us
   were so many burning coals, all blazing within a censer and thus
   letting loose the odors of the sweet incense of our Lord's praise! How
   often has a pillar of fragrant smoke risen from this house to Heaven!
   Yes, but even then there was sin in our praises and iniquity in our
   doxologies. We need pardon for our Psalms and cleansing for our hymns!
   Blessed be God, Atonement is made for all our faults, excesses and
   shortcomings. Jesus puts away not only our unholy things, but also the
   sins of our holy things!

   Once more, on that day, all the people were cleansed. All the
   congregation of the house of Israel were typically cleansed from all
   sin by the Day of Atonement--not only the priests, but all the
   people--not only the princes, but the poorest servants in the camp! The
   aged woman and the little child. The gray beard and the youth were,
   alike, purified. Men of business inclined to covetousness, they were
   cleansed. And younger men and maidens in their gaiety, too apt to
   descend into wantonness--they were all made clean that day! This gives
   great comfort to those of us who love the souls of the multitude. All
   who believe are justified from all things! It is written, "The blood of
   Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin." I have often heard
   the text quoted with the, "us," left out. Permit me to put it in at
   this moment-- "cleanses us from all Sin." Now put yourself into the,
   "us." Dare to believe that Grace admits you there! By an act of faith,
   let all of us all round the galleries and in this great area say, "The
   blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses US." If you pull, "us," to
   pieces, it is made up of a great many "me's." A thousand, thousand
   times "me" will all pack away into a single "us!" Let each one
   say--"The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses me, and cleanses me
   from all sin." Be glad and rejoice forever because of this gracious
   Truth of God! This was done on the Day of Atonement in the symbol--and
   it has really been done by the Lord Jesus through His atoning
   Sacrifice.

   II. Now we notice, in the second place, HOW IT WAS DONE. We have seen
   what was done and this is most cheering. But now we will see how it was
   done. I shall have to be brief in this description. The Atonement was
   made, first of all, by sacrifice. I see a bullock for a sin offering, a
   ram for a burnt offering and, again, a goat for a sin offering. Many
   victims were offered that day and thus the people were reminded of the
   instrumental cause of atonement, namely, the Blood of Sacrifice. We
   know that the blood of bulls and of goats could never take away sin,
   but very distinctly do these point to the sufferings of our dear
   Redeemer. The woes He bore are the Expiation for our guilt. "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."

   If you want to know by what means sin is put away, think of Messiah's
   life of grief and shame and arduous service. Think of His agony and
   bloody sweat in the garden. Think of the betrayal and denial, the
   scourging and the spitting. Think of the false accusations and the
   reproaches and the jeers. Think of the Cross, the nailed hands and
   feet, the bruised soul and the broken spirit. Fierce were the fires
   which consumed our Sacrifice. "My God, My God, why have You forsaken
   Me?" is the quintessence of agony--and this came from the heart which
   was crushed for our sins! Atonement was made for your sins and mine by
   the shedding of blood--that is to say, by our Lord's suffering and
   especially by His laying down His life on our behalf. Jesus died--by
   that death He purged our sin, He who only has Immortality gave up the
   ghost--in the cold embrace of Death, the Lord of Glory slept! They
   wrapped Him in spices and linen cloths and laid Him in the tomb of
   Joseph of Arimathaea. In that death lay the essential deed by which sin
   dies and Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life.

   Notice, next, that the atonement was made not only by the blood of
   sacrifice, but by the presentation of the blood within the veil. With
   the smoke of incense and a bowl filled with blood, Aaron passed into
   the Most Holy Place. Let us never forget that our Lord has gone into
   the heavenly places with better sacrifices than Aaron could present.
   His merits

   are the sweet incense which burns before the Throne of the heavenly
   Grace. His death supplies that Blood of Sprinkling which we find even
   in Heaven. "For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with
   hands, which are the figures of the true; but into Heaven, itself, now
   to appear in the Presence of God for us." "Neither by the blood of
   goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered in once into the Holy
   Place, having obtained eternal redemption for us." The presenting of
   the blood before God effects the Atonement. The material of the
   Atonement is in the blood and merits of Jesus, but a main part of the
   atoning act lies in the presentation of these in the heavenly places by
   Jesus Christ, Himself.

   Furthermore, atonement was made effectual by its application to the
   thing or person cleansed. The atonement was made for the Holy Place--it
   was sprinkled seven times with blood. The same was done to the
   altar--the horns thereof were smeared seven times. So to make the
   Atonement effectual between you and God, the blood of Jesus must be
   sprinkled upon you by a lively faith. Though this does not so plainly
   appear in the type before us as to the people on this occasion, yet it
   comes out in other types--the cleansing blood was always the Blood of
   Sprinkling. Before the blood of the Paschal lamb could cause the
   avenger to pass over the house, it must be marked with the crimson
   sign. This is that scarlet thread in the window which delivers the
   Lord's Rahabs in the day of destruction. Before any man can receive
   reconciliation with God, the Atonement must be applied to his own heart
   and conscience. Faith is that bunch of hyssop which we dip into the
   blood and, with it, sprinkle the lintel and two side posts of the house
   wherein we dwell--and so we are saved from destruction.

   Further, my dear Brothers and Sisters, inasmuch as no one type was
   sufficient, the Lord set forth the method of the removal of sin, as far
   as we are concerned, by the scapegoat. One of two goats was chosen to
   live. It stood before the Lord and Aaron confessed all the sins of
   Israel upon its head. A fit man, selected for the purpose, led this
   goat away into a land not inhabited. What became of it? Why do you ask
   the question? It is not to edification. You may have seen the famous
   picture of the scapegoat, representing it as expiring in misery in a
   desert place. That is all very pretty and I do not wonder that
   imagination should picture the poor devoted scapegoat as a sort of
   cursed thing, left to perish amid accumulated horrors. But please
   observe that this is all fancy--mere groundless fancy! The Scripture is
   entirely silent as to anything of the kind and purposely so. All that
   the type teaches is this--in symbol the scapegoat has all the sin of
   the people laid upon it and when it is led away into the solitary
   wilderness, it has gone and the sin with it! We may not follow the
   scapegoat even in imagination! It is gone where it can never be found,
   for there is nobody to find it--it is gone into a land not
   inhabited--into "no man's land" in fact.

   Stop where the Scripture stops! To go beyond what is written is unwise,
   if not presumptuous. Sin is carried away into the silent land, the
   unknown wilderness. By nature, sin is everywhere, but to Believers, in
   the Sacrifice of Christ, sin is nowhere! The sins of God's people have
   gone beyond recall. Where to? Do not ask anything about that. If they
   were sought for, they could not be found! They are so gone that they
   are blotted out. Into oblivion our sins have gone, even as the
   scapegoat went out of track of mortal man. The death of the scapegoat
   does not come into the type. In fact, it would mar the type to think of
   it. Of Melchizedek, we read that he was without father, without mother,
   without descent and so on, because these things are not mentioned in
   Scripture and the omission is part of the teaching. So in this case,
   the fate of the scapegoat is not spoken of and the silence is a part of
   the instruction. The scapegoat is gone, we know not where, and so our
   sins have vanished quite away--nobody will ever find the scapegoat--and
   nobody will ever find the Believer's sins!

   "Where are my sins? Oh where?" Echo answers, "Where?" Gone to the land
   of nobody, where Satan, himself, could not find them! Yes, where God
   Himself cannot find them. He says He has cast our sin behind His back
   where He cannot see. What part of the creation must that be which lies
   behind God's back, whereas He is everywhere present, beholding all
   things both by night and by day? There is no such place as, "behind His
   back"--and there is no place for our sins. They have gone into nowhere.
   "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our
   transgressions from us." He has cast them into the depths of the
   sea--and even that is not so good a figure as the scapegoat, for things
   that are at the bottom of the sea are still there--but the scapegoat
   soon passed away altogether and, as far as Israel was concerned, it
   ceased to be. The sins of God's people are absolutely and irrevocably
   forgiven! Never, never, never can they be laid to our charge! They are
   extinct, buried, blotted out, forgotten. "Who shall lay anything to the
   charge of God's elect?"

   Yet, dear Friends, the ceremony was not quite finished, for now
   everybody who had had a hand in it must be washed, so that everybody
   might be clean. There is Aaron--he takes off his garments and washes
   himself scrupulously clean! Yes,

   he does it a second time. Here is the man who took the scapegoat away
   and he washes himself. Here is a third person, who carried away the
   skin and the flesh of the sin offering and burnt them outside the
   camp--he also washes himself. Everybody becomes purged. The whole camp
   is clean right through. So, when Jesus completes His sacrifice, we
   sing--

   "Now both the sinner and Surety are free." No sin remains upon Him on
   whom the Lord once laid the iniquities of us all! The great Atonement
   is made and everything is cleansed, from beginning to end. Christ has
   put it all away forever by the water and the blood which flowed from
   His riven side. All is purified and the Lord looks down on a clean
   camp--and soon He will have them rejoicing before Him, each man in his
   home, feasting to the full! I am so glad, my joy overflows! O Lord, who
   is a pardoning God like You? Where can such forgiveness be found as You
   do freely give to sinners through Jesus, Your Son?

   III. In the third place, I ask your attention, for a brief interval, to
   this special point--WHO DID IT? The answer is, Aaron did it all. Aaron
   was quite alone in the work of that day. It was heavy and even
   exhausting work, but he had no assistant. Aaron performed the work of
   priest and Levite that day and no one helped him, for it is written,
   "There shall be no man in the Tabernacle of the congregation when he
   goes in to make an atonement in the Holy Place until he comes out and
   has made an atonement for himself, and for his household, and for all
   the congregation of Israel." The Tabernacle seemed lonely that day.
   Aaron went into its courts and chambers and saw no sign of man. Of
   course there were lamps to be lighted, but Aaron had to light them
   himself--the showbread had to be changed--Aaron had to change it. All
   the offices of the tabernacle were left to his sole care for the day.

   When it came to killing the victims, priests and Levites were there on
   other days, but now the High Priest must do it all. He must kill and
   receive the blood and sprinkle it himself. He must kindle the
   sacrificial fire and lay the burning coals upon the incense. He must
   carry both the incense and the basin of blood into the Holy Place with
   his own hands. I think I see him looking around in the solitude. He
   says, "I looked and there was no man." Of the people there was none
   with him. In the Holy Place there stood no priest to minister before
   the Lord except Aaron. It must have been with trembling that he lifted
   up the curtain and passed into the secret place of the Most High with
   the censer smoking in his hand. There he stood in that awful Presence
   quite alone with the Eternal--no man was with him when he sprinkled the
   blood again and again till the seven-fold rite was finished.

   Three times he goes in and out and never a soul is there to so much as
   smile upon him. The tension of mind and heart which he endured, alone,
   that day, must have been trying, indeed. All that day he must have been
   conscious of a burden of responsibility and a weight of reverence
   enough to bow him to the dust and yet no one was present to cheer him.
   Now fix your eyes on the great Antitype of Aaron. There was none with
   our Lord--He trod the winepress alone. He bore our sins in His body on
   the tree. He alone went in where the thick darkness covered the Throne
   of God and none stood by to comfort Him. "All the disciples forsook Him
   and fled." It would have been a very natural thing, one would think,
   that Peter should have defended Him and even died with Him--but no one
   died with Jesus except thieves--and nobody could suspect that thieves
   aided Him in His Sacrifice! They showed the need of the Sacrifice, but
   they could do no more.

   Worship our Lord as working salvation by His own single arm! Do not
   tolerate those who would share His work. Do not believe in priests of
   any church who pretend to offer sacrifice for the quick and the dead!
   They cannot help you and you do not need their help! Do not put your
   own merits, works, prayers, or anything else side by side with your one
   lone High Priest, who in His white garments of holy service performed
   the whole work of Expiation and then came forth in His garments of
   Glory and of beauty to gladden the eyes of His chosen! I say no more.
   Let that Truth of God abide in your hearts--our High Priest, alone, has
   made Reconciliation!

   IV. Lastly, WHAT WERE THE PEOPLE TO DO for whom this atonement was
   made? There were two things they had to do that day, only I must add
   that one of them was doing nothing. For the first thing, they had to
   afflict their souls that day. Brothers and Sisters, does it seem a
   strange thing to you that on a day of rest they were to afflict their
   souls? Think of it a little and you will see that there was cause for
   it. We most rightly sing--

   "Here let our hearts begin to melt, While we, His death record And with
   our joy for pardoned guilt Mourn that we pierced the Lord." It was a
   day of confession of sin. And should not confession be made with
   sorrowful repentance? A dry-eyed confession is a hypocritical
   confession! To acknowledge sin without grieving over it is to aggravate
   sin. We cannot think of our sin

   without grieving--and the more sure we are that it is forgiven--the
   more sorry we are that ever it was committed! Sin seems all the greater
   because it was committed against a sin-forgiving God. If you do wrong
   to a person and he grows angry, you may be wicked enough to persist in
   the wrong. But if, instead of growing angry, he forgives and does you
   good in return, then you will deeply regret that ever you had an unkind
   thought towards him. The Lord's pardoning love makes us feel truly
   sorry to have offended Him.

   Not only was it a day of confession, but it was a day of sacrifice. No
   tender-hearted Israelite could think of that bullock, ram and goat
   dying for him without saying, "That is what I deserve." If he heard the
   moans of the dying creature he would say, "My own heart groans and
   bleeds." When we think of our dying Lord, our emotions are mingled--we
   feel a pleasing grief and a mournful joy as we stand at Calvary. Thus
   it is we sing--

   "Alas! And did my Savior bleed?

   And did my Sovereign die?

   Could He devote that sacred head

   For such a worm as I?

   Was it for crimes that I ha ve done

   He died upon the tree?

   Amazing pity, Grace unknown,

   And love beyond degree!

   Well might the sun in darkness hide

   And shut his glories in,

   When God the mighty Maker died

   For man, the creature's sin!

   Well might I hide my blushing face

   When His dear Cross appears,

   Dissolve my heart in thankfulness,

   And melt my eyes to tears."

   It was a day of sacrifice and, therefore, a day of affliction of their
   souls and herein we are in sympathy with them.

   Once more, it was a day of perfect cleansing and, therefore, by a
   strange logic, a day of the affliction of the soul, for, oh, when sin
   is forgiven, when we know it is forgiven, when, by Divine Assurance, we
   know that God has blotted out our sins like a cloud, then it is we
   mourn over our iniquities! "They shall look upon Me whom they have
   pierced"--that look gives life! "And they shall mourn for Him as one
   mourns for his only son and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that
   is in bitterness for his first-born"--this bitterness is one of the
   truest signs of life! They were to afflict their souls. Brethren, we
   cannot talk of the Cross of Christ except in subdued tones. If you
   think you can laugh and sport yourself because your sin is forgiven,
   you know nothing of the matter. Sin has been pardoned at such a price
   that we cannot, from this day on, trifle with it. The sacrifice was so
   august that we must always speak of it with holy trembling.

   I always feel a suspicion of those converts who get up and glibly boast
   that once they were drunks, thieves, blasphemers and so forth. Brothers
   and Sisters, if you tell the story of your sin, blush scarlet to think
   it should be true! I am ashamed to hear a man talk of his sins as an
   old Greenwich pensioner might talk of his sea-fights. I hate to hear a
   man exhibiting his old lusts as if they were scars of honor! Friend,
   these things are disgraceful to you, however much the putting of them
   away may be to the honor and Glory of God--and they are to be spoken of
   by you with shame and confusion of face. Afflict your soul when you
   remember what you once were!

   On the day of atonement they were to afflict their souls and yet they
   were to rest. Can these things come together-- mourning and resting? Oh
   yes, you and I know how they meet in one bosom. I never am so truly
   happy as when a sober sadness tinges my joy. When I am the fullest of
   joy I could weep my life away at Jesus' feet. Nothing is more really
   sweet than the bitterness of repentance. Nothing is more healthful than
   self-abhorrence mixed with the grateful love which hides itself in the
   wounds of Jesus! The purified people were to rest--they were to rest
   from all servile work. I will never do a hand's turn to save myself by
   my own merits, works, or feelings. I have done forever with all
   interference with my Lord's work. Salvation as to its meritorious cause
   is complete--we will not think of beginning it over again, for that
   would be an insult to the Savior.

   "It is finished," said our Lord Jesus, as He bowed His dear triumphant
   head and gave up the ghost. And if it is finished, we will not dream of
   adding to it. It is finished! We have no work to do with the view of
   self-salvation. But you say

   to me--"Have we not to work out our own salvation?" Certainly we have!
   We are to work out our own salvation because God works it in us. It is
   our own salvation and we show it forth in our lives--we work it out
   from within--we develop it from day to day and let men see what the
   Lord has done for us! It must first be worked for us and then in us, or
   we can never work it out!

   They were assuredly to cease from all sinful work. How can the pardoned
   man continue in sin? We have done with toiling for the devil! We will
   no more waste our lives in his service. Many men are worn to rottenness
   in the service of their lusts, but the servant of God has been set free
   from that yoke of bondage. We are slaves no longer--we quit the hard
   bondage of Egypt and rest in the Lord.

   We have also done with selfish work. We now seek first the Kingdom of
   Heaven and look that all other things shall be added unto us by the
   goodness of our heavenly Father. Henceforth we find rest by bearing the
   easy yoke of Christ. We joy to spend and be spent in His beloved
   service. He has made us free and, therefore, we are under bonds to His
   love forever. O Lord, I am Your servant, I am Your servant! You have
   loosed my bonds--from this day on I am bound to You. God grant that
   this may be a high day to you because you gladly realize the grand
   Truths of God which are shadowed forth in these delightful types! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Cheering Incident at Bethabara

   (No. 1924)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, OCTOBER 10, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Therefore they sought again to take Him, but He escaped out of their
   hands, and went away, again, beyond Jordan into the place where John at
   first baptized, and there He abode. And many came to Him, and said,
   John did no miracle: but all things that John spoke of this Man were
   true. And many believed on Him there." John 10:39-42.

   BECAUSE our Savior's reasoning was unanswerable, "therefore the Jews
   sought again to take Him." When men are convinced against their wills;
   when the heart struggles against the head; it usually happens that they
   turn persecutors. If they cannot answer holy arguments with fair
   reasoning, they can give hard answers with stones. If you cannot
   destroy the reasoning, you may, perhaps, destroy the reasoner--and this
   naturally suggests itself to the heart which is rendered cruel by
   obstinate unbelief--he who hates Truth of God soon hates its advocate.
   You must not consider yourself to have been unsuccessful in your proofs
   when your opponent waxes angry at them. Perhaps it is your success
   which has startled his conscience and rendered it necessary for him to
   become malicious to retain his obstinacy. Yet it is a very wretched
   business when a man knows that he is wrong and, therefore, attacks the
   person who has convinced him.

   Do I address any person here who, in the secret of his heart, is well
   aware that the Christian faith is true and, therefore, derides it in
   order to be able to resist its influence? Do I speak to any man here
   who has felt the ground clean gone from under him and, therefore, has
   flown in the face of the teaching which has unsettled him? Will he not,
   as a sensible man, quit his unjustifiable position and candidly yield
   to the force of Truth? It is a degrading thing to be willfully shutting
   one's eyes to the light and cursing the sun for shining! Oh, that such
   a person would have Grace! Let me even say-- oh, that he would have
   sense enough to see that this cannot be a safe and right method of
   procedure! Oh that he would yield himself to those blessed influences
   which, I trust, will, this morning, operate upon his mind!

   When our Savior found that there was nothing to be done with the
   bigoted Jews, but that all He said and did only provoked more furious
   opposition, He escaped out of their hands and went away. He knew when
   to speak and when to refrain. Divinely guided, He neither fled as a
   coward, nor rashly pushed on where nothing could be gained. Determined
   opposition in one quarter is sometimes an intimation to the preacher
   that he had better labor elsewhere. When the channel is blocked up by
   rocks, we had better steer in another direction. If we have found no
   son of peace to welcome us as the messengers of God, it may be time to
   shake off the dust of our feet against the violent rejecters of the
   Truth and open our commission in another quarter. If we fail in the
   first place, we may, in the second, find that the Lord has much people
   in the city. The Savior left the infuriated Jews of Jerusalem and went
   to a place of retirement, thus illustrating His own words, "When they
   persecute you in this city, flee you unto another."

   But though our Lord left the obstinate, He never ceased to do good. He
   did not say, "It is of no further use to preach and plead; I am,
   therefore, driven away to Bethabara, by the lonely Jordan, and I will
   warn the people no more." No, rather, as many resorted to Him there, He
   went on with His teaching and, in that place many believed on Him! If,
   my dear Brother, speaking in Christ's name, you find that you have no
   place in such-and-such a town, it may be the Spirit's will that you
   should remove to a people who will receive you. Possibly in a place
   which promises less, you may gain more. Bethabara may yield converts
   when Jerusalem only yields persecutors. God has ways of changing the
   position of His servants for His own Glory and for the building up of
   His Church. As one has well said, "The flight of Christ from men in one
   place may cause the flight of souls to Him in another." Though Jesus
   withdrew from the stones which filled the hands

   of angry Jews, he went to that place where John had said, "God is able
   of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham."

   I think that this somewhat obscure incident of our Lord's abiding in
   Bethabara, though seldom preached upon, may be made exceedingly
   profitable to us. Much prayer has been offered that many may believe on
   the Lord Jesus this morning in this House of Prayer and it seems
   suitable, therefore, to discourse upon the words, "Many believed on Him
   there."

   I. The first remark I shall make is that when men believe in Jesus
   Christ, IT IS VERY PLEASANT TO KNOW THE PLACE where they
   believed--therefore is it recorded by Inspiration that, "many believed
   on Him there." I do not say it is essential for a man to know the place
   where he believed in Jesus--it is not at all essential! It is not
   necessary for a person's life for him to know where he was born, yet I
   am glad that I know my birthplace and I am happy to remember the humble
   spot. If anybody were to say to you, "Do you know where you were born?"
   and you were forced to answer, "No," would you expect him to say, "Then
   you are not alive"? If he did say so, it would be a very bad argument,
   as you would be able to prove at once by letting him see that you were
   far from non-existence and so, if you cannot state where you were
   converted, nor when you were converted, do not fret about it.

   A far more necessary enquiry is--Are you converted? Do you believe on
   the Lord Jesus Christ? Are you, indeed, born from above by the Spirit
   of God? If so, it is by no means essential that you should know the
   place, or the means, or the hour. Still, it is very interesting to be
   able to point out the place of our new birth. I am thankful to be able
   to do so and many others of us are glad that they have an equally vivid
   memory of the spot whereon they stood when they passed from death unto
   life. "Yes," you can say, "I believed on Him there." Happy place! Holy
   place! Some of us know the spot to a yard where we looked unto Christ
   and felt our burden of sin loosed from our weary shoulders. Standing in
   one of the halls of the Orphanage is the very pulpit from which I
   savingly heard the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though I have no
   reverence for relics of any sort, yet a flood of grateful memories
   flows before me as I look upon the platform whereon stood the unknown
   brother who pointed me to Jesus.

   Who he was I shall never know till the Day of Judgement--but the text,
   "Look unto Me and be you saved, all the ends of the earth," was the
   voice of God to my soul! It is an interesting thing to know where you
   were converted. May the Tabernacle prove to be the birthplace of a
   multitude of you, that we may continue to say, "Many believed on Him
   there."

   What was there particular about the retired place in which our Lord, on
   this occasion, gathered so many disciples? What was there about the
   place beyond Jordan where John first baptized?

   It was a place where Divine ordinances had been observed-- "The place
   where John at first baptized; and many believed on Him there." Where
   the Lord is obeyed, we may hope to see him revealed. We are not among
   those who condemn others for their mistakes about outward ordinances,
   but yet we do not look upon erroneous practices without sincere regret
   and apprehension. If the ordinance of Baptism is altered, applied to
   the wrong subjects, practiced in an un-scriptural manner and used for
   unwarranted purposes, it is a serious error and will be sure, one day
   or other, to lead to other errors of still greater importance!
   Disobedience on this point may even now be grieving the Spirit of God
   and restraining His sacred operations. We must be careful to keep the
   ordinances as they were delivered unto us. We may not tamper with royal
   statutes. It is forbidden, even, to batter a penny which bears the
   king's face upon it--and it is far worse to alter an ordinance which is
   stamped with Divine authority!

   "Whatever He says unto you, do it," was the word of the blessed Virgin
   concerning her Son, and it was a good word, worthy to be spoken in the
   ear of the entire Christian Church. If a Church labors to keep the
   ordinances as they were delivered and endeavors to follow in the tracks
   of Christ's teaching and example, it may hope to receive the Divine
   blessing. At any rate, one reason for the withdrawal of the Spirit of
   God is gone and one reason why the Lord Jesus should bless the work is
   present. Oh that in this place, where we have baptized many into the
   name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, we might
   meet with an abundant blessing! In keeping His Commandments there is
   great reward. Outward ordinances cannot secure a blessing, but the
   spirit of obedience which leads to a careful observance of them
   according to the Divine Command is a blessed fruit of the Spirit! Where
   John baptized and Jesus submitted thus to fulfill all righteousness, we
   find a spot which is suited for a Divine revival.

   Secondly, remember, this Bethabara was the place where faithful
   preaching concerning Jesus had been heard. For this John, who baptized,
   also preached the Gospel of repentance. He laid great stress upon that
   part of the Gospel which prepares men for the coming Kingdom of God.
   Where repentance has been thoroughly preached, I believe that many will

   come to believe in Jesus Christ. Jesus fitly followed John and faith
   will follow readily where repentance has been thoroughly preached and
   explained. The plow must lead the way--and then it is good sowing. We
   must first send in the sharp needle and then the silken thread will be
   drawn after it. There must be a measure of conviction of sin before
   there will be a joyful acceptance of the great Sin Offering! John had
   preached repentance.

   "Oh," you say, "but John was dead." Yes, but he, being dead, yet
   speaks! There were the stones of the brook to which John had pointed
   and the reeds shaken of the wind to which he could never be likened.
   There was the river Jordan still flowing on, fit emblem of the stream
   of Grace which washes away the sin of the repentant. The good which men
   have done lives after them. Herod had cut off John's head, but he had
   not silenced John's voice. From the wilderness there still came the
   cry, "Repent you: for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." A hallowed
   influence lingers about the scenes of faithful labors and I wonder not
   that our Lord sought retirement where every ripple of the river
   repeated the Baptist's testimony. From scenes like these, the Church
   will be recruited with new disciples.

   What fine preaching was that of John! He did no miracle, but all things
   that he spoke concerning Jesus were true. He spoke of One that was
   coming after him who was preferred before him, the laces of whose shoes
   he was not worthy to unloose. He spoke of Him in terms so plain that
   the Gospel preacher of today, in the full light of the Spirit of God,
   cannot find better language--"Behold the Lamb of God, which takes away
   the sin of the world." No wonder that many believed on Jesus there,
   where the savor of such a ministry lingered in men's minds! The
   population of the country round about had been saturated with such
   teaching as this and they had not forgotten, although they might not
   thoroughly have accepted, what the last of the Prophets had declared in
   their hearing. The true Elijah that was to come had so spoken as to fix
   his words in men's memories like well-fastened nails! Brothers,
   wherever there has been earnest preaching, we may expect that many will
   believe in the Lord Jesus Christ before long. Let no faithful
   preacher's heart be faint within him! Christ is not preached in
   vain--you have not pointed to the Lamb of God for nothing. Even should
   you die without seeing it, there will come another after you who will
   reap a harvest from the Seed which you have sowed. Hidden Truths of God
   will break out all of a sudden and it shall be said, "Many believed on
   Him there."

   As for the place wherein we stand, I can solemnly assert that I have,
   with all my heart, preached to you the Gospel of the Grace of God. If a
   thousand persons were to believe in Jesus this morning, I would not be
   in the least surprised, for this I surely can claim, that to the best
   of my knowledge and ability I have, these many years, preached nothing
   among you but the Cross of Christ. I, too, have cried, "Behold the Lamb
   of God, which takes away the sin of the world." I have endeavored to
   point out to you Him whose shoe laces I am not worthy to unloose. I
   have prayed that He might baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with
   fire. Many saints have joined me in that earnest prayer. If at
   Bethabara many believed on Him there, we may expect that many will
   believe on Him here!

   The next remark about the place is this--it was a spot where God had
   borne witness to His Son Jesus. Jesus had come to be baptized by John
   and when He was baptized, He came up straightway out of the water--and
   the heavens were opened and the Spirit descended upon Him like a dove,
   while a voice said, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well
   pleased." The Holy Spirit is known to go where He has gone before--and
   where the Father has borne witness to Christ, once, we may expect Him
   to bear witness again! Where Jesus was anointed for his lifework, the
   spot was hallowed. Where the Divine Voice sounded forth, not through a
   Prophet, but distinctly out of Heaven, we might look for other displays
   of God! Where God has spoken, He will speak again!

   Has not God spoken to your soul in this Tabernacle? My Brothers and
   Sisters, has not God often borne witness to His Son in your hearts and
   consciences in this beloved House of Prayer? Not only has Christ been
   set forth visibly crucified among you, but the attesting Voice of God's
   Holy Spirit has been heard within your spirits, saying, "This is My
   beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Therefore let us hope that of
   this house it shall be said again and again, "Many believed on Him
   there!"

   Once more--not only was this a very interesting spot to our Lord Jesus
   Christ, but Bethabara was also very interesting to the leaders of the
   little band who accompanied Him--it was the place where the Lord's
   first disciples had been won. They heard John speak and followed Jesus.
   John and James and Andrew and Peter had been, there, brought to Jesus
   and certain others also had joined the chosen band. To visit the place
   of their own spiritual birth would cause a renewal of their vows and
   act as an encouragement to persevere in winning others. Brothers and
   Sisters, we feel hopeful that God will bless others in the place where
   He has blessed us. In the place where Peter and John and Andrew have
   been found, it

   is to be hoped that other Peters and Johns and Andrews will be
   discovered. Where solid stones have been quarried, there remains much
   more material which may yet be brought forth.

   Eternity, alone, shall tell how many souls have been born to God in
   this House. We have actually registered nearly 11,000 persons who have
   come forward and confessed their faith, and joined this Church--but
   these are only a small part of the whole, for great numbers come here
   and return to the country and unite with other Churches. My Brethren,
   if the Lord has found you out in this place, you will cry day and night
   unto Him that others may be found of Him also. Sit in your pews this
   morning and say, "Lord, I believed on You in this place; therefore I
   pray You this day grant that many others may do the same and may it be
   said--'Many believed on Jesus in the Tabernacle.'"

   I suppose it was a lovely quiet spot by the banks of the Jordan with
   only a little village or hamlet, named Bethany, close by. The word
   Bethany was altered by Origin into Bethabara, I suppose for
   distinction's sake. It really was Bethany, and so our Lord had two
   Bethanys. It was there, in a rural retreat, that many believed on His
   name. O hills of Piedmont, when the Vaudois preached the Christ amidst
   your valleys, it may be said of you, "Many believed on Him there!" O
   mosses and hillsides of Scotland, in the Covenanting times, many
   believed on Him there! Talk not so exceedingly proud, O you cathedrals
   or you great tabernacles, for many have believed on Jesus by the side
   of the highway, out on the village green, or under the spreading oak.
   Out in the desert of southern France, where men fled for their lives to
   hear the Gospel, many believed on Jesus!

   In what place cannot Jesus triumph? He needs no Solomon's Temple, no,
   in its porch He finds quibblers, but yonder by the willows of the
   Jordan He finds a people that believe on Him! Go forth, you heralds of
   the Cross, and preach the Gospel everywhere beneath the arch of Heaven.
   At the corners of the street or on the hillside, publish the
   proclamation of the Great King. Let the trees of the woods sing out and
   the inhabitants of the rocks sing! In all ears proclaim the Gospel,
   till, by river, sea and plain it shall be said, "Many believed on Him
   there." Thus have we seen that it is pleasant to note the place where
   we first believed in Jesus.

   II. Secondly, IT IS VERY INSTRUCTIVE TO NOTE THE TIME when persons are
   led to faith. Many believed on

   Him then and there--when He was preaching at the place where John first
   baptized.

   As I have said, some of you do not know when you believed, but you know
   that you have believed and that knowledge is quite sufficient. Still,
   it is interesting to know when you believed. Let us see if there were
   not certain noteworthy circumstances about the season of the conversion
   of these many. When was it?

   First, it was after a time of very great and obstinate opposition. The
   Savior could make nothing of these quibbling Jews. They were so
   desperately prejudiced against Him that He turned away from them to
   more hopeful spirits. No sooner does He cross the river than we read
   that, "many believed on Him there." So great a difference may we find
   in a few miles and a few hours! Opposition is no sign of defeat, but
   the contrary. When the devil roars, it is because his kingdom is being
   shaken, or he is afraid that it will be shaken. It should not depress
   us when we see a bitter spirit awakened-- it should grieve us to see
   men opposing the Truth of God, but it should not lead us to abstain
   from spreading it. In the face of intense opposition our eyes should
   sparkle--

   "With that stern joy which warriors feel In foemen worthy of their
   steel." In the name of God expect victory! Now the foe advances to the
   fight, the Lord has delivered him into our hands. Hear how David puts
   it--"They compassed me about like bees, they are quenched as the fire
   of thorns: for in the name of the Lord I will destroy them." Have but
   confidence in God and all will be well. Nothing is worse than
   stagnation. The stolid indifference of a thoughtless age is hard to
   deal with, but there is some little hope of a people who will resist
   you. Take courage from the blackening down of the darkness and hope
   that very soon you will see the dawn of a better day. "Be you
   steadfast, immoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as
   much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." If today
   men take up stones to stone the Christ, tomorrow hearts of stone may be
   turned to flesh and we may hear that, "Many believed on Him there."

   The next point which is worthy of thought is that the time when these
   believed was a time of calm, unbroken quietude. The Savior was abiding
   at Bethany beyond Jordan and there He found a resting place. I suppose
   there was a ferry there and, by this means, our Lord crossed to the
   other side of the Jordan, into a lone spot where He could feel safe
   from quib-blers. Those who came there came with the desire to hear and
   learn--they resorted to Him and were prepared to hear

   thoughtfully. Some persons may be converted through those who strive
   and cry and cause their voice to be heard in the streets, but I do not
   think the best minds are won in that manner. Conversion of a solid
   character is effected in a more solid way. Solemn thought and
   consideration are the healthiest for Gospel preaching.

   One of the fathers has a famous sermon upon this text in which he deals
   with women and speaks of them as having so much more time for
   retirement and quiet than men. And he thinks that this is one of the
   reasons why so many of them believe in proportion to men. Men live in
   the noise of public life and so grow worldly and forget the Lord, but
   women are more often alone and walk in quieter places and we may,
   therefore, expect to see more of them turning to God. Certainly an
   opportunity to think is a great privilege to any man or any woman--and
   these people at Bethabara, delivered from the noise and clamor of
   Jerusalem and its priests and sectaries, were able to weigh the claims
   of Jesus and were led to decide for Him. Give me the riverside, away
   from the rush of fashion, and I will preach with great hopefulness!

   They began to speak of John. Do you wonder? It was the natural topic to
   discuss upon the spot where John, at first, baptized. "John did no
   miracle, but all things that he spoke concerning this Man were
   true"--therefore this Man is the Messiah. This is He of whom John said,
   "Who coming after me is preferred before me: for He was before me." I
   thank my God most heartily for giving us quiet worship. We are not dull
   and sleepy, but we are not excited and noisy. I am glad to hope that
   some men are converted to God amid war, earthquakes and pestilence--but
   I am inclined to be suspicious of that kind of conversion, for fear it
   should die with its cause.

   We had an earthquake in Essex, some time ago, and in the little towns
   everybody went to the place of worship that week. I asked one of the
   ministers of a certain village in Essex how they were getting on, now
   that frisky Essex had, once more, settled down. "Oh," he said, "we are
   as dead as ever. We need an earthquake every week to wake us up." If
   that had not been true of Essex, I am sure it is true of other places.
   That which is born with fear dies with fear, but our Savior, in the
   calm of the hamlet by the river's bank, instilled the Truth of God into
   thoughtful minds. The Jordan rolled between Him and His adversaries; no
   disturbance of the peace was to be feared; those who came to Him were
   sincere enquirers and our Lord, therefore, preached with great success
   and, "many believed on Him there."

   A time of calm thoughtfulness and peace of mind should suggest to us
   the propriety of setting our house in order towards God and considering
   the claims of the Lord Jesus. If you are, this day, free from care,
   free from labor, free from fret, I beseech you calmly judge of your
   condition as to the world to come of which we speak. Think of the Son
   of God. See whether He is not worthy of your immediate confidence.
   Judge whether it is not a day of Grace to your soul wherein it would be
   wise to believe in Jesus.

   This time when many believed was a time of great desire for hearing.
   Let me read it--"Many resorted unto Him and many believed on Him
   there." You cannot catch fish where there are none. But when the fish
   come swarming up to the net, we may hope that some will be taken in its
   meshes. We cheerfully hope that when men dock to hear the Gospel, some
   will believe it. When I see the vast crowds flooding this place like a
   sea, I hope it will not all be in vain. When men are as eager to enter
   the House of Prayer as others are to get into a theater, surely we may
   hope that God means to bless them! Oh that God would bless the
   multitudes that contend for standing room in these aisles! To what
   purpose does He incline them to come here if it is not that they should
   believe and live? May it be said of this House, not only that many
   resorted to it, but that they resorted to Jesus--not only that they
   heard of Him, but that they believed in Him!

   What else shall I say as to this time when many believed in Jesus? I
   will say nothing else except that it was a time of which nothing else
   need be said. "Many believed on Him there." Blessed is that age which
   has no history, but more blessed is that age of which this is the
   history--"Many believed on Him there." Happiest of days in which many
   believed in Jesus! Brightest of spots of which it is said, "Many
   believed on Him there!" The most honorable record of any House of
   Prayer will be this--"Many believed on Him there." I am praying that
   this may be the case here today. I began the morning with this prayer
   and my dear Brothers, the deacons and elders, when they came in to pray
   with me before I ventured on this platform, pleaded for the same thing.
   Only one note has sounded from the harp of our prayer--it is this-- "Oh
   that many may, this day, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ! Oh that this
   second Sabbath of October may be marked, not only by the fall of the
   leaf, but by the Lord Jesus Christ gathering ripe fruit which shall be
   the reward of the travail of His soul! Why should it not be so? Why
   should it not be said today--"Many believed on Him then and there!"

   III. We now make a third remark, which is this--IT IS CHEERING TO
   OBSERVE THE FACT ITSELF. We have noticed the place and the time, but
   these are of secondary consequence--it is most charming to observe the
   fact--"Many believed on Him."

   This fact was a great refreshment to our dear Savior's heart. I do not
   say that John tells us so, but I think that from the style of his
   writing in this passage it looks so. There is an air of quietude about
   the passage. He writes, "And there He abode." He seemed at home there.
   He could rest at Bethabara, because many believed on Him there. He must
   have been wounded when the inhabitants of His Father's city again and
   again took up stones to stone Him. But He was pleased to see the plain
   country folk flock to hear Him. When the polished citizens rejected
   Him; when the wise Jews would not hear Him, the plain rustics of Peraea
   stood listening with delight to His dear Words and then weighed them
   with care and expressed, one by one, the conviction that John's witness
   was, indeed, true, and that in Jesus of Nazareth they saw the Messiah!
   This was to be an oasis of comfort for our Lord before He traversed the
   burning desert of His passion and death. Before He was called by His
   last bitter agony to finish the work which the Father had given Him to
   do, He was to be refreshed by many true hearts putting their trust in
   Him.

   I observe again that no doubt it was the fruit of John's words. The
   good man's labors were not in vain. Now, at last, the Seed which the
   faithful John had sown brings forth the blade and the ear! By the
   river's brink the handful of corn grows and ripens to a harvest. Good
   work never dies!

   It was, however, more directly and clearly the result of our Lord's own
   Presence. They first saw Him and what He did, and what He said and then
   they compared this with what John had testified, beforehand, and drew
   the conclusion that all things that John spoke of this Man were true!
   Brethren, we must have Jesus, Himself, here, and I rejoice to believe
   that He will not refuse to come! Our dear Lord has been known to come
   to this House on errands of love--there is scarcely a seat in this
   House which He has not visited--all over the place He has caused the
   tears of repentance and the songs of faith to flow forth! He is no
   stranger, by His Spirit, to this House of Prayer! This week He has been
   here, not only with those who have confessed His name, but with some
   who last Wednesday were stricken down by conviction and made to cry out
   in the midst of the congregation, "What must we do to be saved?" In His
   infinite mercy and boundless condescension Jesus is with us! And from
   this fact we believe and are sure that power to heal and save will go
   forth on all sides. By prayer we will hold Him fast--we will not let
   Him go until He bless many souls!

   The fact is very cheering, for you notice concerning the faith
   produced, that it was decided. They did not say that they would try to
   believe, but they believed on Him there! They did not promise to think
   on it, but they believed on Him there! They did not say that they felt
   impressions, but they believed on Him there! They did not say that they
   hoped and trusted and so on, but they believed on Him there! That is
   the consummation for which I pray at this time, that you should not
   talk about faith or feeling, nor resolve and promise, but that you
   should actually believe on Him straight away! Oh that I might see in
   you a sharp, clear, crisp faith in Jesus Christ--a faith about which
   there shall be no question! Remember, if you have a certain faith, you
   have a certain salvation! A doubtful faith will leave a doubt about
   your security, but those who believe out and out shall have joy and
   peace through believing!

   That belief was prompt. Christ had preached without result for years to
   some others, but to those who came to this place He spoke only for a
   short time and they believed on Him there! How I wish that many who
   have never heard the Gospel before may believe on Jesus this day! I
   believe that new hearers are often the most hopeful hearers. If you
   could take a blind man out under the heavens and in a moment remove the
   scales from his eyes and let him see the stars for the first time, how
   amazed he would be! It is said that much of the special results of the
   preaching of Wesley and Whitefield arose out of the fact that the
   Gospel had become a novelty in England, so that when they preached it,
   men were struck with amazement at it! I have, therefore, hopes that the
   preaching, today, of the fact that the blood of Jesus Christ, God's
   dear Son, cleanses as from all sin--and that there is immediate pardon
   to be had by simply trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ--will take some
   of you so by surprise that you will believe at once and it shall be
   said, "Many believed on Him there." These people did not stop to get
   home; they did not wait for next week--but then and there, by the
   river's brink--they looked to Him who is the Lamb of God and believed
   on His name!

   The believing was of the most solid kind because they could give a
   reason for it. It was not a hasty, ignorant faith, but they argued
   thus--"This is the Man of whom John spoke: we have seen what He did and
   what He said and He is exactly the Man that John said He would be.
   Assuredly He is the Messiah, of whom John spoke." And "They believed on
   Him

   there." I would like you to argue the matter out. I would have you know
   your sin and the way by which it is removed. I desire you to understand
   the Doctrine of Substitution, to get at the back of the plan of
   salvation and see the reason why the Lord Jesus is the fit object of
   our faith. When you do this, you will believe with a grip and a hold to
   your faith such as an ignorant faith can never supply. Oh that we might
   see worked here, today, a solid immovable faith which can give a reason
   for its existence!

   This faith is said to have been widespread, for, "many believed on Him
   there." I dare say many men, women and children--many of all sorts
   believed on Him there. Oh, the privilege of knowing that Christ is no
   Savior for the few, but He gave His life a ransom for many! Heaven is
   not confined in its admissions to a few score, but a number that no man
   can number shall fill the Glory Land. I do not think we have anybody
   left in this congregation of that ancient order of close fellows who
   glory in the fewness of the elect. I hope they are nearly all gone to
   Heaven out of all the congregations whom once they harassed! These
   Brothers and Sisters used to think that if one or two converts were
   brought in each year, a great work was being done. If they heard of an
   evangelist holding revival services and learned that two or three
   hundred were added to the Church, they said, "Ah, h'm! These
   excitements end in rejection. It is all very fine to hear of so many
   joining the Church. I hope they will all turn out right." This meant,
   being interpreted, that they did not think they would and that they
   would be sorry if they did! Now we are not of that mind. We believe in
   many conversions--we look for them and we have them! That power which
   converts one can convert a hundred! The same argument which convinces
   one candid man will convince a thousand candid men. The same Gospel
   which wins one heart by the Holy Spirit's power can win 10,000 hearts!
   O great Master, let us see it done today!

   "Many believed on him." This was what He lived for! This is what He
   died for, that men might believe in Him. This is what we preach for!
   This is what you have come here for! God gives you to hear the Gospel
   that you may believe on Jesus! This is why the Bible was
   written--"These are written, that you might believe on His name." Your
   Sundays are given you that you may believe in Christ. Your houses of
   prayer are built that you may believe in Christ. If you will not
   believe, our preaching is an unhappy failure for us, an unhappier
   failure for you. "If you believe not, you shall die in your sins." "If
   you will not believe, surely you shall not be established." "He that
   believes and is baptized shall be saved: he that believes not shall be
   damned." God save us from that, for Christ's sake!

   IV. And now I close with the fourth head, which is this--it has been
   pleasant to know the place, instructive to note

   the time and cheering to observe the fact--and now IT IS MOST IMPORTANT
   THAT WE SHOULD HAVE A SECOND EDITION OF IT. It is most important that
   many should believe on Christ here, in this very place, at this very
   hour!

   For first, this morning many are here. From different motives and from
   different quarters of the globe you have come here at this time. We
   have so far realized the text that "many resorted unto Him." This is a
   good beginning--we ought to be very thankful to see it.

   Next, the Lord Jesus Christ is here by His Spirit. He declares that
   where two or three are met together in His name, there He is--we have
   many twos and threes here. He has promised to be with His people to the
   end of the world when they go forth to preach the Gospel. We have been
   crying to Him for a blessing, this morning, and He comes to answer our
   prayers! So far all is hopeful. We have the Lord and the many resorting
   to Him.

   Furthermore, the witness borne is even more abundant than that which
   was borne at Bethabara. John is not here, but then he was not there,
   for he had been beheaded. His witness was there as his witness is here.
   Truth is not affected by time--John's witness is as good after 19
   centuries as after three years. We have also the witness of the
   Prophets who all spoke of Jesus. We have what these people had not--we
   have the witness of the Apostles who saw Him live and die and rise
   again and go up into Heaven! We have, moreover, the witness of beloved
   friends who have been saved by the Lord Jesus and can testify that all
   that has ever been said in the Savior's honor is true. He is able to
   save; He is willing to save; He casts out none that come to Him! If you
   put hundreds of us into the witness box, we shall all utter our solemn
   testimony that Jesus is a Savior and a great one, willing to deliver
   you from the wrath to come!

   Beside that, you have the testimony of His own Gospel. The Gospel is
   its own sufficient witness. Somebody wrote a book and wished to present
   it to old George the Third. Farmer George asked, "What's the book
   about, Sir?" "Sire, it is an apology for the Bible." "What?" said
   George, "What? Apology for the Bible? Apology for the Bible? Never
   heard of such a thing! Don't want your book, Sir! Apology for the
   Bible, indeed!" Quite right, King George! Surely we do not

   need any apologies for the Gospel--it is its own witness. "God was in
   Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their
   trespasses unto them." Jesus Christ suffered, bled, and died, bearing
   human sin in Himself, and whoever believes in Him shall be immediately
   forgiven, immediately renewed in his heart by the Holy Spirit and made
   a new creature in Christ! Why, this is evidently a Divine message.
   "Look and live." Such a Gospel never was invented by men, for no man
   likes it well enough to invent it, nor even to accept it after it is
   invented till God renews his heart! Let it sound forth that Jesus,
   mighty to save, invites men to trust Him and, trusting Him, they shall
   live!

   Let us now come to bayonet point. Friend, will you believe in Jesus
   Christ?--that is the point! You have heard about Him long enough--will
   you now believe on Him? Wagon loads of sermons have been lost upon
   you--will you now believe on Him? "I will think about it." I don't ask
   you to think about it, but to believe on Him. "I shall go home and try
   what I can do." Do not try to do anything--believe on Jesus, for the
   Gospel precept is--"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be
   saved." May the sweet Spirit of God come upon you mightily, now, and
   take you away from all things but the one thing necessary! Oh that you
   would cast your guilty souls on Jesus and find Him mighty to redeem!
   Here is a simple verse for you to say in your hearts--

   "A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,

   On Christ's kind arms I fall;

   He is my strength and righteousness,

   My Jesus, and my All."

   If you have said that from your heart, you are a saved man! Go your way
   rejoicing in His salvation! The Lord bless you! Amen and amen!
     __________________________________________________________________

Jesus and the Children

   (No. 1925)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, OCTOBER 17, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And they brought young children to Him, that He should touch them: and
   His disciples rebuked those who brought them. But when Jesus saw it, He
   was much displeased and said to them, Suffer the little children to
   come to Me, and forbid them not: for of such is the Kingdom of God.
   Verily I say unto you, Whoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as
   a little child, he shall not enter in it. And He took them up in His
   arms, put His hands upon them and blessed them." Mark 10:13-16.

   IT must be a very great sin, indeed, to hinder anybody from coming to
   Christ. He is the only way of salvation from the wrath of God. He is
   salvation from the terrible judgment that is due to sin--who would dare
   to keep the perishing from that way? To alter the signposts on the way
   to the City of Refuge, or to dig a trench across the road would have
   been an inhuman act, deserving the sternest condemnation. He who holds
   back a soul from Jesus is the servant of Satan and is doing the most
   diabolical of all the devil's work! We are all agreed about this.

   I wonder, my dear Friends, whether any of us are quite innocent in this
   respect? May we not have hindered others from repentance and faith? It
   is a sad suspicion, but I am afraid that many of us have done so.

   Certainly you who have never believed in Jesus, yourselves, have,
   sadly, done much to prevent others believing. The force of example,
   whether for good or bad, is very powerful and especially is it so with
   parents upon their children, superiors upon their underlings and
   teachers upon their pupils. Perhaps, Father, if you had been an earnest
   Christian, your son would not have been ungodly. Possibly, dear Mother,
   if you had been decided for the Savior, the girls would have been
   Christians, too. We have to speak and judge after the manner of men
   but, assuredly, example is a great fashioner of character. We can, none
   of us, tell, if we go down to Hell, how many we shall draw with us, for
   we are bound to thousands by invisible bands. Here's the respect which
   makes a wide calamity out of the ruin of a single soul. Over the tomb
   of each sinner may be read this epitaph, "this men perished not alone
   in his iniquity." "None of us lives to himself and no man dies to
   himself."

   If we could fling our souls away as solitary stones out of the sling,
   this were woe enough, but since we are all threaded beads upon the
   string of common life, where one goes, many go with him. The plague of
   sin will not confine itself to one man's house--it sallies forth from
   every door and window--and slays its victims all around so that "one
   sinner destroys much good." May I put this question to those of you who
   have never repented of your sins, nor sought the Savior's face? Have
   you calculated what baneful influences are streaming from your lives
   upon the souls of your children, your wives, your brothers, your
   friends? Jesus says, "He that is not with Me, is against Me, and He
   that gathers not with Me, scatters abroad." How many have you scattered
   abroad like wandering sheep? How many have you induced to remain
   careless and godless since they see you doing the same? These are
   solemn reflections for those who mean no harm and yet are doing it.

   Do not some persons go further than their example and hinder others
   from coming to Christ by discouraging speeches? They dishearten those
   who are hoping for better things. Working men are to be found who never
   see any tenderness towards holy things in a fellow employee but what
   they hasten, at once, to wound his heart. If they suspect a comrade of
   endeavoring to escape from drunkenness, they ridicule him--and if he
   goes further and exhibits faith towards God--they make him the football
   of their contempt! It must entail a fearful responsibility upon a man
   for him to make himself the opposer of all good in his companions. Why
   are so many eager to undertake this responsibility? It is a sorrowful
   thing that certain men will let others alone and even be friendly with
   them, should they drink, swear and commit

   lewdness--and yet, as soon as they have serious thoughts of religion,
   they attack them bitterly! Half a fault in a Christian is made the
   theme of the most ungenerous comment--but actual crimes will be excused
   in an irreligious person! Why should men wish to prevent their fellow
   beings from being saved? Friend, if you choose to ruin your own soul,
   why should you try to ruin others? Why play the dog in the manger? If
   you will not have religion for yourself, why not let others have it? It
   can be no gain to you either in this world, or in the world to come, to
   stand with a club at the gates of life to drive back all who would
   enter!

   Again, certain would-be wise people hinder souls from coming to Christ
   by cunningly insinuating doubts about the Revelation of the Divine
   Word. They have heard from an infidel lecturer, or from some "modern
   thought" preacher, a dangerous piece of error and they no sooner find a
   young mind inclined to serious things than they, at once, repeat this
   pretty lie! By their captious questions, they stagger young minds. By
   their evil teaching they dry up the springs of repentance and paralyze
   the strength of faith. Fierce as Pharaoh, they would throw all new-born
   faith into the river of doubt. Cruel as the Prince of Darkness, they
   would quench every newly-kindled candle of hope. They are more diligent
   to destroy the faith than others are to spread it! What an accumulation
   of guilt must be resting upon the mind of the man who breathes out
   doubt as other men breathe air! Neither God, nor Christ, nor Heaven,
   nor Hell can escape the foul steam of his infidelity. See how he blasts
   the souls on whom he breathes!

   Calculate his crimes. Put down the soul-murders of which he is guilty.
   Item--a young man decoyed from the Bible class, familiarized with
   blasphemous notions and then led into outward sin and speedy death.
   Write that down in blood! Note the next item--a young girl, once
   hopeful and considerate, impressed by the supposed scientific knowledge
   of an unbeliever is led from the faith of her mother and, by-and-by,
   snared by the world so as to live and die impenitent. Write that also
   in blood to be demanded at the doubter's door in the Last Great Day!
   Woe unto those who act the part ofjack-als to the lion of Hell! May God
   give repentance to those who have been the bodyguard of the Prince of
   Darkness, doing his murderous work with both their hands by denying the
   Truth of God and sowing the seeds of unbelief! If I speak to any such,
   I do it with sorrowful indignation and I beg them to turn from their
   evil way.

   In many ways, evil-minded persons may lead others to that evil decision
   which, in the ungodly, almost occupies the same place as conversion in
   the case of the regenerate. Minds in their early days are plastic. The
   first seven years of our being often shape all the rest. At any rate,
   give to godly teaching the first 12 years of any child and it will be
   difficult to erase the writing. Some seem to take a wretched delight in
   stamping upon the soft clay their own vile impression and in confirming
   upon youth the dangerous tendencies already present! These people work
   conversions unto evil by which young minds become settled in vice and
   established in wickedness!

   God save us from hindering a single soul from coming to Christ and
   Heaven! I cannot help trembling, sometimes, lest a cold and chilly
   sermon of mine should wither young buds of promise; lest in the Prayer
   Meeting a wandering, rambling prayer from a heartless professor should
   dampen the rising earnestness of a tearful seeker. I tremble for you,
   my dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, lest levity of conversation,
   worldliness of conduct, inconsistency of behavior, or callousness of
   demeanor should, in any one of you, at any time, turn the lame out of
   the way, or give cause of stumbling to one of the Lord's little ones.
   Lord, save me from being a partaker in other men's sins and especially
   in being, in any measure, the cause of another man's destruction! Oh to
   be clear of the blood of all men! God forbid that we should be
   accomplices in the murder of souls, either before the fact, or in the
   fact, or after the fact--for in each of these ways we may be guilty!
   God help us, Brothers, to avoid this great sin of hindering others in
   their coming to Christ!

   Yet this is not the subject of my discourse this morning. I shall only
   deal with a single form of it. I am going to speak upon the great sin
   of hindering the young from coming to Christ. First, let us describe
   it. Secondly, let us watch its action. Thirdly, let us see how Jesus
   Christ condemns it. And then, lastly, let us take a hint from the
   doctrine which our Lord incidentally lays down. It may be that the Lord
   will bless this to our souls.

   I. LET US DESCRIBE THIS SIN of hindering young children from coming to
   Christ.

   First, I may say of it that it is very common. It must be common, or
   else it would not have been found among the 12 Apostles. The immediate
   disciples of our Lord were a highly honorable band of men despite their
   mistakes and shortcomings. They must have been greatly sweetened by
   living near to One so perfect and so full of love. I gather, therefore,
   that if these men, who were the cream of the cream, rebuked the mothers
   who brought their young children to Christ, it must be a pretty common
   offense in the Church of God. I fear that the chilling frost of this
   mistake is felt almost everywhere. I

   am not going to make any ungenerous statement, but I think if a little
   personal investigation were made, many of us might find ourselves
   guilty upon this point and might be led to cry, with Pharaoh's butler,
   "I do remember my faults this day." Have we laid ourselves out for the
   conversion of children as much as we have done for the conversion of
   grown-up folks? What? Do you think me sarcastic? Do you not lay
   yourselves out for anybody's conversion? What must I say to you? It is
   dreadful that the spirit of Cain should enter a Believer's heart and
   make him say, "Am I my brother's keeper?" It is a shocking thing that
   we should, ourselves, eat the fat and drink the sweet--and leave the
   famishing multitudes to perish! But tell me, now, if you did care for
   the salvation of souls, would you not think it rather too commonplace a
   matter to begin with boys and girls? Yes--and your feeling is shared by
   many. The fault is common.

   I believe, however, that this feeling, in the case of the Apostles, was
   caused by zeal for Jesus. These good men thought that the bringing of
   children to the Savior would cause an interruption--He was engaged in
   much better work--He had been confounding the Pharisees, instructing
   the masses and healing the sick. Could it be right to pester Him with
   children? The little ones would not understand His teaching and they
   did not need His miracles--why should they be brought in to disturb His
   great doings? Therefore the disciples as good as said, "Take your
   children back, good women. Teach them the Law of God, yourselves, and
   instruct them in the Psalms and the Prophets and pray with them. Every
   child cannot have Christ's hands laid on it. If we suffer one set of
   children to come, we shall have all the neighborhood swarming about us
   and the Savior's work will be grievously interrupted. Do you not see
   this? Why do you act so

   thoughtlessly?"

   The disciples had such reverence for their Master that they would send
   the prattlers away lest the great Rabbi should seem to become a mere
   teacher of babes! This may have been a zeal for God, but it was not
   according to knowledge! Thus in these days, certain Brothers would
   hardly like to receive many children into the Church lest it should
   become a society of boys and girls. Surely, if these come into the
   Church in any great numbers, the Church may be spoken of in terms of
   reproach! The outside world will call it a mere Sunday school. I
   remember that when a fallen woman had been converted in one of our
   county towns, there was an objection among certain professors to her
   being received into the Church and certain lewd fellows of the baser
   sort even went the length of advertising upon the walls the fact that
   the Baptist minister had baptized a harlot! I told my friend to regard
   it as an honor.

   Even so, if any reproach us with receiving young children into the
   Church, we will wear the reproach as a badge of honor! Holy children
   cannot possibly do us any harm. God will send us sufficient of age and
   experience to steer the Church prudently. We will receive none who fail
   to yield evidence of the new birth, however old they may be--and we
   will shut out no Believers, however young they may be! God forbid that
   we should condemn our cautious Brothers, but, at the same time, we wish
   their caution would show itself where it is more required. Jesus will
   not be dishonored by the children--we have far more cause to fear the
   adults!

   The Apostles' rebuke of the children arose, in a measure, from
   ignorance of the children's need. If any mother in that throng had
   said, "I must bring my child to the Master, for he is sorely afflicted
   with a devil," neither Peter, nor James, nor John would have demurred
   for a moment, but would have assisted in bringing the possessed child
   to the Savior. Or suppose another mother had said, "My child has a
   pining sickness upon it. It is wasted to skin and bone. Permit me to
   bring my darling, that Jesus may lay His hands upon her"--the disciples
   would all have said--"Make way for this woman and her sorrowful
   burden." But these little ones with bright eyes, prattling tongues and
   leaping limbs--why should they come to Jesus?

   Ah, Friends, they forgot that in those children, with all their joy,
   their health and their apparent innocence, there was a great and
   grievous need for the blessing of a Savior's Grace! If you indulge in
   the novel idea that your children do not need conversion--that children
   born of Christian parents are somewhat superior to others and have good
   within them which only needs development--one great motive for your
   devout earnestness will be gone! Believe me, Brothers and Sisters, your
   children need the Spirit of God to give them new hearts and right
   spirits or else they will go astray as other children do! Remember that
   however young they are, there is a stone within the youngest
   breast--and that stone must be taken away, or be the ruin of the child!

   There is a tendency to evil even where as yet it has not developed into
   act--and that tendency needs to be overcome by the Divine Power of the
   Holy Spirit, causing the child to be born again! Oh that the Church of
   God would cast off the old Jewish idea which still has such force
   around us, namely, that natural birth brings with it Covenant
   privileges! Now,

   even under the old dispensation there were hints that the true Seed was
   not born after the flesh, but after the spirit, as in the case of
   Ishmael and Isaac and Esau and Jacob. Will not even the Church of God
   know that, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is
   born of the Spirit is spirit?" "Who can bring a clean thing out of an
   unclean?" The natural birth communicates Nature's filthiness, but it
   cannot convey Grace. Under the New Covenant we are expressly told that
   the sons of God are "born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
   nor of the will of man, but of God." Under the Old Covenant, which was
   typical, the birth according to the flesh yielded privilege, but to
   come at all under the Covenant of Grace you must be born again! The
   first birth brings you nothing but an inheritance with the first Adam.
   You must be born again to come under the headship of the second Adam!

   But it is written, says one, "that the promise is unto you and to your
   children." Dear Friends, there never was a grosser piece of knavery
   committed under Heaven than the quotation of that text as it is usually
   quoted! I have heard it quoted many times to prove a doctrine which is
   very far removed from that which it clearly teaches. If you take one
   half of any sentence which a man utters and leave out the rest, you may
   make him say the opposite of what he means! What do you think that text
   really is? See Acts 2:39--"The promise is unto you, and to your
   children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our
   God shall call." This grandly wide statement is the argument on which
   is founded the exhortation, "Repent, and be baptized, everyone of you."
   It is not a declaration of special privilege to anyone, but a
   presentation of Grace as much to all that are afar off as to them and
   to their children! There is not a word in the New Testament to show
   that the benefits of Divine Grace are, in any degree, transmitted by
   natural descent--they come "to as many as the Lord our God shall call,"
   whether their parents are saints or sinners! How can people have the
   impudence to tear off half a text to make it teach what is not true?

   No, Brothers and Sisters, you must sorrowfully look upon your children
   as born in sin and shaped in iniquity, "heirs of wrath, even as
   others." And though you may, yourself, belong to a line of saints and
   trace your pedigree from minister to minister, all eminent in the
   Church of God, yet your children occupy precisely the same position by
   their birth as other people's children do, so that they must be
   redeemed from under the curse of the Law by the precious blood of Jesus
   and they must receive a new nature by the work of the Holy Spirit! They
   are favored by being placed under godly training and under the hearing
   of the Gospel, but their need and their sinfulness are the same as in
   the rest of the race. If you think of this, you will see the reason why
   they should be brought to Jesus Christ--a reason why they should be
   brought as speedily as possible in the arms of your prayer and faith to
   Him who is able to renew them!

   Also, no doubt, this feeling that children may not come to Christ may
   be derived from a doubt about their capacity to receive the blessing
   which Jesus is able to give. Upon this subject, if I were at this
   moment to deal with facts, alone, and not with mere opinion, I could
   spend the whole morning in giving details of young children whom I have
   personally conversed with, some of them very young children, indeed. I
   will say broadly that I have more confidence in the spiritual life of
   the children that I have received into this Church than I have in the
   spiritual condition of the adults thus received. I will even go further
   than that and say that I have usually found a clearer knowledge of the
   Gospel and a warmer love to Christ in the child converts than in the
   grown-up converts. I will even astonish you still more by saying that I
   have sometimes met with a deeper spiritual experience in children of 10
   and 12 than I have in certain persons of 50 and sixty!

   It is an old proverb that some children are born with beards. Some boys
   are little men and some girls are little old women. You cannot measure
   the lives of any of us by our ages. I knew a boy who, when he was 15,
   often heard old Christian people say, "The boy is 60 years old--he
   speaks with such insight into Divine Truths of God." I believe that
   this youth at 15 did know far more of the things of God and of soul
   travail than any around him, whatever their age might be. I cannot tell
   you why it is, but I know it is that some are old when they are young
   and some are very green when they are old. Some are wise when you would
   expect them to be otherwise and others are very foolish when you might
   have expected that they had left their folly.

   Oh, dear Friends, talk not of a child's incapacity for repentance! I
   have known a child weep herself to sleep by the month together under a
   crushing sense of sin. If you would know a deep, bitter and awful fear
   of the wrath of God, let me tell you what I felt as a boy. If you would
   know joy in the Lord, many a child has been as full of it as his little
   heart could hold. If you want to know what faith in Jesus is, you must
   not look to those who have been befuddled by the heretical jargon of
   the times, but to the dear children who have taken Jesus at His Word
   and believed in Him, loved Him and, therefore, know and are sure that
   they are saved! Capacity for believing lies more in the child than in
   the man! We grow

   less rather than more capable of faith--every year brings the
   unregenerate mind further away from God and makes it less capable of
   receiving the things of God! No ground is more prepared for the good
   Seed than that which, as yet, has not been trod down as the highway,
   nor has been, as yet, overgrown with thorns! Not yet has the child
   learned the deceits of pride, the falsehoods of ambition, the delusions
   of worldliness, the tricks of trade, the sophistries of philosophy--and
   so far it has an advantage over the adult! In any case, the new birth
   is the work of the Holy Spirit and He can as easily work upon youth as
   upon age.

   Some, too, have hindered the children because they have been forgetful
   of the child's value. The soul's price does not depend upon its years.
   "Oh, it is only a child!" "Children are a nuisance." "Children are
   always getting in the way." This talk is common. God forgive those who
   despise the little ones! Will you be very angry if I say that a boy is
   more worth saving than a man? It is infinite mercy on God's part to
   save those who are seventy--for what good can they now do with the end
   of their lives? When we get to be 50 or 60, we are almost worn out and,
   if we have spent all our early days with the devil, what remains for
   God? But these dear boys and girls--there is something to be made out
   of them! If now they yield themselves to Christ, they may have a long,
   happy and holy day before them in which they may serve God with all
   their hearts! Who knows what Glory God may have of them? Heathen lands
   may call them blessed! Whole nations may be enlightened by them! If a
   famous schoolmaster was accustomed to take his hat off to his boys
   because he did not know whether one of them might not be Prime
   Minister, we may justly look with awe upon converted children, for we
   do not know how soon they may be among the angels, or how greatly their
   light may shine among men! Oh, Brothers and Sisters, let us estimate
   children at their true value and we shall not keep them back, but we
   shall be eager to lead them to Jesus at once!

   In proportion to our own spirituality of mind and in proportion to our
   own child-likeness of heart, we shall be at home with children--and we
   shall enter into their early fears and hopes, their budding faith and
   opening love! Dwelling among young converts, we shall seem to be in a
   garden of flowers, in a vineyard where the tender grapes give a good
   smell!

   II. Secondly, concerning this hindering of children, LET US WATCH ITS
   ACTION. I think the results of this sad feeling about children coming
   to the Savior is to be seen, first, in the fact that often there is
   nothing in the service for the children. The sermon is over their heads
   and the preacher does not think that this is any fault. In fact, he
   rather rejoices that it is so! Some time ago a person who needed, I
   suppose, to make me feel my own insignificance, wrote to say that he
   had met with a number of Negroes who had read my sermons with evident
   pleasure. And he wrote that he believed they were very suitable for
   what he was pleased to call, "Niggers." Yes, my preaching was just the
   sort of stuff for "Niggers" he said. The gentleman did not dream what
   sincere pleasure he caused me, for if I am understood by poor people,
   by servant girls, by children, I am sure I can be understood by others!
   I am ambitious to preach to anyone, if, by these you mean the lowest,
   the rag-tag and bob-tail. I think nothing greater than to win the
   hearts of the lowly! So with regard to children. People occasionally
   say of such a one, "He is only fit to teach children. He is no
   preacher." Sirs, I tell you that in God's sight he is no preacher who
   does not care for the children! There should be at least a part of
   every sermon and service that will suit the little ones! It is an error
   which permits us to forget this.

   Parents sin in the same way when they omit religion from the education
   of their children. Perhaps the thought is that their children cannot be
   converted while they are children and so they think it of small
   consequence where they go to school in their tender years. But it is
   not so. Many parents even forget this when their girls and boys are
   closing their school days. They send them away to the Continent, to
   places foul with every moral and spiritual danger, with the idea that
   there they can complete an elegant education. In how many cases I have
   seen that education completed and it has produced young men who are
   thorough-paced profligates and young women who are mere flirts! As we
   sow we reap. Let us expect our children to know the Lord! Let us, from
   the beginning, mingle the name of Jesus with their A B Cs. Let them
   read their first lessons from the Bible! It is a remarkable thing that
   there is no book from which children learn to read so quickly as from
   the New Testament--there is a charm about that book which draws forth
   the infant mind. But oh, dear Friends, let us never be guilty, as
   parents, of forgetting the religious training of our children, for if
   we do, we may be guilty of the blood of their souls!

   Another result is that the conversion of children is not expected in
   many of our Churches and congregations. I mean that they do not expect
   the children to be converted as children. The theory is that if we can
   impress youthful minds with

   principles which may, in later years, prove useful to them, we have
   done a great deal. But to convert children as children, and to regard
   them as being as much Believers as their seniors is regarded as absurd!
   To this supposed absurdity I cling with all my heart! I believe that of
   children is the Kingdom of God, both on earth and in Heaven! It is a
   sacred joy to me, on Thursday night, to notice certain boys and girls
   who have, for a long time, attended the pastor's Prayer Meeting with
   great regularity! Some of you old folks do not come and pray for your
   pastor, but these children do, for they love their pastor and he, on
   his part, highly values their prayers! Happy Church which is adorned
   and blessed by prayers of dear children who early learn to cry to the
   great Father for the hallowing of His name and the coming of His
   Kingdom! We expect to see children converted and we do!

   Another evil result is that the conversion of children is not believed
   in. Certain suspicious people always file their teeth a bit when they
   hear of a newly-converted child--they will have a bite at him if they
   can. They very rightly insist upon it that these children should be
   carefully examined before they are baptized and admitted into the
   Church, but they are wrong in insisting that only in exceptional
   instances are they to be received. We quite agree with them as to the
   care to be exercised, but it should be the same in all cases and
   neither more nor less in the cases of children. I thank God that the
   most of those dear children who have been added to this Church could
   stand a rigid examination in doctrinal matters and would bear favorable
   comparison with the older folks! But still, it seems to me a very harsh
   thing that a high degree of knowledge should be expected of them.

   How often do people expect to see in boys and girls the same solemnity
   of behavior which is seen in older people! It would be a good thing for
   us all if we had never left off being boys and girls, but had added to
   all the excellencies of a child the virtues of a man. Surely it is not
   necessary to kill the child to make the saint! It is thought, by the
   more severe, that a converted child must become 10 years older in a
   minute. A very solemn person once called me from the playground after I
   had joined the Church and warned me of the impropriety of playing at
   trap, bat and ball with the boys. He said, "How can you play like
   others if you are a child of God?" I answered that I was employed as an
   usher and it was part of my duty to join in the amusements of the boys.
   My venerable critic thought that this altered the matter very
   materially, but it was clearly his view that a converted boy, as such,
   ought never to play! What foolery, Brothers and Sisters! I will say no
   more.

   Do not others expect from children more perfect conduct than they,
   themselves, exhibit? If a gracious child should lose his temper, or act
   wrongly in some trifling thing through forgetfulness--straightway he is
   condemned as a little hypocrite by those who are a long way from being
   perfect themselves! Jesus says, "Take heed that you despise not one of
   these little ones." Take heed that you say not an unkind word against
   your younger Brothers in Christ, your little Sisters in the Lord! Jesus
   sets such great store by His dear lambs that He carries them in His
   bosom--and I charge you who follow your Lord--show a like tenderness,
   in all things, to the little ones of the Divine family. I will not say
   more on that point.

   III. And now let us notice, thirdly, how JESUS CONDEMNED THIS FAULT.

   First, He condemned it as contrary to His own spirit. "They brought
   young children to Him, that He should touch them: and His disciples
   rebuked those who brought them. But when Jesus saw it, He was much
   displeased." He was not often displeased. Certainly He was not often,
   "much displeased," and when He was much displeased, we may be sure that
   the cause was serious. He was displeased at these children being pushed
   away from Him, for it was so contrary to His mind about them. The
   disciples did wrong to the mothers. They rebuked the parents for doing
   a motherly act--for doing, in fact, that which Jesus loved them to do.
   They brought their children to Jesus out of respect to Him. They valued
   a blessing from His hands more than gold. They expected that the
   benediction of God would go with the touch of the great Prophet. They
   may have hoped that a touch of the hand of Jesus would make their
   children's lives bright and happy. Though there may have been a measure
   of weakness in the parents' thought, yet the Savior could not judge
   harshly of that which arose out of reverence to His Person. He was,
   therefore, much displeased to think that those good women who meant Him
   honor, should be roughly repulsed.

   There was also wrong done to the children. Sweet little ones! What had
   they done that they should be chided for coming to Jesus? They had not
   meant to intrude. Dear things! They would have fallen at His feet in
   reverent love for the sweet-voiced Teacher who charmed not only men,
   but children, by His tender words! The little ones meant no harm and
   why should they be blamed?

   Besides, there was wrong done to Himself. It might have made men think
   that Jesus was stiff, reserved and self-exalted like the Rabbis. If
   they had thought that He could not condescend to children, they would
   have sadly slandered the repute of His great love. His heart was a
   great harbor wherein many little ships might cast anchor. Jesus, the
   Child-Man, was never more at home than with children. The Holy Child
   Jesus had an affinity for children. Was He to be represented by His own
   disciples as shutting the door against children? It would do sad injury
   to His Character. Therefore, grieved at the triple evil which wounded
   the mothers, the children and Himself, He was sorely displeased.
   Anything we do to hinder a dear child from coming to Jesus greatly
   displeases our dear Lord. He cries to us, "Stand off. Let them alone.
   Let them come to Me and forbid them not." Dear gray-headed Friends, who
   are so strict and good, I must get you to stand back a bit and suffer
   that child to come to Jesus, for I do not wish the Lord to be
   displeased with you. And you, good Christian Sisters, who have curdled
   a little in your temper, I must beg you be quiet lest the Lord should
   be displeased with you, as He will be if you forbid the children to
   come to Him! So, you see, it was contrary to His spirit.

   Next, it was contrary to His teaching, for He went on to say, "Whoever
   shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not
   enter in it." Christ's teaching was not that there is something in us
   to fit us for the Kingdom of God and that a certain number of years may
   make us capable of receiving Grace. All His teaching went the other
   way, namely, that we are to be nothing and that the less we are and the
   weaker we are, the better, for the less we have of self, the more room
   there is for His Divine Grace! Do you think to come to Jesus up the
   ladder of knowledge? Come down, Sir, you will meet Him at the foot! Do
   you think to reach Jesus up the steep hill of experience! Come down,
   dear climber--He stands in the plain! "Oh, but when I am old, I shall
   then be prepared for Christ." Stay where you are, young man! Jesus
   meets you at the door of life--you were never more fit to meet Him than
   now. He asks nothing of you but that you will be nothing and that He
   may be All in All to you. That is His teaching--and to send back the
   child because it has not this or that is to fly in the teeth of the
   blessed doctrine of the Grace of God!

   Once more, it was quite contrary to Jesus Christ's practice. He made
   them see this, for, "He took them up in His arms, put His hands upon
   them and blessed them." All His life there is nothing in Him like
   rejection and refusing. He says truly, "Him that comes to Me, I will in
   no wise cast out." If He did cast out any because they were too young,
   the text would be falsified at once--but that can never be! He is the
   Receiver of all who come to Him. It is written, "This Man receives
   sinners and eats with them." All His life He might be drawn as a
   Shepherd with a lamb in His bosom--never as a cruel shepherd setting
   his dogs upon the lambs and driving them and their mothers away! I have
   neither time nor strength to say more and I must close with a mere
   glance at our last point.

   IV. LET US TAKE THE HINT WHICH JESUS GIVES TO THOSE WHO WOULD COME TO
   HIM. "Whoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child,
   he shall not enter in it." How I wish that all my congregation would
   come and receive Christ as a little child receives Him! The little
   child has no prejudices, no preconceived theories nor opinions it
   cannot give up. It believes what Jesus says. You must come in the same
   way to learn of Christ. I fear you know a great deal--throw it out the
   window! You have made up your mind about a great many things--unmake
   your mind and be as wax to the seal before Jesus!

   A little child believes with an unquestioning faith which makes
   everything vivid and real. Believe just so! The child believes in all
   humility, looking up to its teacher and receiving its teacher's word as
   decisive. Believe in Jesus just so! Say, "Lord, I am a know-nothing. I
   come to You to be taught. I am nothing, be You my All in All."

   A child, when it comes to Christ, comes very sincerely and with all its
   heart. It knows nothing of sinister motives, or of formality. Its
   repentance and faith are genuine. I wish you would come to Christ this
   morning, you poor guilty ones, in real earnest, just as you are. Do not
   play at religion any more. Do not look for fine words with which to
   trim yourselves and make your prayers look neat and pretty, but come as
   a child does, in all simplicity, not ashamed to talk as your heart
   feels.

   When a child believes in Jesus, it cares nothing for critical points.
   That is the way you must come to Christ. You that have always been
   inventing religious riddles--you that for many years have been readers
   of the last new novels in modern theology--for they are mere novels and
   nothing better! You that have addled your brains with the vain thoughts
   of vain men, come to Jesus as you are and believe what Jesus says
   because Jesus says it! Take Christ at His Word and trust Him-- that is
   the way to be saved!

   "But I have no merit," said one, "I have no preparation." Neither has a
   child. I never find children troubled about being prepared for Christ.
   I never hear of such a thing as a child worried about qualifications
   for Grace! A child is a sinner and knows it. That is the way to come to
   Christ. Come as a sinner, knowing that you are such! Say, "Jesus calls
   me, and I come; Jesus died for me and I trust Him." That is the true
   way to come to Jesus. O Friends, instead of thinking yourselves more
   fit for Christ by growing bigger, grow smaller! Instead of getting
   greater, get less! Instead of being more wise, be more completely
   bereft of all wisdom and come to Jesus for wisdom, righteousness and
   all things!

   Sometimes when we are very feeble and our language is very simple, God
   may bless it all the more and I do pray He may, this morning, set His
   seal upon this poor talk of His sick servant! Every particle of my
   flesh and every atom of my bones is praying God to bless this sermon!
   Grim pain has been racking me while I have been speaking. May this
   discourse be more honorable than its brethren because I bore it with
   sorrow! I long, I pine, I cry before God that He may bless this feeble
   word of mine to your conversion and to the conversion of many dear
   children. Those of you who have never looked to Christ and lived, do
   unto Christ, I pray you, just what these dear children did--He called
   them and they came and were folded in His arms. Come along with you! Do
   you half wish you could be a child, again? You can be! He can give you
   a child's heart and you can be in His Kingdom newly-born. May it be so,
   for His name's sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                               Love's Complaining

   A Sermon

   (No. 1926)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, October 24th, 1886, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the [12]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy
   first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent,
   and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will
   remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent"--Rev
   2:4,5.

   IT WAS the work of the priest to go into the holy place and to trim the
   seven-branched lamp of gold: see how our Great High Priest walketh in
   the midst of the seven golden candlesticks: his work is not occasional,
   but constant. Wearing robes which are at once royal and priestly, he is
   seen lighting the holy lamps, pouring in the sacred oil, and removing
   impurities which would dim the light.

   Hence our Lord's fitness to deal with the churches, which are these
   golden lamp-stands, for no one knows so much about the lamps as the
   person whose constant work it is to watch them and trim them. No one
   knows the churches as Jesus does, for the care of all the churches
   daily comes upon him, he continually walks among them, and holds their
   ministers as stars in his right hand. His eyes are perpetually upon the
   churches, so that he knows their works, their sufferings, and their
   sins; and those eyes are as a flame of fire, so that he sees with a
   penetration, discernment, and accuracy to which no other can attain. We
   sometimes judge the condition of religion too leniently, or else we err
   on the other side, and judge too severely. Our eyes are dim with the
   word's smoke; but his eyes are as a flame of fire. He sees the churches
   through and through, and knows their true condition much better than
   they know themselves. The Lord Jesus Christ is a most careful observer
   of churches and of individuals; nothing is hid from his observant eye.

   As he is the most careful observer, so he is the most candid. He is
   ever "the faithful and true witness." He loves much, and therefore he
   never judges harshly. He loves much, and therefore he always judges
   jealously. Jealousy is the sure attendant of such love as his. He will
   neither speak smooth words nor bitter words; but he will speak the
   truth--the truth in love, the truth as he himself perceives it, and as
   he would have us perceive it. Well may he say, "He that hath an ear,
   let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches," since his
   sayings are so true, so just, so weighty.

   Certainly no observer can be so tender as the Son of God. Those lamps
   are very precious to him: it cost him his life to light them. "Christ
   loved the church, and gave himself for it." Every church is to our Lord
   a more sublime thing than a constellation in the heavens; as he is
   precious to his saints, so are they precious to him. He careth little
   for empires, kingdoms, or republics; but his heart is set on the
   kingdom of righteousness, of which his cross is the royal standard. He
   must reign until his foes are vanquished, and this is the great thought
   of his mind at this present, "From henceforth expecting till his
   enemies be made his footstool." He ceases not to watch over his church:
   his sacrifice is ended, but not his service in caring for the golden
   lamps. He has completed the redemption of his bride, but he continues
   her preservation.

   I therefore feel at this time that we may well join in a prayer to our
   Lord Jesus to come into our midst and put our light in order. Oh for a
   visit from himself such as he paid in vision to the seven churches of
   Asia! With him is the oil to feed the living flame, and he knows how to
   pour it in according to due measure; with him are those golden snuffers
   with which to remove every superfluity of naughtiness, that our lights
   may so shine before men, that they may see our good works, and glorify
   our Father which is in heaven. Oh for his presence now, to search us
   and to sanctify us; to cause us to shine forth to his Father's praise!
   We would be judged of the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the
   world. We would pray this morning, "Search me, O God, and know my
   heart: try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way
   in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." All things are naked and
   open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do; and we delight to have
   it so. We invite thee, O great High Priest, to come into this
   sanctuary, and look to this thy lamp this morning.

   In the text, as it is addressed to the church at Ephesus and to us, we
   note three things. First, we note that Christ perceives: "I know thy
   works . . . nevertheless I have somewhat against thee." Secondly,
   Christ prescribes: "Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen,
   and repent," and so forth. Thirdly, Christ persuades--persuades with a
   threatening: "I will remove thy candlestick out of his place;"
   persuades, also, with a promise: "To him that overcometh will I give to
   eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God."
   If the Lord himself be here at this time, our plan of discourse will be
   a river of life; but if he be not among us by his Holy Spirit, it will
   be as the dry bed of a torrent which bears the name of "river," but
   lacks the living stream. We expect our Lord's presence; he will come to
   the lamps which his office calls upon him to trim; it has been his wont
   to be with us; some of us have met him this morning already, and we
   have constrained him to tarry with us.

   I. First, then, we notice that HE PERCEIVES.

   Our Lord sorrowfully perceives the faults of his church--"Nevertheless
   I have somewhat against thee;" but he does not so perceive those faults
   as to be forgetful of that which he can admire and accept; for he
   begins his letter with commendations, "I know thy works, and thy
   labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are
   evil." Do not think, my brethren, that our Beloved is blind to the
   beauties of his church. On the contrary, he delights to observe them.
   He can see beauties where she herself cannot see them. Where we observe
   much to deplore, his loving eyes see much to admire. The graces which
   he himself creates he can always perceive. When we in the earnestness
   of self-examination overlook them, and write bitter things against
   ourselves, the Lord Jesus sees even in those bitter self-condemnations
   a life and earnestness and sincerity which he loves. Our Lord has a
   keen eye for all that is good. When he searches our hearts he never
   passes by the faintest longing, or desire, or faith, or love, of any of
   his people. He says, "I know thy works."

   But this is our point at this time, that while Jesus can see all that
   is good, yet in very faithfulness he sees all that is evil. His love is
   not blind. He does not say, "As many as I love I commend;" but, "As
   many as I love, I rebuke and chasten." It is more necessary for us that
   we should make a discovery of our faults than of our virtues. So notice
   in this text that Christ perceiveth the flaw in his church, even in the
   midst of her earnest service. The church at Ephesus was full of work.
   "I know thy works and thy labour, and for my name's sake thou hast
   laboured, and hast not fainted." It was such a laborious church that it
   pushed on and on with diligent perseverance, and never seemed to flag
   in its divine mission. Oh that we could say as much of all our
   churches! I have lived to see many brilliant projects lighted and left
   to die out in smoke. I have heard of schemes which were to illuminate
   the world; but not a spark remains. Holy perseverance is a great
   desideratum. In these three and thirty years we thank God he has
   enabled us to labour and not to faint. There has been a continuance of
   everything attempted, and no drawing back from anything. "This is the
   work, this is the labour," to hold out even to the end. Oh how I have
   dreaded lest we should have to give up any holy enterprise or cut short
   any gracious effort! Hitherto the Lord has helped us. With men and
   means, liberality and zeal, he has supplied us. In this case the angel
   of the church has been very little of an angel from heaven, but very
   much of a human angel; for in the weakness of my flesh and in the
   heaviness of my spirit have I pursued my calling; but I have pursued
   it. By the help of God I continue to this day, and this church with
   equal footsteps is at my side; for which the whole praise is due to the
   Lord, who fainteth not, neither is weary. Having put my hand to the
   plough I have not looked back, but have steadily pressed forward,
   making straight furrows; but it has been by the grace of God alone.

   Alas! under all the labouring the Lord Jesus perceived that the
   Ephesians had left their first love; and this was a grievous fault. So
   it may be in this church; every wheel may continue to revolve, and the
   whole machinery of ministry may be kept going at its normal rate, and
   yet there may be a great secret evil which Jesus perceives, and this
   may be marring all.

   But this church at Ephesus was not only laborious, it was patient in
   suffering great persecution. He says of it: "I know thy works and thy
   patience, and how thou hast borne, and hast patience, and hast not
   fainted." Persecution upon persecution visited the faithful, but they
   bore it all with holy courage and constancy, and continued still
   confessing their Lord. This was good, and the Lord highly approved it;
   but yet underneath it he saw the tokens of decline; they had left their
   first love. So there may seem to be all the patient endurance and
   dauntless courage that there should be, and yet as a fair apple may
   have a worm at its core, so may it be with the church when it looks
   best to the eye of friends.

   The Ephesian church excelled in something else, namely, in its
   discipline, its soundness in the faith, and fidelity towards heretics;
   for the Lord says of it, "how thou canst not bear them which are evil."
   They would not have it; they would not tolerate false doctrine, they
   would not put up with unclean living. They fought against evil, not
   only in the common people, but in prominent individuals. "Thou has
   tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found
   them liars." They had dealt with the great ones; they had not flinched
   from the unmasking of falsehood. Those who seemed to be apostles they
   had dragged to the light and discovered to be deceivers. This church
   was not honeycombed with doubt; it laid no claim to breadth of thought
   and liberality of view; it was honest to its Lord. He says of it, "This
   thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also
   hate." This was grand of them: it showed a backbone of truth. I wish
   some of the churches of this age had a little of this holy decision
   about them; for nowadays, if a man be clever, he may preach the vilest
   lie that was ever vomited from the mouth of hell, and it will go down
   with some. He may assail every doctrine of the gospel, he may blaspheme
   the Holy Trinity, he may trample on the blood of the Son of God, and
   yet nothing shall be said about it if he be held in repute as a man of
   advanced thought and liberal ideas. The church at Ephesus was not of
   this mind. She was strong in her convictions; she could not yield the
   faith, nor play the traitor to her Lord. For this her Lord commended
   her: and yet he says, "I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast
   left thy first love." When love dies orthodox doctrine becomes a
   corpse, a powerless formalism. Adhesion to the truth sours into bigotry
   when the sweetness and light of love to Jesus depart. Love Jesus, and
   then it is well to hate the deeds of the Nicolaitanes; but mere hate of
   evil will tend to evil if love of Jesus be not there to sanctify it. I
   need not make a personal application; but that which is spoken to
   Ephesus may be spoken at this hour to ourselves. As we hope that we may
   appropriate the commendation, so let us see whether the expostulation
   may not also apply to us. "I have somewhat against thee, because thou
   hast left thy first love." Thus I have shown you that Jesus sees the
   evil beneath all the good; he does not ignore the good, but he will not
   pass over the ill.

   So, next, this evil was a very serious one; it was love declining:
   "Thou hast left thy first love." "Is that serious?" saith one. It is
   the most serious ill of all; for the church is the bride of Christ, and
   for a bride to fail in love is to fail in all things. It is idle for
   the wife to say that she is obedient, and so forth: if love to her
   husband has evaporated, her wifely duty cannot be fulfilled, she has
   lost the very life and soul of the marriage state. So, my brethren,
   this is a most important matter, our love to Christ, because it touches
   the very heart of that communion with him which is the crown and
   essence of our spiritual life. As a church we must love Jesus, or else
   we have lost our reason for existence. A church has no reason for being
   a church when she has no love within her heart, or when that love grows
   cold. Have I not often reminded you that almost any disease may be
   hopefully endured except disease of the heart? But when our sickness is
   a disease of the heart, it is full of danger; and it was so in this
   case; "Thou hast left thy first love." It is a disease of the heart, a
   central, fatal disease, unless the great Physician shall interpose to
   stay its progress, and to deliver us from it. Oh, in any man, in any
   woman, any child of God here, let alone in the church as a whole, if
   there be a leaving of the first love, it is a woeful thing! Lord have
   mercy upon us; Christ have mercy upon us: this should be our solemn
   litany at once. No peril can be greater than this. Lose love, lose all.
   Leave our first love, we have left strength, and peace, and joy, and
   holiness.

   I call your attention, however, to this point, that it was he that
   found it out. "I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy
   first love." Jesus himself found it out! I do not know how it strikes
   you; but as I thought it over, this fact brought the tears to my eyes.
   When I begin to leave off loving Christ, or love him less than I do, I
   would like to find it out myself; and if I did so, there would soon be
   a cure for it. But for him to find it out, oh, it seems so hard, so sad
   a thing! That we should keep on growing cold, and cold, and cold, and
   never care about it till the Beloved points it out to us. Why even the
   angel of the church did not find it out; the minister did not know it;
   but He saw it who loves us so well, that he delights in our love, and
   pines when it begins to fail. To him we are unutterably dear; he loved
   us up out of the pit into his bosom, loved us up from the dunghill
   among beggars to sit at his right hand upon his throne; and it is
   sorrowful that he should have to complain of our cooling love while we
   are utterly indifferent to the matter. Does Jesus care more about our
   love than we do? He loves us better than we love ourselves. How good of
   him to care one jot about our love! This is no complaint of an enemy,
   but of a dear wounded friend.

   I notice that Jesus found it out with great pain. I can hardly conceive
   a greater grief to him as the husband of his church than to look her in
   the face and say, "Thou hast left thy first love." What can she give
   him but love? Will she deny him this? A poor thing is the church of
   herself: her Lord married her when she was in beggary; and if she does
   not give him love, what has she to give him? If she begins to be
   unfaithful in heart to him, what is she worth? Why, any unloving wife
   is a foul fountain of discomfort and dishonour to her husband. O
   beloved, shall it be so with thee? Wilt thou grieve Emmanuel? Wilt thou
   would thy Well-beloved? Church of God, wilt thou grieve him whose heart
   was pierced for thy redemption? Brother, sister, can you and I let
   Jesus find out that our love is departing, that we are ceasing to be
   zealous for his name? Can we wound him so? Is not this to crucify the
   Lord afresh? Might he not hold up his hands this morning with fresh
   blood upon them, and say, "These are the wounds which I received in the
   house of my friends. It was nothing that I died for them, but ill it is
   that, after having died for them, they have failed to give me their
   hearts?" Jesus is not so sick of our sin as of our lukewarmness. It is
   a sad business to my heart; I hope it will be sad to all whom it
   concerns, that our Lord should be the first to spy out our declines in
   love.

   The Saviour, having thus seen this with pain, now points it out. As I
   read this passage over to myself, I noticed that the Saviour had
   nothing to say about the sins of the heathen among whom the Ephesians
   dwelt: they are alluded to because it must have been the heathen who
   persecuted the church, and caused it to endure, and exhibit patience.
   The Saviour, however, has nothing to say against the heathen; and he
   does not say much more than a word about those who were evil. These had
   been cast out, and he merely says: "Thou canst not bear them which are
   evil." He denounced no judgment upon the Nicolaitanes, except that he
   hated them; and even the apostles which were found to be liars the
   Master dismisses with that word. He leaves the ungodly in their own
   condemnation. But what he has to say is against his own beloved: "I
   have somewhat against thee." It seems as if the Master might pass over
   sin in a thousand others, but he cannot wink at failure of love in his
   own espoused one. "The Lord thy God is a jealous God." The Saviour
   loves, so that his love is cruel as the grave against cold-heartedness.
   He said of the church of Laodicea, "I will spue thee out of my mouth."
   This was one of his own churches, too, and yet she made him sick with
   her lukewarmness. God grant that we may not be guilty of such a crime
   as that!

   The Saviour pointed out the failure of love; and when he pointed it out
   he called it by a lamentable name. "Remember therefore from whence thou
   art fallen." He calls it a fall to leave our first love. Brothers,
   sisters, this church had not been licentious, it had not gone aside to
   false doctrine, it had not become idle, it had not been cowardly in the
   hour of persecution; but this one sin summed up the whole--she did not
   love Christ as she once loved him, and he calls this a fall. A fall
   indeed it is. "Oh, I thought," saith one, "that if a member of the
   church got drunk that was a fall." That is a grievous fall, but it is a
   fall if we become intoxicated with the world, and lose the freshness of
   our devotion to Jesus. It is a fall from a high estate of fellowship to
   the dust of worldliness. "Thou art fallen." The word sounds very
   harshly in my ears--no, not harshly, for his love speaks it in so
   pathetic a manner; but it thunders in my soul deep down. I cannot bear
   it. It is so sadly true. "Thou art fallen." "Remember from whence thou
   art fallen." Indeed, O Lord, we have fallen when we have left our first
   love for thee.

   The Master evidently counts this decline of love to be a personal wrong
   done to himself. "I have somewhat against thee." It is not an offence
   against the king, nor against the judge, but against the Lord Jesus as
   the husband of the church: an offence against the very heart of Christ
   himself. "I have somewhat against thee." He does not say, "Thy
   neighbour has somewhat against thee, thy child has somewhat against
   thee, thy God has somewhat against thee," but, "I, I thy hope, thy joy,
   thy delight, thy Saviour, I have this against thee." The word somewhat
   is an intruder here. Our translators put it in italics, and well they
   might, for it is a bad word, since it seems to make a small thing of a
   very grave change. The Lord has this against us, and it is no mere
   "somewhat." Come, brothers and sisters, if we have not broken any law,
   nor offended in any way so as to grieve anybody else, this is sorrow
   enough, if our love has grown in the least degree chill towards him;
   for we have done a terrible wrong to our best friend. This is the
   bitterness of our offence; Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and
   done this evil in thy sight, that I have left my first love. The
   Saviour tells us this most lovingly. I wish I knew how to speak as
   tenderly as he does; and yet I feel at this moment that I can and must
   be tender in this matter, for I am speaking about myself as much as
   about anybody else. I am grieving, grieving over some here present,
   grieving for all of us, but grieving most of all for myself, that our
   Well-beloved should have cause to say, "I have somewhat against thee,
   because thou hast left thy first love."

   So much for what our Lord perceives. Holy Spirit, bless it to us!

   II. And now, secondly, let us note what THE SAVIOUR PRESCRIBES. The
   Saviour's prescription is couched in these three words: "Remember,"
   "Repent," "Return."

   The first word is Remember. "Thou hast left thy first love." Remember,
   then, what thy first love was, and compare thy present condition with
   it. At first nothing diverted thee from thy Lord. He was thy life, thy
   love, thy joy. Now thou lookest for recreation somewhere else, and
   other charms and other beauties win thy heart. Art thou not ashamed of
   this? Once thou wast never wearied with hearing of him and serving him.
   Never wert thou overdone with Christ and his gospel: many sermons, many
   prayer-meetings, many Bible readings, and yet none too many. Now
   sermons are long, and services are dull, and thou must have thy jaded
   appetite exited with novelties. How is this? Once thou wast never
   displeased with Jesus whatever he did with thee. If thou hadst been
   sick, or poor, or dying, thou wouldst still have loved and blessed his
   name for all things. He remembers this fondness, and regrets its
   departure. He says to thee to-day, "I remember thee, the kindness of
   thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in
   the wilderness." Thou wouldst have gone after thy Lord anywhere in
   those days: across the sea, or through the fire, thou wouldst have
   pursued him; nothing would have been too hot or too heavy for thee
   then. Is it so now? Remember! Remember from whence thou art fallen.
   Remember the vows, the tears, the communings, the happy raptures of
   those days; remember and compare with them thy present state.

   Remember and consider, that when thou wast in thy first love, that love
   was none too warm. Even then, when thou didst live to him, and for him,
   and with him, thou wast none too holy, none too consecrated, none too
   zealous. If thou wast not too forward then, what art thou now--now that
   thou hast come down even from that poor attainment? Remember the past
   with sad forebodings of the future. If thou hast come down from where
   thou wast, who is to tell thee where thou wilt cease thy declining? He
   who has sunk so far may fall much farther. Is it not so? Though thou
   sayest in thy heart like Hazael, "Is thy servant a dog?" thou mayest
   turn out worse than a dog yet, yea, prove a very wolf. Who knows? thou
   mayest even now be a devil! Thou mayest turn out a Judas, a son of
   perdition, and deny thy Master, selling him for thirty pieces of
   silver. When a stone begins to fall it falls with an ever-increasing
   rate; and when a soul begins to leave its first love, it quits it more
   and more, and more and more, til at last it falleth terribly. Remember!

   The next word of the prescription is "Repent." Repent as thou didst at
   first. The word so suitable to sinners is suitable to thee, for thou
   hast grievously sinned. Repent of the wrong thou hast done thy Lord by
   leaving thy first love of him. Couldst thou have lived a seraphic life,
   only breathing his love, only existing for him, thou hadst done little
   enough; but to quit thy first love, how grievously hast thou wronged
   him! That love was well deserved, was it not? Why, then, hast thou left
   it? Is Jesus less fair than he was? Does he love thee less than he did?
   Has he been less kind and tender to thee than he used to be? Say, hast
   thou outgrown him? Canst thou do without him? Hast thou a hope of
   salvation apart from him? I charge thee, repent of this thine ill-doing
   towards one who has a greater claim upon thy love than ever he had. He
   ought to be to-day loved more than thou didst love him at thy very
   best! O my heart, is not all this most surely true? How ill art thou
   behaving! What an ingrate art thou! Repent! Repent!

   Repent of much good that thou hast left undone through want of love.
   Oh, if thou hadst always loved thy Lord at thy best, what mightest thou
   not have known of him by this time! What good deeds thou mightest have
   done by force of his love! How many hearts mightest thou have won for
   thy Lord if thine own heart had been fuller of love, if thine own soul
   had been more on fire! Thou hast lived a poor beggarly life because
   thou hast allowed such poverty of love.

   Repent! Repent! To my mind, as I thought over this text, the call for
   repentance grew louder and louder, because of the occasion of its
   utterance. Here is the glorious Lord, coming to his church and speaking
   to her angel in tones of tender kindness. He condescends to visit his
   people in all his majesty and glory, intending nothing but to manifest
   himself in love to his own elect as he doth not to the world. And yet
   he is compelled even then to take to chiding, and to say, "I have this
   against thee, because thou hast left thy first love." Here is a love-
   visit clouded with upbraiding--necessary upbraiding. What mischief sin
   has done! It is a dreadful thing that when Jesus comes to his own dear
   bride he should have to speak in grief, and not in joy. Must holy
   communion, which is the wine of heaven, be embittered with the tonic of
   expostulation? I see the upper springs of nearest fellowship, where the
   waters of life leap from their first source in the heart of God. Are
   not these streams most pure and precious? If a man drink thereof he
   liveth for ever. Shall it be that even at the fountain-head they shall
   be dashed with bitterness? Even when Christ communes personally with us
   must he say, "I have somewhat against thee?" Break, my heart, that it
   should be so! Well may we repent with a deep repentance when our
   choicest joys are flavoured with the bitter herbs of regret, that our
   best Beloved should have somewhat against us.

   But then he says in effect, Return. The third word is this--"Repent,
   and do the first works." Notice, that he does not say, "Repent, and get
   back thy first love." This seems rather singular; but then love is the
   chief of the first works, and, moreover, the first works can only come
   of the first love. There must be in every declining Christian a
   practical repentance. Do not be satisfied with regrets and resolves. Do
   the first works; do not strain after the first emotions, but do the
   first works. No renewal is so valuable as the practical cleansing of
   our way. If the life be made right, it will prove that the love is so.
   In doing the first works you will prove that you have come back to your
   first love. The prescription is complete, because the doing of the
   first works is meant to include the feeling of the first feelings, the
   sighing of the first sighs, the enjoying of the first joys: these are
   all supposed to accompany returning obedience and activity.

   We are to get back to these first works at once. Most men come to
   Christ with a leap; and I have observed that many who come back to him
   usually do so at a bound. The slow revival of one's love is almost an
   impossibility; as well expect the dead to rise by degrees. Love to
   Christ is often love at first sight: we see him, and are conquered by
   him. If we grow cold, the best thing we can do is to fasten our eyes on
   him till we cry, "My soul melted while my Beloved spake." It is a happy
   circumstance if I can cry, "Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like
   the chariots of Amminadib." How sweet for the Lord to put us back again
   at once into the old place, back again in a moment! My prayer is that
   it may be so this morning with any declining one. May you so repent as
   not merely to feel the old feelings, but instantly to do the first
   works, and be once more as eager, as zealous, as generous, as
   prayerful, as you used to be! If we should again see you breaking the
   alabaster box, we should know that the old love had returned. May the
   good Master help us to do as well as ever, yea, much better than
   before!

   Notice, however, that this will require much of effort and warfare; for
   the promise which is made is "to him that overcometh." Overcoming
   implies conflict. Depend upon it, if you conquer a wandering heart, you
   will have to fight for it. "To him that overcometh," saith he, "will I
   give to eat of the tree of life." You must fight your way back to the
   garden of the Lord. You will have to fight against lethargy, against an
   evil heart of unbelief, against the benumbing influence of the world.
   In the name and power of him who bids you repent, you must wrestle and
   struggle till you get the mastery over self, and yield your whole
   nature to your Lord.

   So I have shown you how Christ prescribes, and I greatly need a few
   minutes for the last part, because I wish to dwell with solemn
   earnestness upon it. I have no desire to say a word by which I may
   prove myself a true brother pleading with you in deep sympathy, because
   in all the ill which I rebuke I mourn my own personal share. Bless us,
   O Spirit of the Lord!

   III. Now see, brethren, HE PERSUADES. This is the third point: the Lord
   Jesus persuades his erring one to repent.

   First, he persuades with a warning: "I will come unto thee;" "quickly"
   is not in the original: the Revised Version has left it out. Our Lord
   is generally very slow at the work of judgment: "I will come unto thee,
   and will remove thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent."
   This he must do: he cannot allow his light to be apart from love, and
   if the first love be left, the church shall be left in darkness. The
   truth must always shine, but not always in the same place. The place
   must be made fit by love, or the light shall be removed.

   Our Lord means, first, I will take away the comfort of the Word. He
   raises up certain ministers, and makes them burning and shining lights
   in the midst of his church, and when the people gather together they
   are cheered and enlightened by their shining. A ministry blessed of the
   Lord is a singular comfort to the church of God. The Lord can easily
   take away that light which has brought comfort to so many: he can
   remove the good man to another sphere, or he can call him home to his
   rest. The extinguisher of death can put out the candle which now
   gladdens the house. The church which has lost a ministry by which the
   Lord's glory has shone forth has lost a good deal; and if this loss has
   been sent in chastisement for decline of love it is all the harder to
   bear. I can point you to places where once was a man of God, and all
   went well; but the people grew cold, and the Lord took away their
   leader, and the place is now a desolation: those who now attend those
   courts and listen to a modern ministry cry out because of the famine of
   the Word of the Lord. O friends, let us value the light while we have
   it, and prove that we do so by profiting by it; but how can we profit
   if we leave our first love? The Lord may take away our comfort as a
   church if our first zeal shall die down.

   But the candlestick also symbolizes usefulness: it is that by which a
   church shines. The use of a church is to preserve the truth, wherewith
   to illuminate the neighbourhood, to illuminate the world. God can soon
   cut short our usefulness, and he will do so if we cut short our love.
   If the Lord be withdrawn, we can go on with our work as we used to do,
   but nothing will come of it: we can go on with Sunday-schools,
   mission-stations, branch churches, and yet accomplish nothing.
   Brethren, we can go on with the Orphanage, the College, the Colportage,
   the Evangelistic Society, the Book Fund, and all else, and yet nothing
   will be effected if the arm of the Lord be not made bare.

   He can, if he wills, even take away from the church her very existence
   as a church. Ephesus is gone: nothing but ruins can be found. Rome once
   held a noble church of Christ, but has not her name become the symbol
   of antichrist? The Lord can soon take away candlesticks out of their
   places if the church uses her light for her own glory, and is not
   filled with his love. God forbid that we should fall under this
   condemnation! Of thy mercy, O Lord, forbid it! Let it not so happen to
   any one of us. Yet this may occur to us as individuals. You, dear
   brother or sister, if you lose your first love, may soon lose your joy,
   your peace, your usefulness. You, who are now so bright, may grow dull.
   You, who are now so useful, may become useless. You were once an
   instructor of the foolish, and a teacher of babes; but if the Lord be
   withdrawn you will instruct nobody, you will be in the dark yourself.
   Alas! you may come to lose the very name of Christians, as some have
   done who once seemed to be burning and shining lights. They were
   foolish virgins, and ere long they were heard to cry, "Our lamps are
   gone out!" The Lord can and will take away the candlestick out of its
   place if we put him out of his place by a failure in our love to him.

   How can I persuade you, then, better than with the warning words of my
   Master? My beloved, I persuade you from my very soul not to encounter
   these dangers, not to run these terrible risks; for as you would not
   wish to see either the church or your own self left without the light
   of God, to pine in darkness, it is needful that you abide in Christ,
   and go on to love him more and more.

   The Saviour holds out a promise as his other persuasive. Upon this I
   can only dwell for a minute. It seems a very wonderful promise to me:
   "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which
   is in the midst of the paradise of God." Observe, those who lose their
   first love fall, but those who abide in love are made to stand. In
   contrast to the fall which took place in the paradise of God, we have
   man eating of the tree of life, and so living for ever. If we, through
   grace, overcome the common tendency to decline in love, then shall we
   be confirmed and settled in the favour of the Lord. By eating of the
   tree of knowledge of good and evil we fell; by eating of the fruit of a
   better tree we live and stand fast for ever. Life proved true by love
   shall be nourished on the best of food: it shall be sustained by fruit
   from the garden of the Lord himself, gathered by the Saviour's own
   hand.

   Note again, those who lose their first love wander far, they depart
   from God. "But," saith the Lord, "if you keep your first love you shall
   not wander, but you shall come into closer fellowship. I will bring you
   nearer to the centre. I will bring you to eat of the tree of life which
   is in the midst of the paradise of God." The inner ring is for those
   who grow in love; the centre of all joy is only to be reached by much
   love. We know God as we love God. We enter into his paradise as we
   abide in his love. What joy is here! What a reward hath love!

   Then notice the mystical blessing which lies here, waiting for
   meditation. Do you know how we fell? The woman took of the fruit of the
   forbidden tree, and gave to Adam, and Adam ate and fell. The reverse is
   the case in the promise before us: the Second Adam takes of the divine
   fruit from the tree of promise, and hands it to his spouse; she eats
   and lives for ever. He who is the Father of the age of grace hands down
   to us immortal joys, which he has plucked from an unwithering tree. The
   reward of love is to eat the fruit of life. "We are getting into
   mysteries," says one. Yes, I am intentionally lifting a corner of the
   veil, and no more. I only mean to give you a glimpse at the promised
   boon. Into his innermost joys our Lord will bring us if we keep up our
   first love, and go from strength to strength therein. Marvelous things
   are locked up in the caskets whereof love holds the key. Sin set the
   angel with a flaming sword between us and the tree of life in the midst
   of the garden; but love has quenched that sword, and now the angel
   beckons us to come into the innermost secrets of paradise. We shall
   know as we are known when we love as we are loved. We shall live the
   life of God when we are wholly taken up with the love of God. The love
   of Jesus answered by our love to Jesus makes the sweetest music the
   heart can know. No joy on earth is equal to the bliss of being all
   taken up with love to Christ. If I had my choice of all the lives that
   I could live, I certainly would not choose to be an emperor, nor to be
   a millionaire, nor to be a philosopher; for power, and wealth, and
   knowledge bring with them sorrow and travail; but I would choose to
   have nothing to do but to love my Lord Jesus--nothing, I mean, but to
   do all things for his sake, and out of love to him. Then I know that I
   should be in paradise, yea, in the midst of the paradise of God, and I
   should have meat to eat which is all unknown to men of the world.

   Heaven on earth is abounding love to Jesus. This is the first and last
   of true delight--to love him who is the first and the last. To love
   Jesus is another name for paradise. Lord, let me know this by continual
   experience. "You are soaring aloft," cries one. Yes, I own it. Oh that
   I could allure you to a heavenward flight upon wings of love! There is
   bitterness in declining love: it is a very consumption of the soul, and
   makes us weak, and faint, and low. But true love is the antepast of
   glory. See the heights, the glittering heights, the glorious heights,
   the everlasting hills to which the Lord of life will conduct all those
   who are faithful to him through the power of his Holy Spirit. See, O
   love, thine ultimate abode! I pray that what I have said may be blessed
   by the Holy Spirit to the bringing of us all nearer to the Bridegroom
   of our souls. Amen.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Revelation 1; 2:1-7.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--425, 797, 804.
     __________________________________________________________________

Our Sympathizing High Priest

   (No. 1927)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, OCTOBER 31, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and
   supplication, with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to sa
   ve Him from death, and was heard in that He feared; though He were a
   Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered and,
   being made perfect, He became the Author of eternal salvation unto all
   who obey Him, called by God as High Priest after the order of
   Melchisedec." Hebrews 5:7-10.

   THE Holy Spirit, in this chapter, reminds us that two things were
   necessary in a High Priest. First, he must be suitable for the men for
   whom he stood and next, he must be acceptable with God. "Every High
   Priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to
   God." He must be fit from both points of view, both man-ward and
   God-ward. Our Lord Jesus Christ was ordained of God from of old and did
   not, of Himself, assume the position of High Priest. The Prophets spoke
   of Him as the Messiah of God and Jehovah, Himself, declared, "You are a
   Priest forever after the order of Melchisedec." When He came into the
   world, the Holy Spirit bore witness to His being the Son of the
   Highest. At His Baptism there came a Voice from Heaven saying, "You are
   My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," and that same Voice was
   thrice heard declaring the same fact. The Father has given further
   testimony to the mission of Christ, "in that He has raised Him from the
   dead," and has caused Him to enter into the heavenly places on our
   behalf. Moreover, He has given Him a pledge that as Melchisedec, being
   both King and Priest, He shall sit at His right hand until He has made
   His enemies His footstool. Our Lord Jesus has been chosen, ordained and
   glorified as our "Great High Priest, that has passed into the heavens."
   This is the groundwork of our comfort in our Lord Jesus, for we know
   that He is One with the Father and that all things are done by Him as
   the Messenger of the Covenant, the authorized Representative of Jehovah
   our God.

   That is not the point to which I call your attention this morning--I
   would have you follow the text and consider the pre-eminent suitability
   of our Lord Jesus to be a High Priest for us, viewed from the human
   side. A High Priest must be one "who can have compassion on the
   ignorant and on them that are out of the way; for that he, himself,
   also is compassed with infirmity." He must be one who has learned
   compassion in the school of suffering, so that he can succor the
   afflicted. There is no learning sympathy except by suffering. It cannot
   be studied from a book, it must be written on the heart. You must go
   through the fire if you would have sympathy with others who tread the
   glowing coals. You must, yourself, bear the cross if you would feel for
   those whose life is a burden to them.

   Beloved Friends, we live in a world of sin and sorrow and we are sinful
   and sorrowful--we need one who can put away our sin and become a sharer
   in our sorrow. If he cannot go with us through all the rough places of
   our pilgrimage, how can he be our guide? If he has never traveled in
   the night, himself, how can he whisper consolation to us in our darkest
   hours? We have a fully qualified High Priest in our Lord Jesus
   Christ--He is perfect in that capacity. I desire to speak of Him, this
   morning, in that light. Oh for help from on high, for I feel that it
   needs the Inspiration of the Holy One to enable a man to speak of Jesus
   as He should be spoken of. No careless utterance must attempt to
   describe the Great High Priest of our profession! It needs a perfect
   preacher to fully describe a perfect Redeemer and where is he to be
   found? To preach a crucified Savior in a crucified style is no easy
   task! I take it that a lip needs as much to be touched with a live coal
   from off the altar to speak of the lowly sympathy of Jesus as to
   describe His Glory. Of the two I had rather venture to speak of the
   Garden of Paradise than of the Garden of Gethsemane--apart from the
   help of the Holy Spirit. Oh that the

   Divine Instructor would direct our meditations at this time so that we
   may glorify Christ and may, with increased confidence, repose in Him!

   I have this further objective, also--while trying to comfort the people
   of God, I would persuade others to approach our Great High Priest. Oh
   how I long that many of you who have, until now, never known the love
   of Christ, may now be touched with a sense of it and may be sweetly
   drawn to Him! By the very fact that He is able to sympathize with you
   in your griefs, I hope that those of you who are afflicted may be
   induced to draw near to Him. Oh that upon this spot and at this hour,
   you who have been halting and hesitating for years may at once find a
   shelter with the Compassionate One! He waits to give you everlasting
   comfort! Oh that you would believe in Him and enjoy it! We shall pray
   for this and look for it--and may God grant us our desires so that His
   Son, Jesus, may be glorified!

   The great suitability of Christ for His work will be seen as we view
   Him in three Characters. Let us first consider Him as a Suppliant--this
   is set forth in the seventh verse--"Who in the days of His flesh, when
   He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and
   tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in
   that He feared." Next we would view Him as a Son--"Though He were a
   Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered." And
   then we shall close by regarding Him as a Savior--"He became the Author
   of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him." Come, Holy Spirit,
   and take of the things of Christ and show them to us!

   I. First, then, that we may see the suitability of our Lord to deal
   with us in our cares and sorrows, we shall view Him as A SUPPLIANT.

   The text begins with a word which reveals His weakness--"Who in the
   days of His flesh." Our blessed Lord was in such a condition that He
   pleaded out of weakness with the God who was able to save. When our
   Lord was compassed with the weakness of flesh, He was much in prayer.
   It would be an interesting exercise for the younger people to note all
   the times in which the Lord Jesus is said to have prayed. The occasions
   recorded are very numerous, but these are, no doubt, merely a few
   specimens of a far greater number. Jesus was habitually in prayer--He
   was praying, even, when His lips did not utter a sound. His heart was
   always in communion with the Great Father above. This is said to have
   been the case "in the days of His flesh." This term is used to
   distinguish His life on earth from His former estate in Glory. From of
   old the Son of God dwelt with the Father, but He was not, then, a
   partaker of human nature, and the eternal ages were not "the days of
   His flesh." Then He could not have entered into that intimate sympathy
   with us which He now exercises since He has been born at Bethlehem and
   has died at Calvary. "The days of His flesh" intend this mortal
   life--the days of His weakness, humiliation, labor and suffering. It is
   true that He wears our nature in Heaven, for He said to His disciples
   after His Resurrection, "Handle Me and see, for a spirit has not flesh
   and bones, as you see I have." But yet we should not call the period of
   His exaltation at the right hand of the Father, "the days of His
   flesh." He still prays--in fact He continually makes intercession for
   the transgressors. But it is in another style from that in which He
   prayed "in the days of

   His flesh"--

   "With cries and tears He offered up His humble suit below, But with
   authority He asks, Enthroned in Glory now."

   Among the days of His life on earth there were some which peculiarly
   deserved to be called "the days of His flesh"-- days in which His
   feebler Nature pushed itself to the front. Then men saw less of His
   greatness as a Teacher and more of His suffering as Man. I should call
   that one of the days of His flesh when He went to Gethsemane and "was
   exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death." He was very heavy because the
   shadow of His Cross fell upon Him with a denser darkness as He drew
   nearer to His death upon it. When the dread desertion by God, which was
   the center of His grief, began to startle Him and when men esteemed Him
   "stricken, smitten of God and afflicted," then were, "the days of His
   flesh!" Prostrate under the olives, pouring out His inmost soul in
   plaintive entreaties, even to a bloody sweat, you see your Lord a
   Suppliant in weakness--"in the days of His flesh."

   Brothers and Sisters, I beseech you to think of our Lord's pleading,
   "in the days of His flesh," as a matter of fact. Do not dream of Him as
   though He were a phantom and of His prayers as if they were part of a
   mere show. He was a real Man and His prayers were as real as yours can
   be. Believe in Jesus as Man. You would be indignant at anyone who would
   diminish the Glory of His Godhead and most justly so, but oh, do not,
   yourself, take away from Him the truth of His Humanity! He was, in very
   deed, made flesh and dwelt among us! This was the case even when His
   Apostles beheld His

   Glory, "the Glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of Grace
   and truth!" We must get a firm grip of the true Humanity, or otherwise
   we lose the Sacrificial death, the Resurrection and all the rest--and
   the Brotherhood of our Lord, which is a grand source of consolation,
   also disappears. Remember that He who sits at the right hand of God was
   once here in the likeness of sinful flesh! He who shall shortly come to
   judge the quick and dead passed through a period of limitation,
   weakness, suffering, weariness since He was in human flesh. "The days
   of His flesh" were, to Him, days of poverty, sickness, weariness,
   reproach and temptation--though in Him was no sin, yet He was tempted
   and tried in all points like as we are. Inasmuch as He has passed
   through such days as these, He is fitted to be the High Priest of
   Believers who also are passing through the days of their flesh.
   Brothers and Sisters, we know too well that we are partakers of flesh
   and blood--and it is no mean comfort that our Lord Jesus, Himself, took
   part in the same!

   In the days of His flesh, our Divine Lord felt His necessities. The
   words, "He offered up prayers and supplications," prove that He had
   many needs. Men do not pray and supplicate unless they have greater
   needs than this world can satisfy. Men work for what they can get by
   working, but pray for that which can by no other means be obtained. The
   Savior offered no petitions by way of mere form--His supplications
   arose out of an urgent sense of His need of heavenly aid. It is
   difficult to realize it, but so it is, that our Divine and innocent
   Savior placed Himself in such a condition for our sakes that His needs
   were manifold. Of course, as God, He could come under no necessity, but
   being Man, like ourselves, He did not permit the power of His Godhead
   to destroy the man-like weakness of the flesh! Therefore He endured
   such necessities as we do and resorted, as we must, to the one
   all-sufficient Source of supply, approaching His Father by prayer! He
   sought for blessings with prayers, He pleaded against evil with
   supplications. His approaches to God were many--both words are in the
   plural--"prayers and supplications"--and they were manifold in their
   character, for He presented prayers and supplications of all kinds.
   Especially in the Garden He cried again and again, "If it is possible,
   let this cup pass from Me."

   Now, trite as the observation may be, yet it is one that needs to be
   often repeated, that our Savior did really pray. When you, in your
   heaviness, shut the door of your chamber and kneel down in prayer--when
   that prayer gathers strength and you fall flat upon your face in
   agony--when you cry and weep before the Most High, under a sinking
   sense of need, it is hard for you to think that Jesus ever did the
   same! But He did. He asked as really as you ask. He implored and
   besought, He entreated and wrestled even as you must. He knows that
   solitary place on Carmel where Elijah bowed his head between his knees
   and cried seven times unto the Lord! He knows the turning of the face
   to the wall and the weeping of the sorrowful eyes, even as Hezekiah
   knew them! He can have pity upon you in your loneliness, your
   distraction, your apparent desertion, your sinking of heart, your
   sorrowfulness even unto death. Look to Him, then, in your night of
   weeping and be of good cheer!

   Those of you who are only now beginning to pray, I would encourage you
   to remember Jesus as your Example of praying. If your prayers have but
   few words in them and are mainly made up of crying and tears, yet in
   this they are like those of your Savior and so you may hope that they
   will be accepted. If you are afraid that your prayers are shut out from
   Heaven, remember how the Savior complains in the 22nd Psalm, "O My God,
   I cry in the daytime but You hear not; and in the night season, and am
   not silent." He was heard in the end, but, at the first, He seemed to
   plead in vain. Jesus prayed under discouragements--what He did,
   Himself, He will help you to do. He knows what the agony of prayer
   means and He will cast a Brother's eyes on you when, in the bitterness
   of your repentance, you seek the Lord. How clear it is that we have a
   suitable High Priest, of tender heart and loving soul!

   Further, let us see how like the Son of God was to us in His intensity
   of prayer. I wish I knew how to preach upon a theme so sacred. One had
   need take his shoes off of his feet upon this doubly-consecrated
   ground. The intensity of His prayer was such that our Lord expressed
   Himself in "crying and tears." The Evangelists do not record His tears,
   but the Holy Spirit, here, reveals what human eyes could not have seen.
   He pleaded with God until His pent-up grief demanded audible utterance
   and He began to cry! He said, so that the disciples heard Him a stone's
   cast away, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me."
   His voice grew louder as the stream of His sorrows forced a channel for
   itself! There was great strength in His cries--there was "strong
   crying"--there was deep, plaintive, touching, heart-breaking crying.
   "If it is possible--if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me."

   We may be thankful that we did not hear the cries of that sore distress
   which fell upon our great Substitute. Cries are weak things, but His
   was strong crying--strong with the heart of the Great Father. When He
   ceased His crying and was

   silent, His tears took up the strain. The Lord heard a voice in His
   tears and who shall say which spoke the more loudly, His crying or His
   tears? When a Man so courageous, so patient as Jesus, betakes Himself
   to cries and tears, we may be sure that the sorrow of His heart has
   passed all bounds. His soul within Him must have been bursting with
   grief! We know it was so by another sign, for the life-blood forgot to
   course in its usual channels and overflowed its banks in a sweat of
   blood. I do not think, as some do, that it was merely a sweat such as
   is common to labor. I believe it was a sweat of blood, or the
   expression would not have been used, "as it were. great drops of
   blood." A sweat of blood has now and then been seen upon men in great
   and fatal alarm, but the Savior's was more amazing than any of these
   cases, for so profuse was this bloody sweat that there was, as it were,
   great drops of it "falling down to the ground." This was prayer,
   indeed--supplication which exhausted His whole Manhood! Body, soul and
   spirit were now upon the rack of anguish and upon the strain of agony!
   He pleaded with God after a more piteous, painful, terrible, and
   powerful sort than you and I will ever attain.

   But, Brothers and Sisters, here is the point--if it comes to your case
   to be in a dark, dark hour and to be praying with the heavens like
   brass above your head. And if you are obliged to cry aloud and weep
   your soul away, then remember Jesus in the days of His flesh! Usually
   it may be you are very quiet and, perhaps, wordless in prayer. But now
   you cannot refrain yourself--as Joseph cried so that the Egyptians in
   the house of Pharaoh heard him--so do you give vent to your agony! Be
   not ashamed of your weakness--your Lord did so before you. Strong man
   as you are, you weep like a child. Do not apologize lest you seem to
   accuse your Savior! Behold, you are not alone! Jesus is passing through
   the deeps with you. Can't you see the blood-stained footprints of your
   Lord? Your utmost anguish is known to Him. Fear not! Commit your way
   unto the Lord, even in this worst part of it. Trust Him when the iron
   enters into your soul. Leave all in His experienced hands.

   You poor souls who have never as yet trusted my Lord, are you not
   attracted to Him? If He suffered all this, can He not meet your case?
   By all this He was made perfect as a High Priest--oh, can you not trust
   Him? Is He not able to enter into your misery? Oh, darkened hearts, is
   there not light here for you? When you pray with anguish, Jesus
   perfectly understands the situation. Oh, you that loathe yourselves!
   Oh, you that wish you had never been born! Oh, you daughters of
   melancholy and children of despair--can you not see, in the marred
   visage of your Redeemer, a reason for trusting Him? Since from His lips
   you hear strong crying and from His eyes you see showers of tears, you
   may well feel that His is a sympathetic spirit to whom you may run in
   the hour of danger, even as the chicks seek the wings of the hen!

   Still, to proceed with the text, we have seen our Lord's needs and the
   intensity of His prayer, now note His understanding in prayer. He
   prayed "unto Him that was able to save Him from death." The expression
   is startling! The Savior prayed to be saved! In His direst woe He
   prayed thoughtfully and with a clear apprehension of the Character of
   Him to whom He prayed. It is a great help in devotion to pray
   intelligently, knowing well the Character of God to whom you are
   speaking. Jesus was about to die and, therefore, the aspect under which
   He viewed the great Father was as "Him that was able to save Him from
   death." This passage may be read in two ways. It may mean that He would
   be saved from actually dying if it could be done consistently with the
   glorifying of the Father. Or it may mean that He pleaded to be saved
   from death, though He actually descended into it. The word may be
   rendered either from or out of. The Savior viewed the great Father as
   able to preserve Him in death, from the power of death, so that He
   should triumph on the Cross--and also as able to bring Him up, again,
   from among the dead.

   Remember how He said in the Psalm--"You will not leave My soul in Hell,
   neither will You suffer Your Holy One to see corruption." Jesus had
   faith in God concerning death and prayed according to that faith. This
   brings our blessed Lord very near to us--He prayed in faith even as we
   do! He believed in the power of God to save Him from death and even
   when cast down with fear, He did not let go His hold on God! He pleaded
   just as you and I should plead, impelled by fear and encouraged by
   faith! Let us imitate His intensity, His intelligence and His faith. He
   has condescended to set us an example which we can copy--He has come
   into living companionship with us in our most urgent supplications. He
   has had His Jabbok. Therefore, O you seed of Jacob, trust in Him!

   It will further help you if I now call your attention to His fear. I
   believe our old Bibles give us a correct translation, much better than
   the Revised Version, although much can be said for the latter, "With
   strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death,
   and was heard in that He feared." That is to say, He had a fear, a
   natural and not a sinful fear--and from this fear He was delivered by
   the strength brought to Him from Heaven by the angel. God has im-

   planted in all of us the love of life and we cannot part from it
   without a pang--our Lord felt a natural dread of death. If it is said
   that the Savior was too courageous to know the fear of death, I beg to
   remark that He was the more courageous because He so calmly encountered
   that which He feared. Martyrs have died without the preceding dread
   which fell upon our Lord, but remember that the help of God which
   sustained them was taken away from Jesus! And consider, also, that His
   death was special and differed from that of all others of our race, for
   in that death there was condensed the penalty due to sin.

   To the righteous man, death is not now a penalty, but a mode of going
   Home--to Jesus it was, in the fullest sense, the penalty of death for
   human guilt! He saw before Him, as we do not, all the pains and
   torments of death--He knew what He had to bear and foretasted in the
   Garden, the smart involved in being a Surety for sinful man. The vials
   of God's wrath were about to be poured upon Him and Jehovah was heard
   saying, "Awake, O sword"--as if it had never awoke before--"Awake, O
   sword, against My Shepherd and against the Man that is My Fellow, says
   the Lord of Hosts." He saw the abyss into which He must fall! If no
   dread had come upon Him, why, I think the very essence of the atoning
   suffering would have been absent! Fear must take hold upon Him--not
   that of a coward, but that of one terribly oppressed! His soul was
   "exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death." So when you tremble after
   sipping your cup of bitterness, think of Jesus trembling, too. When
   you, in entering into the valley of death's shade, feel yourself
   greatly disturbed at the prospect before you, think of Jesus who was
   heard in His fear! Come, you that fear, and find help in One who also
   feared! Borrow courage from One who, out of fear, prayed Himself into
   victory! Think of Him who cried unto God, "Be not You far from Me, O
   Lord: O my Strength, hasten You to help Me!" Trust your souls with Him
   who, in the days of His flesh, cried out in anguish, "My God, My God,
   why have You forsaken Me?"

   But then notice another thing in the text, namely, His success in
   prayer which also brings Him near to us. He was heard "in that He
   feared." O my Soul, to think that it should be said of your Lord that
   He was heard, even as you, a poor suppliant, are heard! Yet the cup did
   not pass from Him, neither was the bitterness thereof in the least
   abated. When we are compelled to bear our thorn in the flesh and
   receive no other answer than, "My Grace is sufficient for you," let us
   see our fellowship with Jesus and Jesus' fellowship with us! Jesus came
   forth from His agony saying, "You have heard Me from the horns of the
   wild oxen! I will declare Your name unto My brethren: in the midst of
   the congregation will I praise You." Oh what a Brother Christ is, since
   He, too, cried and wept and had power with God and prevailed! When God
   has sent from above and drawn us out of many waters, the Lord Jesus is
   there to sing with us and rejoice with us-- the constant companion of
   all our experiences. Can we not trust Him? Brothers and Sisters, if
   Jesus rises with us to the highest note of the scale and if He also
   comes down with us to the deepest bass that the human voice can reach,
   then we may conclude that all along He is in unison with us in all the
   intervening notes! So let us, today, feel that Jesus is like ourselves
   in all but our sin and that we may fearlessly come and trust Him as we
   would trust a father or a brother, or as a fond wife confides in the
   husband of her love.

   II. Let us now spend a few moments in beholding our Lord as A SON. His
   prayers and pleas were those of a son with a father--"though He were a
   Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered."

   The Sonship of our dear Savior is well attested. The Lord declared this
   in the second Psalm--"You are My Son; this day have I begotten You."
   Thrice, as we have already noticed, did the Voice out of the excellent
   Glory proclaim this truth and Jesus was "declared to be the Son of God
   with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the Resurrection
   from the dead." Yes, He that cried, He that wept, He that pleaded until
   He came to a bloody sweat and He from whom the cup could not pass till
   He had drained it to the dregs, was, nevertheless, the only-begotten
   Son of God! So, my Brothers and Sisters, when you are put to great
   grief, do not doubt your sonship! What son is there whom the father
   chastens not? When you are in heaviness through manifold trials, do not
   listen to the insinuations of the enemy--"If you are the Son of God."
   Yes, if you should have to ask, "Why have You forsaken me?" do not
   doubt your sonship! Your faith should not be founded upon your own
   enjoyments, but upon the promise and the faithfulness of God! You are
   as much a son or daughter when you walk in the dark as when you rejoice
   in the light of Jehovah's Countenance!

   Being a Son, the text goes on to tell us that He had to learn
   obedience. Is not that an amazing thing? As Man, our Savior had to
   learn! He was of a teachable spirit, and the Lord, Himself, instructed
   Him. All God's children go to school, for it is written, "All your
   children shall be taught of the Lord." The lesson is practical--we
   learn to obey. Our Lord took kindly to this lesson--He always did the
   things which pleased the Father. This is our time of schooling and
   disci-

   pline and we are learning to obey, which is the highest and best lesson
   of all. How near this brings our Lord to us, that He should be a Son
   and should have to learn! We go to school to Christ and with
   Christ--and so we feel His fitness to be our compassionate High Priest.

   Jesus must learn by suffering. As swimming is only to be learned in the
   water, so is obedience only learned by actually doing and suffering the
   Divine will. Obedience cannot be learned at the university unless it is
   at the College of Experience. You must suffer the Commandment to have
   its way with you and then it will educate you. We think, when we are
   first converted, that we have learned obedience and assuredly we have,
   in a measure, received the spirit by which we obey, but no man knows
   obedience till he has actually obeyed, both in an active and a passive
   sense. Even the Lord Jesus must come under the Law of God, honor the
   Law and suffer the Law, or else He cannot learn obedience. Who knows
   what it is to obey God to the fullest until he has had to lay aside his
   own will in the most tender and painful respects? To plead with God for
   the life of a beloved child and yet to see that dear child die--but to
   kiss the rod--this is to learn obedience! To get alone and plead with
   God for the life of a husband or wife and agonize with Him for the
   gift--and then to be compelled to weep at the new-made grave, but yet
   to say, by His Grace, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;
   blessed be the name of the Lord"--this is to learn obedience! Our Lord,
   as Man, was made to know, by His sufferings, what full obedience
   meant--His was practical, experimental, personal acquaintance with
   obedience--and in all this He comes very near to us. A Son learning
   obedience--that is our Lord. May we not joyfully walk with Him in all
   the rough paths of duty? May we not safely lean on the arm of One who
   knows every inch of the way?

   The Lord Jesus Christ learned this obedience to perfection. The text
   speaks of Him as "being made perfect." As a High Priest He is perfect
   because He has suffered to the end, all that was necessary to make Him
   like His brethren. He has read the book of obedience quite through. He
   was not spared one heavy stroke of Divine discipline. You and I never
   go to the end of grief--we are spared the utmost depth--but not so our
   Lord. The Lord sets us a service proportioned to our strength, but what
   a service was exacted of the Son of God! Ours is a lightened burden,
   but the Well-Beloved was not spared the lest ounce of crushing sorrow.
   "For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all
   things, in bringing many sons unto Glory, to make the Captain of their
   salvation perfect through sufferings."

   Our Lord learned by suffering much with prayer and supplication. His
   was no unsanctified sorrow. His griefs were baptized in prayer. It cost
   Him cries and tears to learn the lesson of His sufferings. He never
   suffered without prayer, nor prayed without suffering. Supplication and
   suffering went hand in hand and, in this way, our Lord became perfected
   as the High Priest of our profession.

   The practical point I am trying to drive at in my poor way is this--let
   us trust ourselves with Him who, as a Son, knows the training and
   discipline of sons. Being yourself a son, look up and see what the
   elder Brother endured and know that, "in that He has suffered, being
   tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted." You who are
   afraid that you never will be the children of God, come and hear your
   Savior cry as He rises from prayer, "Come unto Me, all you that labor
   and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Sons of men, why do you
   wander? Why not come to Him who is made like yourselves? Which way are
   you looking? Look to Him that suffered in your place--and suffered both
   as a Suppliant and a Son! If you have never trusted Him before, I think
   that you should begin this morning, now that you see His fellowship
   with you, His sympathy with you. I do not, at this time, set Him forth
   to you in His Power and Glory--that I will do on another occasion--but
   I bring Him before you in His weakness and humiliation, hoping,
   thereby, to attract to Him the poor and needy who need such a Helper.

   III. Time fails me and, therefore, we can do no more than spend a brief
   time in beholding the Lord Jesus as A SAVIOR. It is to this end that He
   pleaded as a Suppliant and learned obedience as a Son.

   As a Savior He is perfect. Being made perfect through suffering, He is
   fully able to discharge His office. Nothing is lacking in the Character
   and Person of Christ in order to His being able to save to the
   uttermost. He is a Savior and a great one. You are wholly lost, but
   Jesus is perfectly able to save. You are sorely sick, but Jesus is
   perfectly able to heal. You have gone, perhaps, to the extreme of
   sin--He has gone to the extreme of Atonement. In every office essential
   to our salvation, Jesus is perfect. Nothing is lacking in Him in any
   point. However difficult your case may seem, He is equal to it. Made
   perfect by suffering, He is able to meet the intricacies of your trials
   and to deliver you in the most complicated emergency.

   Therefore He is the Author of salvation. What a suggestive word--the
   Author of salvation! Author! How expressive! He is the Cause of
   salvation; the Originator; the Worker; the Producer of salvation!
   Salvation begins with Christ; salvation is carried on by Christ;
   salvation is completed by Christ! If a man is the author of a book and
   not a mere compiler, it is all his own writing. Salvation has Jesus for
   its Author! Do any of you wish to write a little of the book,
   yourselves? Then Jesus would not be the author of it--it would be Jesus
   and you. But because our Lord has assumed our Nature and entered into
   fellowship with us, He has become the Author of salvation and we must
   not intrude into His office. Let the Author of salvation complete His
   own work. Come and accept the salvation which He is waiting to give to
   you. He has finished it and you cannot add to it--it only remains for
   you to receive it.

   Observe that it is eternal salvation--"The author of eternal
   salvation." Jesus does not save us, today, and leave us to perish
   tomorrow! He knows what is in man and so He has prepared nothing less
   than eternal salvation for man. A salvation which was not eternal would
   turn out to be no salvation at all. Those whom Jesus saved, are saved,
   indeed! Man can be the author of temporary salvation, but only He who
   is "a High Priest forever" can bring in a salvation which endures
   forever. This reminds us of the word of the Prophet--"Israel shall be
   saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation." Surely I know that
   whatever the Lord does shall be forever. An eternal salvation is worth
   having, is it not? Jesus does not give a salvation which will let you
   fall from Grace and perish, after all, but a salvation which will keep
   you to the end-- though you should live to be as old as Methuselah!
   Salvation to eternity and through eternity is provided by Jesus. Oh,
   love the Lord, all you His saints, since by His stooping to be
   perfected as a High Priest, He has been able to bring in for you such a
   salvation as this!

   Furthermore, inasmuch as He has learned obedience and become a perfect
   High Priest, His salvation is wide in its range, for it is unto "all
   them that obey Him." Not to some few, not to a little select company
   here and there, but "unto all them that obey Him." One of His first
   Commandments is "Repent." Will you obey Him in that and quit your sin?
   Then He is the Author of eternal salvation for you! His great command
   is, "Believe and live." Will you trust Him, then? For if you do, He is
   the Author of eternal salvation for you. He whom I have tried to
   describe with all my heart--this blessed sympathetic fellow-sufferer of
   ours--He is willing and able to save all of you who will obey Him at
   this moment by trusting Him!

   Come, my Hearers, let Jesus be your Master and your Lord! Come, you
   runaways, return to Him! Come, you castaways, hope in Him! Be His, for
   He has made Himself yours. Seek Him, for He has sought you. Obey Him,
   for He obeyed for you. He is "the Author of eternal salvation unto all
   them that obey Him."

   Note, that He is all this forever, for He is "a Priest forever." If you
   could have seen Him when He came from Geth-semane, do you think you
   could have trusted Him? Oh, trust Him today, for He is "called of God
   to be an High Priest after the order of Melchisedec," and that order of
   Melchisedec is an everlasting and perpetual Priesthood! He is able,
   today, to plead for you, able, today, to put away your sins! Oh that
   God the Holy Spirit may lead many of you to come and obey Him at once!

   A heavy atmosphere fills this Tabernacle this morning, making it
   difficult to speak and more difficult to hear, but yet, if some sudden
   news came to you, as the burning of your house, or the death of a dear
   child, you would shake off all lethargy and wake up from all dullness
   and heaviness of spirit! And, therefore, I claim your liveliest
   thoughts for the solemn subject which I have introduced to you. Think
   much of the Son of God, the Lord of Heaven and earth, who, for our
   salvation, loved and lived and served and suffered! He that made man
   was made Man! As a Suppliant, with cries and tears He pleaded with
   God--even He before whom the hosts of Heaven bow adoringly! He has
   still that tenderness to which He was trained by His suffering! He bids
   you come to Him now! You that love Him, approach Him, now, and read the
   love which is engraved on His heart! You who have not, until now, known
   Him, come boldly to Him and trust Him who has come so near to you. The
   Man is very near akin to us! Behold how He loves us! He bends down to
   us with eternal salvation in His hands! Believe in Him and live! God
   grant it! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Our Ascended Lord

   (No. 1928)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 7, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Who has gone into Hea ven and is at the right hand of God; angels and
   authorities and po wers being made subject to Him." 1 Peter 3:22.

   LAST Lord's Day morning [#1927--Our Sympathizing High Priest] we
   considered the humiliation of our Divine Lord and, I think, if one may
   speak for the rest, that we consciously and deeply felt how very near
   He came to us in His suffering condition and how very near He still is
   to us as truly Man. On that happy occasion we had fellowship with Him
   of the truest kind. The sympathy of His soul toward us awoke our
   sympathies towards Him. We felt it exceedingly profitable to sit and
   weep with Him who not only wept but bled for us.

   This morning, in considering our Lord's Glorification, I hope we shall
   feel quite as near to Him as we did on the former occasion, for if He
   was humiliated for us, He is also exalted for us. If He, Himself, once
   stooped to come near to us, He now lifts us up from our low estate and
   brings us near to Himself in His Glory. It is not only that He is
   partaker of our lowliness, but we are partakers of His exaltation. The
   fellowship is full and complete, for while He takes upon Himself our
   fall, we, on the other hand, partake in His rising again! He comes down
   to us in His Incarnation, but He calls us up to Him in His Ascension.
   He wears our garb of poverty by bearing our flesh, but He robes us in
   His splendor as He bears our nature into Heaven. Remember, it is "this
   same Jesus" whom they saw on earth who also is gone into Heaven and who
   is to come again a second time. Yes, it is "this same Jesus" and He is
   no less Man on the Throne of God than He was on the Cross--He is as
   truly our Brother, now, amid the acclaim of angels as among the weeping
   women of Jerusalem.

   I beseech you, do not let the change of His estate create any distance
   in your hearts, since there is no distance in His heart, but rather ask
   for Grace that you may rise up unto Him, to joy in His joy and triumph
   in His triumph! Let us behold our Lord's glories today, not as a blaze
   of intolerable splendor, driving us back with fear, but as a radiance
   of peace, drawing us near with hope! Let us go to the land where our
   greater Joseph is Lord of all! Let us go into His palace, let us sit at
   His table with Him, there, as He once sat at our table with us here! We
   went to David in the cave, let us not fear to approach Him now that He
   is King! Yes, let us rejoice that we share His royalty, for He has made
   us kings and priests, and we shall reign with Him forever and ever.

   The history of our Lord after His death is as simple as it is sublime
   and I shall not try to set it forth with garnishing of human speech.
   When a renowned warrior writes home after great victories, his
   dispatches are short and to the point. The brilliance of the news is
   sufficient without the light of sparkling sentences. His words are few;
   he has so much to tell that he does not waste a letter! His
   achievements are so great that they do not require the aid of poetry or
   oratory. A dash from the conqueror's pen is enough to set a nation
   rejoicing. "I came, I saw, I conquered," is a line which will be quoted
   to the end of time! Such is the life of our Lord Jesus from the Cross
   onward. If I seem to preach very plainly and even baldly, this morning,
   you will understand that my theme forbids the adornments which other
   subjects invite.

   Our Savior died, but He rose again. It is a sort of courtesy to death
   to speak of the period of our Lord's entombment as three days. The
   victory of death was so short that Scripture can afford to let it be
   reckoned in the roughest manner, to give to death the utmost it could
   claim by the broadest method of reckoning. Give Death his three
   days--that is the outside of all his victory! Let Death and Hell make
   the best they can of it--the bruised heel of the Seed of the woman soon
   ceases to be lame!

   When the first day of the week began to dawn, before yet the sun had
   gleamed through the veil of the olives and lit up the garden of Joseph
   of Arimathaea, our Lord arose from His slumber and began to disrobe
   Himself of His grave clothes. In orderly manner He folded them up and
   divided them with intent of instruction. He left the grave clothes for
   us, that our last chamber may be fitly furnished when we shall come to
   lie in it--and then He put the napkin by itself, that our friends may
   dry their tears thereon when they remember that there is now a glorious
   hope in death for all who are in Christ! The living Lord waited a while
   and then the messenger from the courts of Heaven descended to set Him
   free. The angel touched the stone which shut the mouth of the
   grave--the stone removed--the Risen One came forth from the dampness of
   the vault into the freshness of the morning air, frightening the
   watchmen and causing the solid earth to quake with fear! He was as
   truly risen as He had been truly dead! He was no apparition or
   phantom--that body which had most certainly given up the ghost now
   received life again!

   Our Lord tarried here for 40 days--a time sufficient for the
   establishment of His identity and the production of proof of the fact
   that He had truly risen. During that 40 days He so showed Himself in
   different places that the testimony to His Resurrection became most
   abundant and convincing. He was seen by ones and twos who could the
   more carefully examine Him because they were alone with Him. He was
   tested by one who put his finger into the print of the nails and thrust
   his hand into His side--nothing could be more conclusive than the
   verdict of that suspicious examiner! He was seen by about 500 brethren
   at once, that by the eyes of many the fact of His being the once
   Crucified Jesus might be ascertained beyond all further question. His
   appearance was not a vision beheld by one or two enthusiasts when
   alone--He was manifestly set forth among a great company as their Lord
   and Master who had been cruelly put to death, but had risen from among
   the dead! Our Savior would not go to Heaven till He had settled the
   fact of His Resurrection upon a basis which can never be shaken. There
   is no fact in history, ancient or modern, which is half so well
   attested as the Resurrection of our Lord from the dead! You shall turn
   to the pages of the most veracious and sober historians of any age you
   please, but you will not there find such assured evidence of any event
   as the Gospels give to us of the rising again of Jesus! Events which we
   now speak of as indisputable are not so surely true as that Jesus, who
   was taken down from the Cross and laid in the tomb of Joseph of
   Arimathaea, did really rise and live again among the sons of men!

   He tarried 40 days, not only for the establishment of this great Truth
   of God, but for the comfort of His disciples. He wiped away the tears
   which they shed at His death and made them feel that it was no longer a
   calamity that their Lord had died. He also prepared them for the more
   enduring grief of His departure--indeed, He so elevated their minds and
   raised their spirits, that we never hear of their lamenting His
   Ascension! He made them see that it was expedient that He should go
   away so that the Comforter might come to them. He also communed with
   them, gave them of His Spirit and filled them with His peace. He raised
   them from being common peasants to be the Patriarchs of a new age, the
   vanguard of the Divine crusaders who would conquer the world for Jesus!
   They went forth strong in the Lord and in the power of His might
   because He had spoken to them and they had heard from His own lips the
   Gospel which they were commissioned to proclaim.

   He also stayed long enough to give them directions how to act. In fact,
   He organized His forces, ordered their line of battle and prepared them
   for the victory! To all He gave the direction to tarry at Jerusalem
   till they were endowed with power from on high and, in that command, we
   have our marching orders for all time. Some of the disciples He had to
   address individually, for they had special needs. He had to cheer the
   heart of Magdalene, to overcome the unbelief of Thomas, to give warning
   and encouragement to Peter and to brace them all for their coming
   struggle. The Great Shepherd of the sheep could not return unto His
   rest till He had seen to every sickly sheep and put the whole flock in
   order. He would not go to His Glory till He could leave all whom the
   Father gave Him prepared for their future destiny.

   Those forty days were soon over. Very remarkable days they were, if you
   study them--so different from His former life. Nobody molested the
   Lord. No scribes or Pharisees contradicted Him, no malicious Jews took
   up stones to stone Him. Those were calm days, days wherein the birds of
   peace sat on the still waters and not a wave ruffled the calm. I might
   almost say that those days were the prelude of His Glory, a sort of
   anticipation of His reign of peace when He shall stand in the latter
   day upon the earth and wars shall cease unto the end of the earth. When
   those 40 days were over, the Master went His way. All was done that He
   had covenanted to perform and He ascended to His reward. Now we have
   come to our text.

   I shall this morning, first of all, rehearse the circumstances which
   are here mentioned in three parts--He has gone into Heaven. He is at
   the right hand of God. Angels and authorities and powers are made
   subject to Him. When I have rehearsed these circumstances, I shall
   then, Beloved, by the help of God's Spirit, ask you to learn the simple
   but sublime lessons which these facts are meant to teach us.

   I. First, LET US REHEARSE THE CIRCUMSTANCES.

   They begin thus--"Who is gone into Heaven." "He is gone"--that sounds
   rather gloomy. You might touch the mournful string as you hear these
   words, for if He is gone, we are bereaved, indeed! Yet we dare not
   raise a monument to Christ as one who is dead! Let us complete the
   sentence--"Who is gone into Heaven." Now you demand the trumpet, for
   the words are full of soul-stirring music and create intense delight!
   Still, there are the words, "He is gone"--He is gone away from you and
   from me--we cannot embrace His feet, nor wash them, nor lean our head
   upon His bosom, nor look into His face. We have to sing to our
   Well-Beloved--

   "Jesus, these eyes have never seen

   That radiant form of Yours!

   The veil of sense hangs dark between

   Your blessed face and mine!'

   We are strangers here because He is not here. He intends us to remove,
   for He has removed. We are not at home on earth. If He were here, we
   might think this world could be our abiding place, but it cannot be so
   now. If He were here, earth would be a kind of Heaven to us, but away
   from Him it is a place of exile. If we could now run to Him and tell
   Him our griefs as they arise, they would cease to be griefs, but Jesus
   does not mean this to be our lot and portion. Our inheritance is not on
   this side of Jordan. Truly, this world and all the works that are in
   it, are to be burned up--in token of which He is gone from it. It is
   vain for us to think that we can make our abode here! We are,
   ourselves, to go away soon and, therefore, He is gone--

   "When He arose, ascending high He taught our feet the way."

   He seems to say, "Upwards, my Brethren, upwards from off this earth!
   Away from this world to the Glory Land! I am gone and you must be gone.
   This is not your place of resting, but you must prepare yourselves for
   a time when it shall be said of each one of you, 'He is gone.'" Those
   who linger behind us will see us no more, for we shall be gone into
   Heaven to be with our Lord in His Kingdom.

   I like to remember that our Lord Jesus is gone in the entirety of His
   Nature. His body is gone. He has not left His flesh in the grave. Jesus
   has carried with Him His entire Self, His whole Humanity. Therein I
   rejoice, for He has carried my nature to Heaven with Him! My heart is
   with Him on His Throne and all my being longs to follow it! Jesus has
   taken our manhood into Heaven. He is in Heaven, our Adam, the
   Representative of His people. He has taken us up with Himself, Beloved,
   even all of us who are in Him. He has gone into Heaven in His true and
   proper Manhood. In the New Jerusalem He looks like a Lamb that has been
   slain and still He wears His Priesthood, His Manhood and His
   sympathetic heart. He who is gone into Heaven is not an imposter, but
   the real Christ! We shall know Him there if we have known Him here. He
   on whose head are many crowns, is identical with the Christ whose head
   was encircled with thorns! Despite the change in His circumstances,
   there is no change in Him--He is "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday,
   today and forever." He, His own Self, who bore our sins, is gone up
   into Heaven!

   We have dwelt long enough upon the words, "He is gone." Now let us
   consider that He "is gone into Heaven." What does this signify but,
   first, that He is gone out of the region wherein our senses can
   perceive Him? Be sure of this, that you will not now see Him, nor touch
   Him, nor handle Him. He is gone into Heaven--out of reach of our
   earth-bound senses. It is a vain idea of carnal-minded men that Christ
   is corporeally in the "sacrament." He is gone into Heaven! His very
   flesh and blood cannot be here among us. He is gone up into Heaven and,
   therefore, He is not where He can be recognized by these bodily senses.
   Spiritually He is here, according to His promise, "Lo, I am with you
   always, even unto the end of the world," but to say that He is here
   corporeally is to deny that He is gone up into Heaven. As Man, as His
   body was of substance, it is not capable of being in more than one
   place at a time! You must not transform His Humanity into De-ity--His
   Deity is everywhere, but His substantial Humanity can only be in its
   one proper place--and to suppose it to be everywhere is virtually to
   deny that it is anywhere! A covert unbelief in the reality of our
   Lord's body thus veils itself un-

   der the appearance of a superstitious faith. Jesus is really and indeed
   gone into Heaven and, therefore, we see Him not, we hear Him not and
   our communion with Him is by faith--not by the senses.

   But then, Beloved, we know that our Lord, as Man, is gone into a
   greater nearness to God than ever--"He is gone into Heaven" where is
   the Throne of the Great King. The High Priest, on the Day of Atonement,
   lifted the mysterious veil which shut in the Holy of Holies. He passed
   within and the veil fell between him and the people. They could not
   possibly see him while he was performing his sacred functions. But they
   knew that he stood before the Throne of God. Though he was not with
   them, he was with God which was better for them. The High Priest was
   more useful to them within the veil than outside of it--he was doing
   for them, out of sight, what he could not accomplish in their view. I
   delight to think that my Lord is with the Father! Sometimes I cannot
   get to God--my access seems blocked by my infir-mity--but He is always
   with God to plead for me! Sometimes my intercessions seem to die
   outside the veil--but His prayers are always within the Holy Place,
   since He, Himself, is there, presenting His potent pleas directly to
   the Father and being always accepted by Him! Let us joy and rejoice
   that our Covenant Head is now in the bosom of the Father, at the
   Fountainhead of Love and Grace--and that He is there on our behalf.

   In going into Heaven there is also this thought, that our Lord is gone,
   now, into the place of perfect happiness and of complete Glory. We
   rightly sing--

   "No more the bloody spear,

   The Cross and nails no more, For Hell itself shakes at His name, And
   all the heavens adore.'

   No weariness, no mockery, no sinking of heart, no bearing of reproach,
   no crying, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" He is gone into
   peace, bliss, honor and renown. "Heaven" is a great word--none of us
   can understand it--nor shall we approach its meaning till we reach the
   place. He is where there are pleasures forevermore. The Human soul and
   body of Jesus are filled with delight! The Man, Christ Jesus, the son
   of Mary--He that died upon the Cross is now blessed forevermore! The
   Lord Jesus is filled with ineffable satisfaction which is the reward of
   His passion and His death. Let us this day be glad and rejoice in Him,
   for He is gone up into Heaven!

   Thinking this over, let us reflect, dear Brothers and Sisters, that
   nothing could stop His going there. "He is gone up into Heaven, despite
   all who raged against Him."

   Death could not hold Him. Death bound Him very fast with the strongest
   cords, but He could not be held by them. This great monster must give
   up Jesus, even as another monster gave up Jonah, after the third day!
   Our greater Jonah came up, again, from the depths of the earth. He died
   and was a captive for our sakes, but His body could not see corruption,
   nor could His soul abide in the realms of death. He is gone to Heaven,
   despite the stone, the watch, the seal-- despite the clay-cold hand of
   death.

   He is gone into Heaven despite malicious men. Have you ever wondered
   why they did not attack Him when He had showed Himself openly and had
   led out His disciples to the Mount of Olives? They paid the soldiers to
   say that His disciples stole Him away while they slept--why did they
   not seize Him? Why is Herod so quiet and Caiaphas so still? Scribes and
   Pharisees, where are they? Are these lions chained? Our greater Daniel
   is in their den, but they do not even roar at Him! It is now or never
   with them--if they could capture Him, now, and stop His way to His
   eternal triumph, it would be a great victory! It is the last chance for
   the overthrow of His power! But truly, against Him did not a dog move
   his tongue! They were still as a stone while He passed over to take
   possession of the inheritance!

   As death could not hinder Him, so neither could the malice of men
   detain Him, nor could all the forces of the devil block His way. I see
   no trace of the arch-enemy after Christ has risen from the dead. O
   Prince of Darkness, you did meet Him in the wilderness at the
   beginning--why not close with Him at the end? Why not assail Him by the
   sea when He stands there with His coals of fire, with fish laid on
   them, and bread? Prince of Darkness, why did you not hasten up to shoot
   a last arrow at Him and summon all your bands to waylay Him in mid-air
   to block His passage to the Golden City? No, the powers of darkness
   were baffled! In their silence they gnashed their teeth for rage, but
   they could not even hiss against Him! He had so thoroughly cowed and
   subdued Satan and all his angels in Gethsemane and on the Cross, that
   nothing remained but to triumph over them and lead captivity captive!
   The leaguered hosts of Hell could not summon courage for another
   encounter--His warfare was accomplished and the road to His Father's
   capital lay open before Him! In peaceful triumph He passed beyond the
   clouds. Troops of angels on the road met with their joyful songs, the

   Heir of all things returning to His Home! My heart rejoices as I think
   that He is gone into Heaven, none disputing His passage.

   But I beg you to remember that He is gone up into Heaven as our
   Representative. Jesus does nothing by Himself, now. All His people are
   with Him. He says, "Behold I and the children which God has given Me."
   They are always in union with Him. The Head is never separate from the
   members--the supposition is ghastly! He is our Forerunner marking the
   way; our Herald predicting our coming; our Breaker clearing the road.
   As the great Lord calls them Home, it shall be said of each one of the
   saints, "who is gone into Heaven." Jesus is gone there as Pioneer to
   open the way, as our Friend to prepare a place for us and as the Pledge
   that all who are in Him shall come to the same happiness! If He had not
   entered, neither could we, but in His Person God has given to us a
   token that we, also, shall rise from the dead and shall enter into
   Heaven! He who is the Surety of the Covenant is our guarantee of
   entrance into Heaven! This is the best seal that our faith could
   desire, the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ being practically the
   resurrection and the home-bringing of all His redeemed! I stop--may the
   Lord bless this to your souls.

   Secondly, we have to look at the next circumstance, His sitting at the
   right hand of God--"who is gone into Heaven, and is at the right hand
   of God." Remember that this being at the right hand of God relates to
   the complex Person of our Lord. It relates to Him not as God, alone,
   but as God and Man. It is His Manhood that is at the right hand of God.
   Wonderful conception! The next being to God is Man! Infinite leagues
   must necessarily lie between the Creator and the created, but between
   God and man, in Christ Jesus, there seems no distance at all--the Man
   Christ Jesus sits at God's right hand. Is not this a sublime thought,
   that man, creature as he is, is now so linked with the Second Person of
   the Divine Trinity in Unity, that he is so near to God as to be at His
   right hand? So near, so very near to God--he cannot be nearer! This is
   a wonderful thing--Jesus sits at the right hand of God as Man--and man
   is thus brought into a singular nearness to God! As I said before,
   there is an immeasurable chasm between God and a seraph, and yet man,
   whom He made a "little lower than the angels," and who was,
   consequently, a little further off, is, in the Person of the Son of
   God, brought so near to God that no being of any kind now intervenes
   between the Almighty God and man!

   What does it mean that Christ sits at the right hand of God? Does it
   not mean, first, unrivalled honor? To sit at the right hand of God is
   the highest conceivable glory. The mother of Zebedee's children asked
   that her sons might sit, the one on His right hand, and the other on
   His left, in His Kingdom, but Jesus said it was not His to give. The
   Father has given the Son to sit in the highest place nearest to His
   Throne, yes, on the very Throne of God, for we read of "the Throne of
   God and of the Lamb." Jesus, our Brother, is elevated to the throne of
   the Most High!

   Does not it also signify intense love? When Solomon would describe the
   love of the king to his bride, he said, "Upon your right hand did stand
   the queen in gold of Ophir." The Lord God places the Son of Man in the
   seat of love, where none may be but the One who is the beloved of the
   Father. He loves Him with an unutterable, inconceivable love and even
   thus does He love us in Him! Christ at the right hand of God means all
   His people at the right hand of God--all the saints are in the place of
   the nearest and dearest love!

   It means, also, communion and counsel. We speak of a person with whom
   we take advice as "the man of our right hand." God takes counsel with
   the Man, Christ Jesus. When you have a friend at court, you hope you
   will do well, but what a Friend have we in the King's courts--even He
   who is The Wonderful, Counselor! He is the King of Glory, the Governor
   of earth, the Distributor of thrones and crowns, the Man Christ Jesus!
   Now I know that the decree of God must mean my good, for my Lord sits
   at the right hand of Him that does decree! Now I understand that the
   purposes of God must work out the happiness of the chosen, for He who
   loves them is in union with the Maker of the purpose!

   Does it not also signify perfect repose? Jesus is gone up to the right
   hand of God and sits there. While He was occupied with His holy
   service, He did not sit down. There were no seats for the priests in
   the tabernacle--their work was too laborious for sitting down. But
   Jesus has forever taken His seat at the right hand of God, expecting
   till His enemies are made His footstool! O restful Savior, we, toiling
   and laboring, come to You and find rest in You--we also sit down
   longing for and expecting the time when You shall put down all our
   enemies and we shall tread even Satan under our feet! Even now we sit
   with You in the heavenlies and enjoy Your peace. So much concerning the
   seating of our Lord.

   The third fact is, His dominion--"Angels and authorities and powers
   being made subject to Him." Angels are subject to Him upon whom cowards
   spat--to Him whom they nailed to the Cross--and at whom they wagged
   their heads! This is one of the wonders of Heaven. Is it possible that
   the conjecture of the old writers was true, that Satan rebelled

   against God because He heard a whisper that a man would one day be Head
   over all principalities and powers? I do not know, but certainly the
   angels must often marvel that Gabriel, nor the brightest of the
   seraphim is next to God--but a Man! Lord, what is man! Man made of the
   dust of the earth--what is he that he should sit above more spiritual
   beings, crowned with glory and honor? Yet it is so. God has set the
   Christ above all angels and principalities and powers. Is not this one
   of those things which angels desire to look into? Although Lucifer has
   fallen, there is yet no gap in Heaven. Creatures in part, material, are
   lifted up to fill the void caused by the great dragon when he drew down
   with his tail the third part of the stars of Heaven. Men in countless
   myriads are in Heaven, white-robed, praising God! And one Man is
   actually on the Throne of God, Vice Regent, Lord over all--having every
   knee to bow before Him and every tongue to call Him Lord, to the Glory
   of God the Father!

   Oh, think of it! The Man Christ Jesus is Lord of all the shining ones!
   He can send an angel to comfort you in your grief--"Are they not all
   ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs
   of salvation?" When you count up the available forces of your Lord, do
   not forget these invisible armies. Did He not say in the hour of His
   agony, "Can I not now pray to My Father and He shall presently give Me
   more than twelve legions of angels"? The air will soon teem with
   invisible spirits if they are needed for our defense, for our Savior is
   their Lord! They will count it all joy to do His bidding on our behalf.
   They are the chariots of God in which He rides to the rescue of His
   own. The day shall come when all the hosts of Heaven shall come down to
   earth, attending the Son of Man--then shall they gather out of His
   Kingdom all things that offend and, at the same time, they shall
   delight to display their loyalty to Him that once did hang upon the
   Cross. We rejoice, today, that God has set Him far above all
   principality, power, might and dominion-- and every name that is named!

   But I must not forget that He has power over all devils as well. They
   are fallen angels and Jesus has subdued them once and for all. They
   cannot tempt His followers without His permission. They cannot put
   forth their finger to bring any calamity upon a Job unless God wills
   it. These dogs are muzzled and, therefore, we should not fear them--

   "A faithful God restrains their hands, And binds them down in iron
   bands.'

   Jesus is Lord of all!

   Whatever else this term "angels and authorities and powers" may
   comprehend, Christ has under His sway. That is to say, all kings and
   princes upon earth, all leaders of thought--political or religious--all
   controllers of human movements are subject to Him. Do not be afraid of
   this or that form of anarchy--nothing can shake the eternal Throne of
   the Prince of Peace! Monarchs may die and crumble back to dust and
   their empires with them, but the Throne of the Son of David shall
   endure forever and ever! No acts of senators, nor decrees of despots,
   nor raging of the multitude, nor foaming of rebels, nor deliverances of
   sages can interfere, in the least degree, with the supreme power of
   Jesus of Nazareth! His very Cross proclaimed Him King--and King He is!
   Be cheered by His reign. "Fear not, little flock, for it is your
   Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." It is surely so, for
   the Lord has given Jesus the Kingdom and He shall reign forever and
   ever.

   Yes, and all kinds of forces other than human are under subjection to
   Jesus. The Psalmist, when he measured the domain of man, said--"You
   made him to have dominion over all the works of Your hands; You have
   put all things under His feet: all sheep and oxen, yes, and the beasts
   of the field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and
   whatever passes through the paths of the seas." We do not yet see all
   things put under man, but we see Jesus, who was made a little lower
   than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with Glory and
   honor! All things this day bow before the Lord Jesus, willingly or
   unwillingly. It matters not what powers, forces and energies may be now
   developed, or may be yet developed in the ages to come--they are all
   subject to the Lord Christ! That heel which once was bruised when the
   serpent wounded it, has crushed the dragon's head and holds it down
   upon the earth. Life, death, Hell and worlds unknown lie in subjection
   to Him that lives and was dead! Oh that my Lord had a servant that
   could worthily declare His glories! Great princes have their heralds
   who, with blast of trumpet, proclaim their honors and dignities, but
   who shall proclaim the glories of the Son of Man who once died for our
   sins?

   Come, let us rejoice together in the victories of our Leader and Lord!
   I know of no better theme to stir the pulses of my soul with holy
   exultation than the thought that Jesus is victorious! I have heard of
   wounded men crushed amid a heap of bleeding bodies lying on the
   battlefield and awakening all the life that remained in them when they
   saw the great Na-

   poleon come riding over the plain. With their legs gone, they raised
   themselves upon their arms, once more to salute their captain! Poor
   souls, to be thus enthusiastic for one who shed their blood like water!
   Far more wise is our enthusiasm for Him who shed His blood for us! If I
   knew that I must die in a ditch and be forgotten or slandered and
   abhorred of men, I would yet rejoice and cry, "Hosanna!" at the
   prospect of my Lord's sure victory! Yes, I will salute Him now with my
   most hearty praises and be glad because I know that He is, even now,
   King of kings and Lord of lords. Hallelujah! He of whom they said,
   "Crucify Him, crucify Him," is now Head over all! There I leave it. God
   grant us Grace to rejoice in this story of our Lord!

   II. Secondly, and very briefly, LET US LEARN THE LESSONS OF THESE
   CIRCUMSTANCES.

   The first lesson is--the religion of Christ is true. Whenever I read
   modern doubts--and you cannot read long without coming across them--I
   am glad to get back to facts. If you read a certain set of modern
   sermons, you will find all the eternal Truths of God denied or
   maligned. Too many ministers, instead of being servants of Christ, are
   servants of the devil dressed in the livery of God--may the Lord have
   mercy upon them! Whenever a doubt is proposed to me, I fall back upon
   this fact--Jesus did rise from the dead. That is sure. He did also
   ascend into Heaven, for His disciples saw Him rise. Well, then, I am
   satisfied to be the least of His disciples and to take His Word and the
   words of His Inspired Apostles and believe them--even though faith is
   denounced as ridiculous! "You are left behind in the march of progress.
   You are poor fools who cannot think for yourselves." I confess that I
   am such a fool--I believe what God has revealed. I have more confidence
   in the Revelation of God than in the opinions of men. I know nothing
   among men except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. For this is the Truth
   of God! We know it! We have facts at our back. Our doctrine is not
   sentiment, view and opinion, but fact! "Who has gone into Heaven and is
   at the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made
   subject to Him."

   I learn another lesson--that Christ's cause is safe. Let not His Church
   tremble. Let her not think of putting out the hand of unbelief to
   steady the Ark of the Lord. The history of the Church is to be the
   history of Christ repeated--she is to be betrayed, she is to be
   scourged, she is to be falsely accused and spit on--she may have her
   crucifixion and her death. But she shall rise again! Her Master rose
   and, like He, she shall rise and receive Glory. You can never kill the
   Church till you can kill Christ--and you can never defeat her till you
   defeat the Lord Jesus who already wears the crown of triumph! The grand
   old cause is safe! The outlook may be dark, just now, and it may be
   unpopular to follow the Lamb wherever He goes, but the day will come
   when they who do so shall walk in white, for they are worthy! The wheel
   will turn and they that are lowest, now, shall soon be highest--they
   that have been with Him in the dust shall be with Him in His

   Glory.

   Now I can see that His saints are safe, for if Jesus has risen and gone
   into His Glory, then each individual in Him shall be safe, too. Where
   does your hope lie, Brothers and Sisters? Why, in Christ! Well, then,
   your hope is always safe, is it not? If you have any hope outside of
   Him, it may perish, but if your hope is all within Him, your treasure
   is all within the heavenly casket and it is always secure! Therefore,
   be glad and rejoice! You, too, may have to cry, "Why have you forsaken
   me?" You, too, may thirst. You, too, may die. But you shall live again
   and you shall triumph, for as He is, so are you and what Jesus is, that
   you shall be in Him!

   I can also see another lesson here--this explains the way in which
   Jesus deals with sinners. That which took place in His own Person, He
   makes to be a picture of what takes place in the men whom He saves. If
   you come to Him, you can only get to know the fullness of His gracious
   power by being scourged and buffeted with conviction and repentance--
   and by having self, especially self-righteousness, crucified and slain!
   You must know the destruction of self, you must see death written upon
   all carnal hopes and then, out of that death, you shall live again in
   newness of life and you shall receive honor and glory and immortality!
   Therefore, dear troubled Heart, if Christ is killing you, be assured He
   will make you alive, for this is what He says, even He, the mighty
   God--"I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal." The history of
   Christ has to be written out again in us! Death to sin and a new life
   unto righteousness must be ours. That is a lesson worth the learning!

   And so I must close with one more division which will have several
   points in it. I think, Beloved, since Christ has gone into Heaven and
   sits at the right hand of God, it shows which way we ought to go. "I,
   if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me." He draws
   them to the Cross and you may be sure He will draw them to the crown!
   Do you think He has lost His appeal, now that He sits on the Throne?
   Not He! He is drawing us up this morning! Let us send all

   our thoughts upward--our desires, our rejoicings, our aspirations--let
   them all climb Jacob's ladder up to the Lord! Oh that we could at once
   rise to Him! Stop a while, my Soul! Be patient through your appointed
   days. Though you can hardly stand delay, yet follow His example, for
   your Lord, Himself, had to wait. He had His time of waiting and so must
   you, in order that you may have fellowship with Him in His sufferings.
   Still feel the drawings. Remember that pretty parable, given by one of
   our ministers, of the boy's kite. He made it fly aloft. It rose up so
   high that he could no longer see it. Still, he said he had a kite and
   he held fast to it. "Boy, how do you know you have a kite?" "I can feel
   it pull," he said.

   This morning we feel our Jesus pull. He draws us with a far greater
   force than a mere string. He is gone into Heaven and He draws us after
   Him! O Lord, draw us with greater power than ever! "Draw us, we will
   run after You." Do we not feel as though we could kneel down and pray
   over those words of the spouse? Wait a bit and soon you shall climb the
   shining way to embrace your risen Lord! Yield to His upward drawing! Do
   not pull away from Him to grasp earth and things that are earthly, but
   yield to His drawings. As you yield to them, begin to sing--He has
   conquered! He has conquered! He has conquered! What matters it though
   my garments are rolled in dust and blood? He has conquered! He has
   conquered! What does it matter though the arrows fly thick about me,
   winged by the feathers of death? He has conquered! He has conquered! My
   Soul, grasp the victory, for there is laid up for you, also, a crown of
   life that fades not away!

   God bless you, Brothers and Sisters, for Jesus' sake!
     __________________________________________________________________

To Those Who Are Angry With Their Godly Friends

   (No. 1929)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And the Lord said unto Cain, Why are you angry? And why is your
   countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if
   you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And unto you shall be his
   desire and you shall rule over him." Genesis 4:6, 7.

   SINNERS are not all of the laughing sort--Cain's mind was angry and his
   heart was heavy. The short life of the vicious is not always a merry
   one. See, here you have a man who is utterly without God, but he is not
   without sorrow. His countenance has fallen, his looks are sullen--he is
   a miserable man. There are many ungodly people still in the world who
   are not happy in the condition in which they find themselves. The
   present does not content them and they have no future from which to
   borrow the light of hope. The service of sin is hard to them and yet
   they do not quit it for the service of the Lord. They are in danger of
   having two Hells--one in this life and another in the world to come!

   They have a religion of their own, even as Cain brought an offering of
   the fruit of the ground, but it yields them no comfort, for God has no
   respect to their offering and, therefore, they are displeased about it.
   The things of God bring an increase to their inward wretchedness--it
   was after a sacrifice that Cain's countenance fell. Many unrenewed
   hearts quarrel with God at His own altar--quarrel by presenting what He
   never commanded and then by growing angry because He rejects their
   will-worship! They attend the means of Grace, but they are not saved
   nor comforted, and they do not like it. They pray, after a fashion, but
   they are not heard--and they feel indignant at the slight. They read
   the Scriptures, but no cheering promise is ever applied to their
   hearts--and they grow fierce at their failure. They see another
   accepted, as Abel was, and this excites their jealousy and envy gnaws
   at their heart. They are angry with God, with their fellow man and with
   everything about them! Their countenance falls and they are in a morose
   mood which fits them for any cruel word or deed. Can you not see their
   sullen looks?

   They would very much like to have the enjoyments of religion. They
   would like to have peace of conscience. They would like to be uplifted
   beyond all fear of death and they would like to be as happy as
   Christian people are, but they do not want to pay the price, namely,
   obedience to God by faith in Jesus Christ! They would willingly bring
   an offering to God according to their own choice and taste, but they do
   not care to come with "the Lamb" as their Sacrifice--they cannot accept
   the Atonement made by our Lord's laying down His life for us. They wish
   to have the reward of obedient faith while yet they have their own way!
   They would reap the harvest without sowing the seed. They would gather
   clusters without planting vines. They would win the wages without
   serving the Master of the vineyard! But as this cannot be and never
   will be, they are full of bitter feeling. Since sin and sorrow are sure
   to be, sooner or later, married together-- and since only by walking in
   the ways of God can we hope to find peace and rest--they quarrel with
   the Divine arrangement, grow inwardly miserable and show it by their
   sullen looks and growling words.

   They are in a bitter state of heart and it is fair to ask each one of
   them, "Why are you angry?" Alas, they are not angry with themselves, as
   they ought to be, but angry with God--and often they are angry with
   God's chosen and envious of them--even as Cain was malicious and
   vindictive towards Abel. "Why should my neighbor be saved, and not I?
   Why should my brother rejoice because he has peace with God while I
   cannot get it? Why should my own sister be converted and sing of Heaven
   and I, who have gone to the same place of worship and have joined in
   the same prayers and hymns, seem to be left out in the cold?" Such
   questions might be useful to them, but instead of looking into their
   own hearts to see what is wrong there--instead of judging themselves
   and trying to get right with God--they inwardly blame the Lord or the
   persons whom they think to be more favored than themselves! The
   blessings of Grace are to be had by them, but they refuse to take them
   and yet quarrel with those who accept them! They play the part of the
   dog in the manger,

   who could not eat the hay, himself, and would not let the horses do so.
   They will not accept Christ and yet grumble because others have Him.

   It is one of the sure signs of the seed of the serpent--that they will
   always be at enmity with the Seed of the woman. This is one of the
   marks of distinction between those who walk after the flesh and those
   who walk after the spirit, for as Ishmael mocked Isaac, so the child of
   the flesh mocks the child of promise even to this day! As soon as the
   two sons born to Adam were grown up, the great division was seen--he
   who was of the Wicked One slew the man who, by faith, offered a more
   acceptable sacrifice. This division has never ceased and never will
   cease while the race of man remains on earth under the reign of God's
   long-suffering! By this shall you know to which seed you
   belong--whether you are of those who hate the righteous, or of those
   who are hated for Christ's sake.

   Now, I want to call attention to a very gracious fact connected with
   this text and that is, that although Cain was in such a bad temper that
   he was very angry and his countenance fell, yet God, the infinitely
   Gracious One, came and spoke with him and patiently reasoned with him.
   It is wonderful that God should speak with man at all, considering
   man's insignificance. Did not the Psalmist say, "When I consider Your
   heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You
   have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him? And the son of
   man, that You visit him?" But for the Lord to speak with sinful man is
   a far greater marvel! And for Him to reason with such a man as Cain, a
   murderer in heart and soon to be a murderer in deed--impenitent,
   implacable, presumptuous, blasphemous--this is a miracle of mercy!
   Shall the pure and holy God speak with such a wretch as Cain who was
   angry with his brother without just cause? Why does He not, at once,
   cut him off while yet his hate has not issued into murder--and thus at
   the very beginning show His detestation of envy and malice? Truly His
   mercy endures forever! Behold, the Lord comes to Cain with a question,
   gives him an opportunity of speaking for himself and defending, if he
   can, his state of mind. "Why are you angry? And why is your countenance
   fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do
   well, sin lies at the

   door."

   Yet this is no solitary instance of the condescension of God--it is the
   way of our God to expostulate with sinners and to let them produce
   their strong reasons and justify themselves if they can. It is His
   fashion to say, "Turn you: turn you, why will you die, O house of
   Israel?" for He wills not the death of any, but that they should turn
   unto Him and live! He is greatly patient and waits to be gracious. God
   gives none up until they fatally resolve to give themselves up--and
   even then His good Spirit strives with them as long as it is possible
   to do so, consistently with His holiness.

   Often to the very gates of death and up to the very edge of the
   bottomless Pit, His pity follows obstinate sinners, crying still, "Turn
   you! Turn you! Turn you! Why will you die?" Yes, the angry sinner--the
   Cain-ite sinner--the sinner whose face betrays the anger of his soul,
   whose heart is hot with enmity against God and against His Christ, even
   he is not left to die without Divine pleadings which may show him his
   fault and folly. Still does the Lord handle conscience with skill and
   awaken thought with fit enquiries--"Why are you angry? And why is your
   countenance fallen?"

   I pray God that He may speak to any among my congregation who may be in
   this sad and evil condition. I have felt, lately, that I may have but
   few more opportunities of preaching the Gospel and, therefore, I would
   try and speak more solemnly every time I preach and endeavor to strike
   right home at the heart and conscience, if, by any means, I may save
   some. Oh how I long to bring men to Jesus! I could gladly lay down my
   life to save my hearers. May the Holy Spirit make my words to be full
   of force and holy fire--and may they meet the case of some here present
   whom I have never seen before, but whose thoughts are as well known to
   God as if they were printed in a book and laid open before His eyes! Oh
   that I may be moved to speak a word which shall fit the case as a glove
   fits the hand which wears it! May it not merely be the voice of man
   that speaks to you, but may it be clear that God has commissioned His
   servant to speak to your hearts and that by my sermon, God, Himself
   expostulates with you even as He expostulated with Cain in those
   ancient times!

   Remember that the case is that of a man who is angry--angry mainly
   because he cannot get the comforts of religion. He sees his brother
   enjoying them and he grows angry with him for that reason. With him and
   all like he, I would reason with kind words.

   I shall take the last sentence of the text, first--"Unto you shall be
   his desire and you shall rule over him." In these words God argues with
   Cain and answers the charge of favoritism which was lurking in his
   mind. He tells him, in effect, that NO DIFFERENCE IS MADE IN THE
   ARRANGEMENT OF SOCIAL LIFE BECAUSE OF THE ARRANGEMENTS OF GRACE. Notice
   that He says to him, "Unto you shall be his desire and you shall rule
   over him"--which I

   understand to mean just this, "Why are you so angry against Abel? It is
   true that I have accepted his offering--it is true that he is a
   righteous man and you are not, but, for all that, you are his elder
   brother and he looks up to you. His desire is toward you and you shall
   rule over him. He has not acted otherwise than as a younger brother
   should act towards an elder brother, but he has admitted your seniority
   and priority. He has not revolted from you. You rule over him--you are
   his master. Why, then, are you so angry?"

   Observe this, then--that if a man shall be angry with his wife because
   she is a Christian, we may well argue with him--Why are you thus
   provoked? Is she not a loving and obedient wife to you in all things
   except in this matter touching her God? Is she not all the better for
   her religion? I have known a husband meet his wife at the Tabernacle
   door and call her foul names all the way home for no other reason than
   because she joined in the worship of God! Yet she was all the more
   loving, diligent and patient because of that worship. Here is your
   child converted and you are angry. Are you not unreasonable in this?
   You are his father and he yields obedience to you. God has not caused
   religion to alter the natural position of things--your child, your
   servant, your wife all recognize this--and remain in due subservience
   to you. For what cause are you thus sullen and angry? Good Sir, this is
   not like a reasonable man! Be persuaded to let better feelings sway
   you.

   Now, this is an important thing to note because, first of all, it takes
   away from governments their excuse for persecution. In the early days
   of Christianity, multitudes of Christians were tormented to death
   because of their faith in Jesus. There was no excuse for it, for they
   had done no harm to the State. Christianity does not come into a nation
   to break up its arrangements, or to break down its fabric. All that is
   good in human society it preserves and establishes. It snaps no ties of
   the family; it dislocates no bonds of the body politic. There are
   theories of socialism and the like which lead to anarchy and riot, but
   it is not so with the mild and gentle teaching of Jesus Christ, whose
   every word is love and patience. He says, "Resist not evil, but whoever
   shall smite you on your right cheek, turn to him the other, also." His
   Apostle says--"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands:
   husbands, love your wives; children, obey your parents in all things:
   servants, obey in all things your masters, not with eye service as men
   pleasers: masters, give unto your servants that which is just and
   equal; knowing that you, also, have a Master in Heaven." Such precepts
   as these are no injury to government.

   Paul was no leader of sedition, no destroyer of the rights of property.
   Caesar needed not to fear Christ. Jesus did not covet Caesar's purple
   or Caesar's throne. Even Herod needed not to tremble for his princedom,
   for the Child that was born at Bethlehem would not have hunted that fox
   or disturbed his den. "My Kingdom is not of this world," said our Lord
   Jesus, "otherwise would My servants fight, that I should not be
   delivered to the Jews." Now, inasmuch as the religion of Jesus Christ
   does no hurt any social order, teaches no one to be rebellious, takes
   away from no man his rights, but guards the rights of all from the
   meanest to the greatest, all excuse is taken away from any government
   that dares to put out its hand to touch the Church of God! As to each
   disciple of Jesus, the government may be satisfied that he is loyal.
   "You shall rule over him" is certainly true. Christians will cheerfully
   submit to all lawful rule and righteous authority. To them it is a
   matter of joy if they are enabled to lead peaceable lives because the
   magistrate is a terror to evildoers.

   They are a non-resistant, peaceable, quiet people, who have, from the
   beginning of the world until now, borne burdens and suffered and been
   content to suffer so that they might but be true to their Master. They
   hate tyranny, but they love order. They protest against oppression, but
   they uphold law and justice. Why, then, should they be persecuted? They
   ask nothing from the State by way of pay or patronage--they only ask to
   be left alone and to be subject to no disability on account of their
   religion. Let all who are in authority, whether as kings or petty
   magistrates, beware of wantonly molesting a people who cause them no
   trouble, lest they be found in this matter to be fighting against God!

   That being so in the broad field of national life, it is just the same
   if you bring it down to the little sphere of home. There is no reason
   why Cain should be so angry with Abel because God loves him, for the
   love of God to Abel does not take away from Cain his right as an elder
   brother. It does not teach Abel to refuse to Cain the rights of his
   position, nor lead him to act rudely and wrongfully toward him. No,
   Abel's desire is unto Cain and Cain rules over him as his elder
   brother. Why, then, should Cain be angry and his countenance fall?

   My dear Friend, if you are angry, tonight, about the Sovereignty of the
   Grace of God, as seen in the conversion of another, let me ask you what
   hurt has the Grace of God in the heart of the person you envy done to
   you? Is your eye evil because God's eye is good? Have you suffered in
   any sense because that other one is saved? You cannot have your way if

   you wish to coerce the envied one into giving up his faith--but have
   you a right to your own way? Is it not the privilege of every man to
   have his conscience left free to serve God alone? What right have you
   as an Englishman to take away liberty from another? You say, "Why, I
   think he is very stupid to believe as he does." Very likely you may
   think so, but then your judgment is given you for yourself, not for
   another, and you must not become a tyrant and domineer over others. I
   thought you were a stickler for liberty! And yet you sneer at others
   because they think for themselves, or at least do not think as you do!
   If religion made men false in their dealings with others. If it made
   the servant careless and indifferent. If it made the husband a tyrant.
   If it made the wife a tattler and untidy and dirty. If it turned all
   relationships upside-down--then there would be some little
   reasonableness in the opposition which you offer to it! But if it does
   nothing of the kind, why are you angry? And why is your countenance
   fallen?

   Why, to me it seems to be a great blessing to a man to have his friends
   converted--a blessing to be desired and prized! Their conversion may do
   you good, even if you are not converted, yourself. Laban learned by
   experience that the Lord blessed him for Jacob's sake. Look at Joseph.
   The Lord was with him and we find that wherever Joseph went, others
   were the better because God blessed them through Joseph! A good man in
   a house is good store to the family. A converted daughter, a praying
   son, a holy husband, a gracious wife--why, these are the pillars, the
   ornaments, the buttresses of the house! Godly people hedge the mansion
   in with their prayers! Who can tell what blessings God gives to
   unconverted men because of their converted relatives? I do not doubt
   that, as sometimes the chaff is spared for the sake of the grain which
   it covers and protects, so, often, the lives of ungodly men are spared
   for the sake of the children whom they have to bring up--for the sake
   of those who have to be cherished by them for a while. Had it not been
   for the grief it would cause the mother whom you mock, the Lord might
   have cut you down, young man, long ago! Pity for holy relatives may be
   the motive for the Lord's long-suffering to many rebels. Therefore be
   not angry with the righteous.

   I could hope, my angry friend, that God means to still give a greater
   blessing to you--that He means to entice you to Heaven by showing your
   wife the way, or He means to lead you to Christ by that dear child of
   yours. I have known parents brought to repentance by the deaths of
   daughters or of sons who have died in the faith. I hope you will not
   have to lose those you love that you may be brought to Jesus by their
   dying words. But it may be so--it may be so. It will be better for you
   to yield to their gentle example while yet they are spared, than for
   you to be smitten to the heart by their sickness and death. Oh that the
   persecuted one may live to have the great joy of going to the House of
   God with his Father, or walking with brother in the ways of godliness,
   or bringing the thoughtless sister to seek and find the Savior! Why
   should it not be so? Let us hope for it!

   At any rate, I do not see any cause to be angry because Grace has
   visited your family. To say the very least about it, a man who is angry
   with another for enjoying a religion which he, himself, does not care
   for, is a poor specimen of good nature! Surely he may allow others to
   enjoy what he does not, himself, desire. If you do not wish for
   salvation, why worry yourself because others possess it? If you do not
   mean to serve Christ, at least stand out of the way and let other
   people serve Him. There cannot be any gain to you in kicking against
   the pricks, by resisting the power of Divine Grace! You will find it
   hard work in the long run, for the Lord has said that if any shall
   offend one of the least of His little ones, it were better for him that
   a millstone were hung about his neck and that he were cast into the
   midst of the sea! For prudence's sake, for your own sake, for reason's
   sake, for freedom's sake, I pray you be no longer angry and let not
   your countenance fall! If we cannot agree in matters of religion, let
   us not persecute or think contemptuously of one another.

   II. Now let us advance farther into the text. There is no room for
   being angry, for THOUGH THE DIFFERENCE LIES FIRST WITH THE GRACE OF
   GOD, YET IT LIES, ALSO, WITH THE MAN'S OWN SELF. "If you do well, will
   you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door."

   First, then, if you are not accepted and you are angry because you are
   not accepted, is there not a just cause for it? If you do not enjoy the
   comforts of religion and you grow envious because you do not, you
   should cool your wrathfulness by considering this question--"If you do
   well, will you not be accepted?" That is to say, will you not be
   accepted on the same terms as Abel? You will be accepted in the same
   way as your brother, your sister, your child. How is it that the one
   you envy is full of peace? It is because he has come to Jesus and
   confessed his sin and trusted his Redeemer. If you do this, shall not
   you, also, be accepted? Has not the Lord said, "Him that comes to Me I
   will in no wise cast out"? If you, too, come and confess your sin and
   trust the Savior, you are as certain to be accepted as your friend. You
   are envious because another is full of joy. Where did that joy come
   from but from this--that he came according to the Divine command and

   rested himself upon the finished work of Christ and gave himself up to
   be Christ's servant--and asked for the Holy Spirit to renew him and
   lead him into the way of righteousness?

   That has been done according to the faithful promise of God which is
   sure to all who obey the Gospel command. If you come in the same way
   and rest on the same Savior and yield yourself up to be renewed by the
   same Spirit, the Lord will not refuse you! Put it to the test and see.
   Try Him. Try Him and if He refuses you, let me know, for I am telling
   everybody that Jesus never casts out any that come to Him--and I must
   not do so any more if I find out that He does reject you or anyone
   else! Come to Jesus confessing your sin and trusting in Him and if He
   does not save you, let me know, and I will publish it to the four winds
   of Heaven! We shall be bound to make it known that Christ has broken
   His Word and that His Gospel has become of no effect, for we must, on
   no account, cry up a falsehood and lead our fellow men to believe that
   which is not true! Try the Lord Jesus, I beseech you, and I know what
   the result will be! You shall find that the gate of mercy stands wide
   open for you and that you will be received as well as others. There is
   no difference in this mat-ter--whoever calls upon the name of the Lord
   shall be saved! Whoever will, may take of the Water of Life freely!

   Now, is it not much wiser for a man, instead of being angry with
   another's enjoying the comforts of religion, to seek to enjoy them
   himself? Am I hungry--and angry with another because he has eaten a
   good meal when the same bread stands before me? Then I am foolish and
   cross-grained! Do I see another refreshed at the fountain and do I
   stand at the freely flowing stream and complain? Do I bitterly demand
   why his lips are moistened while my mouth is dried up like an oven?
   What is the use of being angry with the neighbor who has quenched his
   thirst when the same fountain is free to me? O murmuring Friend, why do
   you not, yourself, believe? Stoop and drink as your friend has done and
   you shall be refreshed as he has been!

   If you do well--that is, if you are obedient to the precious Word of
   the Gospel--will you not be accepted? "No," says one, "I am afraid that
   I shall not be." Who told you so? Your fear is without scriptural
   foundation. "But perhaps my name is not written in the Book of Life."
   Who told you so? Who has climbed up to the secret chamber of God to
   read the mystic roll? Who dares to tell you that your name is not
   there? Who knows anything about the secret purposes of God? I venture
   to tell you this--that if you believe in Jesus Christ, be you who you
   may, your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life! "Him that comes
   to Me," He says, "I will in no wise cast out." Any "him" that comes in
   all the world, while time shall last, if he does but come to Christ,
   Christ has said that He cannot and will not cast him out! Therefore,
   come, and you shall find Grace in His sight! Instead of being angry
   with another for believing and rejoicing, taste, for yourself, the joys
   which faith secures. May infinite Grace lead you to do so now!

   God's second word with Cain was, however, "If you do not do well, sin
   lies at the door." That is to say, "If religion does not yield you joy
   as it does your brother, what is the reason? Surely sin blocks the
   entrance, as a stone blocking the doorway. If you cannot gain an
   entrance to mercy, it is because sin, like a huge stone, has been
   rolled against it, and remains there. If the way to God and salvation
   is, indeed, blocked up, it is only blocked up by your own sin! The door
   is not locked by a Divine decree, nor nailed up by any necessity of
   circumstances, nor barred by any peculiarity of your case. No, there is
   neither block, nor bar, nor lock except your sin. Your sin lies at the
   door and makes you a prisoner, where, otherwise, you might be free as
   air! I desire to press this point home upon any unconverted persons who
   are somewhat anxious, but yet cannot get peace. A secret something is
   keeping you from being accepted as Abel was accepted. I am sure it is
   sin in one shape or another. I entreat you to see what that sin is!

   Is it unbelief? In most cases unbelief is the damning sin. You will not
   believe God's Word. You reject the testimony of God concerning His Son
   Jesus and thus you put away from you eternal life. You say, "I cannot
   believe." But that will not do, for you know that God is true and if
   God is true, how dare you say that you cannot believe Him? If, when I
   stated solemnly a fact, you told me, "I cannot believe you," I should
   understand you to mean that I am a liar. And when you say, "I cannot
   believe God," do you not know that the English of such an expression is
   this--you make God a liar by refusing to believe on His Son? This
   unbelief is sin enough--sin enough to destroy you forever! What higher
   offense can there be against any man, much more against God, than to
   accuse Him of a lie? Every person here who does not now believe in
   Jesus Christ is guilty of the high profanity and infinite blasphemy of
   making the Almighty God a liar! This is the huge stone which lies at
   the door. May God help you to roll it away, by saying, "I will believe;
   I must believe. God must be true; the blood of His dear Son must be
   able to wash away sin. I will trust in it now!"

   Possibly, however, another form of the same stone of sin lies at your
   door and keeps you back. Is it impenitence? Are you hardened about your
   sin? Do you refuse to quit it? Is there no sorrow in your heart to
   think that you have broken the Divine Law and have lived forgetful of
   your God? A hard heart is a great stone to lie in a man's way, for he
   who will not acknowledge his sin and forsake it is wedded to his own
   destruction! May God soften your heart and help you, at once, to repent
   of sin!

   Or, is it pride? Are you too big a man to become a Christian? Are you
   too respectable, too wealthy, too polite? Are you too deep a thinker?
   Do you know too much? You could not go and sit down with the humble
   people who, like little children, believe what God tells them. No,
   no--you have too much brain for that, have you? Now be honest and admit
   it. You read the reviews and you like a little dash of skepticism in
   your literature. You could not possibly listen to Jesus when He says,
   "Except you be converted and become as little children, you shall not
   enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." You do not care for such
   old-fashioned doctrine, for you are too much of a philosopher! Well, I
   have heard of a Spanish monarch who perished through etiquette--there
   was too much fire in the grate and it was not according to state for
   His Majesty to pull his chair back from the fire. And so he became
   over-heated and died in consequence. I would not care to lose my soul
   to gratify my loftiness! Would you? One's pride may carry him far if he
   is a great fool, but let him not suffer his pride to carry him into
   Hell, for it certainly will never carry him out, again!

   Alas, there are some who have another sin, a hidden sin. I cannot
   mention it. It is a shame, even, to speak of the things which are done
   by them in secret. I have been frequently puzzled to know why certain
   persons cannot attain peace. Do what we may with them, they appear to
   have a tide of disquiet forever ebbing and flowing and casting up mire
   and dirt. They have seemed to be in a fair way to salvation and yet
   they have never reached it--they have been one day near and the next
   far off! In one or two instances I have not discovered the reason why
   the Gospel never succeeded with them till they were dead. When they
   were gone, the sad truth was revealed which accounted for all their
   uneasiness--but I will not tell you what it was. There was a secret
   which, if it had been known, would have made their character abhorrent
   to those who, in ignorance, respected them!

   Does any man here carry about with him a guilty secret? Does he
   persevere in shameful acts which he labors to conceal? How can a man
   hope for peace while he wars with the laws of morality? What rest can
   there be while solemn vows are broken and the purest of relationships
   are treated with despite? No, while there is any uncleanness about a
   man, or about a woman, there cannot be peace with God--such sins must
   be given up or there cannot be acceptance with the Most High. Would
   you, for a moment, insinuate that the Lord Jesus died to allow you to
   sin and yet escape its penalty?

   We have known persons practice dishonesty in business and this has shut
   them out from acceptance. Not that they actually pilfer, but they have
   ways and means of calling things by wrong names and taking fraudulent
   advantage. Cheating is called, "custom of trade," and so on. I could
   not tell why the Lord did not accept certain people when they appeared
   to be seeking mercy. I understand it now. How can the Lord be gracious
   to one who continues in dishonesty? Will He choose thieves to be His
   friends? If He will take thieves and make them honest--they shall enter
   His kingdom--but if we abide in transgression of any sort when it is
   known to us, we cannot expect to be accepted! My Brothers and Sisters,
   to be very plain with you, an honest heart and an honest hand must be
   found in every man who is to be justified at the Last Great Day.

   Some cannot get peace because they neglect prayer. They do not ask, or
   seek or knock--and so they do not receive, they cannot find and the
   door of Grace is not opened to them. Oh, how can you think that God
   accepts you when you live day after day without prayer?

   Not a few harbor enmity in their hearts towards their brother or
   neighbor. O angry Hearer, God cannot accept your sacrifice until you
   are at peace with your brother! It cannot be. He might as well have
   pressed Cain to His bosom as you, for he that hates his brother abides
   in death! "You know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him."
   Go home and be reconciled. Go home and forgive your fellow servant, for
   if you do not so forgive your little debts, the great Lord will not
   forgive you all your great debt! Before you can hope to have peace with
   God, you must be at peace with those who have offended you.

   Then there are some who keep evil company. They like to come to the
   Tabernacle, or to some other place where the Gospel is preached, and
   they hope that they may find Christ--but then they also like a
   lascivious song. They relish those silly, coarse, loathsome ditties
   which have a touch of "smut" about them. These are disgraceful things
   and yet certain

   people roll them out as choice morsels! While that is the case, can a
   man hope that God will accept him? No! It is of no use pretending
   anything of the kind! You and your sins must part, or God and you
   cannot be friends. God will accept us and receive us as penitent
   sinners, but not so long as we open the back door for the devil and
   enthrone him in our heart of hearts. If you are not accepted, sin lies
   at the door and shuts you out of present rest and peace, even as it
   will ultimately shut you out of Heaven!

   I think this word of Divine expostulation bears another meaning. "If
   you do not do well, sin lies at the door." That is to say, not only as
   a stone to block your way, but as a lion to pounce upon you. It is true
   that sin is hindering you from peace, but it is also true that a
   greater sin is lurking at the door ready to spring upon you. What a
   warning this word ought to have been to Cain! If you are doing evil and
   God is not accepting you-- and that fact is making you angry-- there is
   a worse sin lying like a lion ready to devour you! It was so with Cain.
   Perhaps at that moment he had not seriously thought of killing his
   brother. He was angry, but he was not yet implacable and malicious. But
   God said, "There is a sin lying at your door that will come upon you to
   your destruction." May it not be the same with you, my Hearer? What if
   I were to look steadily in the face of some undecided person here,
   tonight, and say, "Friend, are you not accepted by God and are you
   angry? A sin is lying at your door which will be your ruin. You will go
   on from being a sinner to become a criminal." Is Hazael here? Shall I,
   like the Prophet, look you in the face till my tears begin to flow at
   the sight of you, and say, "I know what you will do. You will be a
   terror to all around you"? You would probably answer me as Hazael
   did--"Is your servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?"

   Many a man would be horrified to be told what yet will be the fact in
   his case. Dreadful to tell, men that have been melted by a sermon have
   afterwards grown hard enough to perpetrate crimes that have brought
   them before the courts of their country! Almost converted, almost
   persuaded, it looked as if a vista opened up before them leading to
   endless glory and happiness--but in one sad hour they turned the other
   way. Like Felix, they waited for a more convenient season and their
   life was, from that day on, down, down, deeper and deeper and
   deeper--till it ended in the lowest Hell. Oh, my dear Hearers, I am
   always fearful about those who are so near salvation and yet are not
   decided! Judas, who can preach the Gospel. Judas, who is an Apostle.
   Judas, who can say, "Lord, is it I?"--He is the man that at the last
   sells his Master! Though an Apostle in appearance, he was in heart a
   traitor and a son of perdition! The raw material for a devil is an
   angel! The raw material for the son of perdition was an Apostle--and
   the raw material for the most horrible of apostates is one who is
   almost a saint!

   I say no more than I mean and than history can prove. There have
   usually been splendid traits of character about men who have been unfit
   to live. The question has been in their minds, "Which shall have the
   mastery?" and, for a while, the result has trembled in the balance! But
   when they have decided for evil, it has been decision with a vengeance.
   God gave Cain the clearest warning. He did as good as say--"Why are you
   angry? And why is your countenance fallen? There is an opportunity for
   you. If you do well, shall not you, even you, O Cain, be accepted? And
   if you do evil, sin lies at the door to spring upon you and drag you
   down." Oh that he had been capable of taking the warning and escaping
   the evil! Be you warned, O man or woman to whom these words shall come,
   lest your last end be worse than the first!

   But there is yet another meaning which I must bring out, here, and that
   is one which is held by many critics, though it is questioned by
   others. I am content to go with a considerable following, especially of
   the old divines, who say that the word here used may be rendered, "If
   you do evil, a sin offering lies at the door." And what a sweet meaning
   this gives us! God graciously declares to angry Cain, "You can bring a
   sin offering, as Abel has done, and all will be well. You can present a
   bleeding sacrifice, typical of the great Atonement--a sin offering lies
   at the door." This should be an encouraging assurance to anyone who is
   anxious and, at the same time, greatly afraid that pardon is not
   possible. My dear Friend, why need you grow despondent because another
   enters Heaven? A sin offering lies at your door, also! You can have
   your sin forgiven even as his has been forgiven--come and try for
   yourself!

   "Where can I find Christ?" asks one. He stands at the door! He waits
   for you! The offering is not far to seek. You have not to climb to
   Heaven to bring Him down. He has descended! You have not to dive into
   the depths to fetch Him up. He has risen from the dead! "The Word is
   near you, even in your mouth," so says Paul. What then? If you would
   have it for your own and know its virtue, receive it into your soul.
   "Alas!" cries one, "I am dying! Where is the elixir which will restore
   me?" In your mouth! Swallow it, by God's Grace! You have not even to
   open the box to get out the pill. It is in your mouth! Receive it into
   your inward parts. Jesus crucified is freely presented to you. All the
   merit of His death is

   here at this moment. Accept it. It is yours. A sin offering lies at the
   door! That is to say, the sufferings of Christ, the Atonement of Christ
   and the righteousness of Christ are available at this moment! You may
   have all that Jesus has pur-chased--have it for nothing, the free gift
   of God! Repenting of sin and believing in Jesus, you have it all!
   Eternal salvation is yours if the Holy Spirit has made you willing to
   have it. "He that believes on Him is not condemned." Only trust Him and
   the death of Christ is death for you and the righteousness of Christ is
   your righteousness! A sin offering lies at the door. God does, as it
   were, say, "Bring it, I will receive it and I will receive you, for its
   sake."

   Do but take Christ by faith and bring Him before God. Say unto God "My
   Father, I have no good works to trust in, but I trust Your Son. I
   desire to be rid of my sin and I trust in You to purify me. I pine to
   become a new creature and I trust in Your Spirit to new-create me.
   Behold the bloody Sacrifice offered upon Calvary. I present it to You.
   For Jesus' sake accept me." He will do it, dear Friend! He will do it!

   I do not know that I can say any more. I wish that I could have said it
   better. I would speak right into your heart. May the Spirit of God so
   speak! Do not be angry because another is saved, but turn your anger on
   yourself because you have not accepted salvation. Remember, if you do
   what other sinners have done, namely, simply come to Christ, you shall
   be accepted as they have been! And if you are not accepted, it is your
   sin that is preventing it. A sin offering is waiting to take away that
   sin. Oh, reject not the priceless gift! Trifle not with your soul and
   with your Savior! Do not incur an eternity of misery! Do not lose an
   eternity of bliss! "Turn you, turn you; why will you die, O house of
   Israel?"

   If I never should occupy this pulpit again, what should I wish to have
   preached? Nothing but the Gospel which I have now preached for so many
   years. I wish I had spoken better, but I do not know that I could have
   said more. If these kind pleadings do not touch angry hearts, neither
   would they be affected though martyrs rose from the dead.
     __________________________________________________________________

Is It True?

   (No. 1930)

   A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1886,

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S DAY EVENING,
   SEPTEMBER 12, 1886.

   "Nebuchadnezzar spoke and said to them, Is it true, O Shadrach,
   Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods, nor worship the
   golden image which I have set up?" Daniel 3:14.

   DEAR Friends who are not yet decided, if you would become followers of
   the Lord Jesus Christ it will be well for you to count the cost. It was
   our Lord's custom to bid men consider what His service might involve.
   His frequent declaration was, "He that takes not his cross, and follows
   after Me, is not worthy of Me." He knew and would have us know that it
   is no child's play to be a soldier of the Cross. If we count upon ease
   in this warfare, we shall be grievously disappointed. We must fight if
   we would reign.

   One reason for this is that the world, like Nebuchadnezzar, expects us
   all to follow its fashions and to obey its rules. The god of this world
   is the devil and he claims implicit obedience. Sin in some form or
   other is the image which Satan sets up and requires us to serve. The
   tyranny of the world is fierce and cruel--and those who will not
   worship its image will find that the burning fiery furnace has not yet
   cooled. If you mean to be a Christian and, therefore, intend to cast
   off the bondage of this present evil world, your resolve must be taken
   to bear all consequences rather than worship the idol of the hour. The
   world's flute, harp, sackbut and psaltery must sound in vain for you! A
   nobler music must charm your ears and make you bid defiance to the
   world's threats. The true Believer's stand must be taken and he must
   determine that he will obey God rather than man. That which commends
   itself to your conscience as right and pure and true, you must follow
   without reserve--but that which is wrong and foul and false--you must
   quit with fixed resolve!

   You cannot be Christ's disciple unless you have come to this point and
   abide by it, for Jesus leads only in the ways of righteousness. He who
   is a loyal subject of King Jesus will not attempt to live in sin and
   live in Grace, too, for he will know that no one can serve two masters.
   The love of the world and the love of God will no more mix than oil and
   water. To attempt a fusion of these two is to bring confusion into your
   heart and life. The prophetic challenge is a wise one-- "If the Lord is
   God, follow Him: but if Baal, then follow him." One or the other you
   may serve, but not both! Every man who knows the Lord Jesus Christ and
   has been washed in His blood--and has been made a partaker of the
   Divine Nature--will understand that he has done with the friendship of
   this present evil world. The world may demand that he should yield to
   its behests, but as a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, he will refuse
   to do so. As Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego said to Nebuchadnezzar, so
   will true Believers say to the world--"We will not serve your gods, nor
   worship the golden image which you have set up."

   Now, if you can refuse to sin, if you can refuse, even, to parley with
   iniquity, it is well with you. If you stand out for truth and
   righteousness, your conscience will approve your position and this is,
   in itself, no small comfort. It will be an ennobling thing for your
   manhood to have proved its strength and it will tend to make it
   stronger. Your course of resolute right will be acceptable with God and
   this, also, is an exceedingly great reward. I had rather please the
   Lord than win the applause of all the angels in Heaven and all the
   princes on earth! In that day, when the blessed and only Potentate
   shall distribute crowns and palms to the faithful, it will be the
   height of bliss to hear Him say, "Well done, you good and faithful
   servant."

   Perhaps some of you may say, "We will not bow before the gods of the
   world, but we will worship God only: we will follow Christ, and none
   beside." This is a brave resolve--you will never regret it if you stand
   to it even to the end.

   We are glad to hear you speak thus, but is it true? "Is it true?" These
   words I shall take by themselves and set them on fire. No question can
   be more necessary or more searching than, "Is it true?" It is very well
   to profess, but, "Is it true?" It is very fine to promise and vow, but,
   "Is it true?" It is a bold thing to talk of defying Nebuchadnezzar and
   his fiery furnace, but, "Is it true?" Skeptics question your
   declaration with a sarcastic sneer. Sinners question it with an open
   unbelief and saints question it with deep anxiety to have you sincere.
   From many sides comes the query, "Is it true?" It must be asked, it
   will be asked, it ought to be asked and, therefore, I ask it, "Is it
   true?"

   I. Follower of Christ, BE READY FOR THE QUESTION, "IS IT TRUE?"

   Do not reckon to live unnoticed, for a fierce light beats about every
   Christian. You will be sure to meet with someone whom you respect or
   fear who will demand of you, "Is it true?" Nebuchadnezzar was a great
   personage to these three holy men--he was their despotic lord, their
   employer, their influential friend. In his hands rested their liberties
   and their lives. He was, moreover, their benefactor, for he had set
   them in high office in his empire. All hope of further promotion lay
   with him and if they would prosper and rise in the world, they must
   earn his smile. Many young Christians are tried with this temptation.
   Many worldly advantages may be gained by currying favor with certain
   ungodly men who are like little Nebuchadnezzars--and this is a great
   peril. They are bid to do wrong by one who is their superior, their
   employer, their patron. Now comes the test! Will they endure the trial
   hour? They say that they can endure it, but is it true? Let my hearers
   stand prepared for such an ordeal, for in all probability it will come.
   Some Nebuchadnezzar will put it to you pretty plainly--"Will you do as
   I wish, or will you obey God?" At such a time I pray that you may
   answer in the right manner without a second thought--and so prove that
   your love to God is true.

   Nebuchadnezzar spoke in peremptory tones, as if he could not believe
   that any mortal upon earth could have the presumption to dispute his
   will! He cannot conceive that one employed under his patronage will
   dare to resist his bidding! He demands indignantly, "Is it true?" He
   will not believe it! He must have been misinformed! Can there exist a
   being in all his wide dominions who can have the impudence to think for
   himself, or the audacity to insinuate that it can be wrong to do what
   Nebuchadnezzar commands? He will not believe it! It is condescension on
   his part even to ask, "Is it true?" You will meet with persons so
   accustomed to be obeyed that they think it hard that you do not hasten
   to carry out their wishes. The infidel father says to his boy, "John,
   is it true that you go to a place of worship against my wishes? How
   dare you set up to be better than your father and mother?"

   Often ungodly men profess that they do not believe in the conversion of
   their fellow workmen. Is it true, John, that you have become religious?
   A pretty fellow! Why, you used to sing a jolly song as well as other
   people and now you whine out a Psalm like other canting hypocrites! Is
   it true? Why, you could empty a glass and follow pretty games like the
   rest of us--and now you profess to be afraid of doing wrong! Is it
   true? Are you really such a fool? You seem almost afraid to put one
   foot before another for fear you should be hauled over the coals. Are
   you really the same fellow who could once drink and swear? "Is it
   true?"

   They insinuate that you are out of your head, that your wits have gone
   wool-gathering and that you are the dupe of fanatics. I do not see the
   sense of such suggestions, but I suppose they do. In one form or other
   they put to you the question, "Is it true? Can you really be of this
   opinion and do you really intend to carry it out?" Beloved Brothers and
   Sisters, I want you to be ready for this assault and ready to answer
   without hesitation--"It is most certainly true."

   You will not be able to go through life without being discovered--a
   lighted candle cannot be hid! There is a feeling among some good people
   that it will be wise to be very reticent and hide their light under a
   bushel. They intend to lie low all during the war and come out when the
   palms are being distributed! They hope to travel to Heaven by the back
   lanes and skulk into Heaven in disguise. Ah me, what a degenerate set!
   How was it Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came up to the front when
   the king's command was given? They could not consistently keep back.
   They were public men, set over provinces and it was necessary that they
   should set an example. They had been summoned with the rest of the
   rulers to attend the great ceremony and their course of action upon
   this public occasion would be a guide to all other Jews in the
   Babylonian dominions!

   It would not have been enough for them to stay at home and send in the
   excuse that they were not well, or were called elsewhere upon urgent
   business. Others might do this and not be blamed, but these leaders
   could not shun the conflict. They must try the question between the
   living God and the golden idol. They must not only abstain from
   idolatry, but they must bear their public protest against it or else
   they would be unfaithful to their Lord. Rest assured, my fellow

   Christians, that at some period or other--in the most quiet
   lives--there will come a moment for open decision! Days will come when
   we must speak out or prove traitors to our Lord and to His Truths.

   Perhaps you have fallen among godly people and so you have gone on
   quietly for a time--but look for storms! If you live with worldlings,
   perhaps they have not yet suspected you because of your exceeding
   closeness of disposition--but your secret will be discovered! You
   cannot long hold fire in the hollow of your hand, or keep a candle
   under the bed. Godliness, like murder, will soon be discovered! You
   will not always be able to travel to Heaven in secret! In every house
   there comes a time when each person of the family has to take sides and
   acknowledge to whom he belongs. The most timid wife, or the most
   unassuming child will be compelled to say, "I, also, am Christ's
   disciple." Be ready at once to answer the question, "Is it true?"

   To be fully prepared to answer the enquiry of opposers, act upon sound
   reasons. Be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you with
   meekness and fear. Be able to show why you are a believer in God, why
   you worship the Lord Jesus Christ, why you trust in His atoning
   Sacrifice and why you make Him the regulator of your life. Show why you
   cannot do what others do--why, being a child of God--your nature is
   changed and you have no wish to do that which you once delighted to do
   in the days of your unregeneracy. Ask the Lord to help you to go to
   work with Bible reasons at your fingertips--for these are the best of
   reasons and bear a high authority about them--so that when the question
   is put to you, "Is it true?" you may be able to say, "Yes, it is true
   and this is why it is true! At such-and-such a time God revealed
   Himself to me, in His Grace, and opened my blind eyes to see things in
   a true light. He renewed my nature when He delivered me from the burden
   of sin. He made me to be a child of God when I found peace through His
   name and, because of all this, I cannot grieve my loving Lord by living
   in sin. I am not my own, I am bought with a price and, therefore, I
   must do the will of Him that redeemed me with His own blood."

   I am sure that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would never have stood
   out against the imperious monarch as they did if they had not known
   their bearings and well understood why it was that Jehovah, alone, is
   to be worshipped as God. When the mind is established, the heart is
   more likely to be firm. Know your duty and the arguments for it and you
   are the more likely to be steadfast in the hour of temptation. These
   three men were instructed men, well trained in the Law of the Lord and,
   therefore, they stood fast where the more ignorant and uninstructed
   yielded at once.

   Next, take care that you always proceed with deep sincerity.
   Superficial profession soon ends in thorough apostasy. Only heart-work
   will stand the fire. Never let your speech outrun your heart. Do not
   profess to be more than you really are. Remember, all your professions
   will have to be tested and the question will be made a burning one for
   you, "Is it true?" Mind that it is true, all true, thoroughly true!
   Alas, my Friends, how much there is of praying, singing, teaching and
   preaching which is not real work! How much there is of Christian
   thought--yes, and what we call, "experience"-- which is not true to the
   person who talks of having thought and experienced it! How much of
   external religion is fiction, fluff, form, foam! What is needed is
   solid reality. We need a religion which will bear us up under the
   heaviest burdens and make us patient under the sharpest pains. We need
   a religion which we can die with. It is a most blessed thing to be able
   to face death every day like the Apostle who said, "I die daily"--by
   this daily education we shall learn how to die gloriously at the last.
   Put yourself through your paces and do not believe that your religion
   is worth a penny unless it will bear death, judgment and the eternal
   world.

   God grant us to be true in our first repentance and very thorough in it
   and, as we begin, so may we go on, not borrowing our religion and using
   it at second-hand, but with personal sincerity making every truth our
   own. We need that the Revelation of God should be a revelation to
   us--that repentance, faith, hope, love, holiness should be our own
   private possessions, our own inheritance! Then when the question comes,
   "Is it true?" we shall promptly answer before the living God, "It is
   true. O You heart-searching Lord, You know that I love You!"

   This being done, accustom yourself to act with solemn determination
   before God on every matter which concerns morals and religion. Many
   very decent people are not self-contained, but are dependent upon the
   assistance of others. They are like the houses which our London
   builders run up so quickly in long rows--if they did not help to keep
   each other up they would all tumble down at once--for no one of them
   could stand alone! How much there is of joint-stock company religion,
   wherein hypocrites and formalists keep each other in countenance! Where
   things are not quite so bad as this, yet there is too little personal
   establishment in the faith. So many people have a "lean-to" religion.
   If their minister, or some other leading person were taken away, their
   back wall would be gone and they would fall to the ground.

   In some cases the wife and mother, or the husband and father, or the
   friend and teacher constitute the main support of the individual's
   religion--he leans upon others and if these fail him that is the end of
   his hope. Friends, this sort of religion will not do! You cannot, all
   your life, have these good people to be your supporters and if you
   could have them in life they must be separated from you by death. It is
   a safe thing for every Christian to be in the habit of judging for
   himself as to what is right and then to adhere to it whether others do
   so or not. We have need, nowadays, to set our face as a flint against
   sin and error. We must purpose in our own heart what we will do and
   then stand to our purpose. Happy is he who dares to be in the right
   with two or three. Happier still is he who will stand in the right even
   if the choice two or three should quit it! He who can stand alone is a
   man, indeed! Every man of God should be such. Athanasius contra mundum
   is a grand figure. Against the whole world Athanasius proclaimed the
   Godhead of Christ and he won the day. If you will not go to the world,
   the world will have, one day, to come to you.

   Once more, dear Friends, when your determination is formed, act in the
   light of eternity. Do not judge the situation by the king's threat and
   by the heat of the burning fiery furnace, but by the everlasting God
   and the eternal life which awaits you! Let not flute, harp, and sackbut
   fascinate you, but listen to the music of the glorified! Men frown at
   you, but you can see God smiling on you and so you are not moved. It
   may be that you will be unable to grow rich in your trade if you are
   honest, but in the light of eternity, you will gladly forego the
   luxuries of wealth to keep a clear conscience. It may be that you will
   be discharged from your employment unless you can wink at wrong and be
   the instrument of injustice. Be content to lose place rather than to
   lose peace. These three holy men took the burning fiery furnace into
   their account and yet they cast the balance in favor of fidelity to
   God! Brothers and Sisters, have an eye for the endless future. Never
   forget Heaven and Hell and that sublime gathering around the Great
   White Throne when you and I shall be of the company.

   Now I am sure that these good men believed in immortality or they would
   never have dared the violence of the flames. The martyrs, when they
   went to the stake, were great fools unless they believed that they
   should live forever and that in the great hereafter they would find a
   Divine recompense for the torments they were about to suffer! If in
   this life, only, they had hope, they were certainly poor economists.
   Believing in the Glory of that word, "Well done, good and faithful
   servants," and weighing eternity as against time--and life at the right
   hand of God as against a cruel death-- the martyrs felt that the
   eternal was by far the weightier matter and so they went to prison and
   to death without a question! These three brave men dared the rage of an
   infuriated tyrant because they saw Him who is invisible and had respect
   unto the recompense of the reward. You also must come to live a great
   deal in the future or else you will miss the chief fountain of holy
   strength. If you are living for this life, you will soon sell your
   souls for so many pieces of silver. But if you project yourselves into
   eternity and live the life eternal, no bribe will lure you from the
   ways of righteousness. If your ears can hear, by anticipation, the
   thunder of that sentence, "Depart, you cursed," you will not dare to
   incur it! If that sweeter sound, "Come, you blessed," charms your ears,
   you will be strong in your resolve to follow the Lamb wherever He goes.
   Yes, with eternity before you and around you--your determination will
   be fixed--and you will, with dauntless spirit, meet the challenge, "Is
   it true?"

   God make us champions of His holy cause! Heroism can only be worked in
   us by the Holy Spirit. Humbly yielding your whole nature to the power
   of the Divine Sanctifier, you will be true to your Lord even to the
   end! At the foot of the Cross, with your eyes upon those blessed wounds
   and your whole soul trusting in Him that lives and was dead, you will
   not be ashamed of your Lord, nor afraid of the consequences of obeying
   Him!

   This much upon this first head of our discourse--be ready to answer the
   question, "Is it true?"

   II. But now, secondly, IF YOU CANNOT SAY THAT IT IS TRUE, WHAT THEN?
   If, standing before the heart-

   searching God at this time, you cannot say, "It is true," how should
   you act? If you cannot say that you take Christ's Cross and are willing
   to follow Him at all hazards, then listen to me and learn the truth!

   Do not make a profession at all. Do not talk about Baptism or the
   Lord's Supper, nor of joining a Church, nor of being a Christian! For
   if you do, you will lie against your own soul. If it is not true that
   you renounce the world's idols, do not profess that it is so. It is
   unnecessary that a man should profess to be what he is not--it is a sin
   of excess, a superfluity of evil! If you cannot be true to Christ; if
   your coward heart is recreant to your Lord--do not profess to be His
   disciple, I beseech you. He that is married to the world, or
   flint-hearted, had better return to his house, for he is of no service
   in this war.

   If you have made a profession and yet it is not true, be honest enough
   to quit--for it can never be right to keep up a fraud! A false
   profession is a crime and to persevere in it is a presumptuous sin.
   Whatever you are, or are not, be transparent, sincere, truthful. If
   there is any man here who, says in his heart, "No, I cannot suffer for
   the Truth of God's sake. I will follow Christ as far as it is good
   walking and costs nothing, but I will not go through the mire for Him,"
   well, then, turn back at once for you are no true pilgrim! If you are
   determined not to press onward even though the way should lie through
   the Slough of Despond, you had better make the best of your way home to
   the City of Destruction, for you are not a man that God has called into
   this Kingdom. "Strange advice," you say. Yes, but prudent advice, too!
   Listen to me! If any of you are ashamed of Christ, afraid of man,
   unwilling to be abused for Christ's sake, then, like the faint-hearted
   men with Gideon, it will be well for you to go home and no longer
   encumber the little band of the true-hearted.

   Will you, then, go back to your old ways? I am sure you will if you
   cannot answer the question of my text. But remember, that in so doing
   you will have to belie your consciences. Many of you who are not firm
   in your resolves yet know the right. You will never be able to get that
   light out of your eyes which was shone into them from God's Word. You
   can never again sin so cheaply as others--it will be willfulness and
   obstinacy in your case. I am sure that many of you will have desperate
   work to get to Hell. You will have to ride steeple-chase over hedge and
   ditch to reach Perdition, for the Lord has put that within you which
   will never let you rest in sin, or be easy in ungodliness. The Lord has
   taught you too much to let you be comfortable slaves of ignorance and
   vice! You who have tasted of the powers of the world to come are spoilt
   for this world--and if you are such cowards that you will not press
   forward for the next--you are, of all men, most miserable! Your
   consciences will dog you, haunt you and torment you. Dare you run the
   risk of being pursued by such a foe, compared with which the furies of
   classic fable were gentle beings?

   Remember, also, that by yielding to the fear of man you are demeaning
   yourself. There shall come a day when the man that was ashamed of
   Christ will, himself, be ashamed. He will wonder where he can hide his
   guilty head. Look at him! There he is! The traitor who denied his Lord!
   The Christ was spat upon and nailed to the Cross and this man was
   afraid to acknowledge Him! To win the smile of a silly maid; to escape
   the jest of a coarse fellow; to win a few pieces of silver; to stand
   respectable among his companions, he turned his back upon his Redeemer
   and sold his Lord! And now what can be said for him? Who can excuse
   him? The angels shun him as a man who was ashamed of the Lord of Glory!
   He is clothed with shame and everlasting contempt. Even the lost in
   Hell get away from him, for many of them were more honest than he! Is
   there such a man or woman as this before me? I summon him in the name
   of the living God to answer for his cowardice! Let Him come forth and
   admit his crime and humbly seek forgiveness at the hands of the
   gracious Savior.

   If your avowal of faith in Jesus and opposition to sin is not true, you
   had better withdraw it and be silent, for by a groundless presence you
   will dishonor the cause of God and cause the enemy to take up a
   reproach against His people. If Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had
   stood before Nebuchadnezzar and had made a compromise, it would have
   dishonored the name of the Lord. Suppose they had said, "O king, we
   believe in Jehovah, but we hardly know what to do in our peculiar
   circumstances. We desire to please you and we also dread the thought of
   the burning fiery furnace and, therefore, we must yield, though it
   greatly grieves us." Why, they would have cast shame upon the name of
   Israel! O Brothers and Sisters, do not talk about principle and then
   pocket your principles because they are unfashionable, or will cost you
   loss and disrepute! If you do this, you will be the enemies of the King
   of kings! God commanded His people not to bow before engraved images,
   but the king of Babylon commanded them to do so at once or die. Which
   would they obey? To whom would they render the most honor?

   That was the point. It would have been idle to say that they would only
   do it once, that it would be only a mere form and so on, for had they
   bowed the knee to the engraved image, they would have set
   Nebuchadnezzar before Jehovah. They might have pleaded that to refuse
   the great king was virtually to commit suicide, but they kept from such
   crooked reasonings. They might have argued that it was wise to save
   their lives because they could be so very useful to the Israelites and
   to the cause of true religion. How often have I heard this plea for
   remaining in an erring church and professing to believe what is not
   believed! Men do evil that good may come and after bowing in the house
   of Rimmon, wash their hands and pray, "The Lord pardon Your servants in
   this thing."

   I am glad that the three holy children were not "careful to answer," or
   they might have fallen upon some crooked policy or lame excuse for
   compromise. What have we to do with consequences? It is ours to do
   right and leave results with

   the Lord! To do wrong cannot, under any circumstances, be right! For
   the Lord's servants to be false to their conviction is always an evil
   thing, a root that bears wormwood. Yes, these men would have cast a
   slur upon the living God, upon their nation and upon themselves had
   they flinched in the moment of trial. Thousands of men and women are
   doing this continually. Shame upon them! They plead their own
   necessities, their large families, their position, their hopes of
   usefulness and the examples of others--but none of these things can
   excuse cowardice towards God. If by doing a little wrong, we could
   effect a great deal of good, we would not, thereby, be excused! This is
   a common way of drugging conscience and I beseech you be upon your
   guard against it, for it comes to this--that you are a better judge of
   what you ought to do than God is and your judgment is superior to the
   Law of God! Is not this high presumption? Does it not, also, suggest
   itself to you that some would serve God if it did not pay better to
   serve the devil? And is not this Judas Iscariot all over again, the son
   of perdition reproduced?

   I want you to remember, also, that if you renounce Christ, if you quit
   Him in obedience to the world's commands, you are renouncing eternal
   life and everlasting bliss. You may think little of that, tonight,
   because of your present madness, but you will think differently before
   long. Soon you may lie on a sick bed gazing into eternity and then your
   estimate of most things will undergo a great change. I know what that
   solemn outlook means, for I have been called several times to lie in
   spirit upon the brink of eternity--and I can assure you it is no
   child's play. The solemn article, the judgment, the declaration of
   destiny--these are not little. It requires all the faith a man can
   summon to enable him to look forward, calmly and intelligently, to that
   great day when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed.

   Come, my Hearers, look to the eternity which awaits you! I charge you
   to remember that if you take the mess of pottage and barter away your
   birthright, you will bemoan yourselves at the last. In your dying
   hours, you may find no place for repentance though you seek it
   carefully with tears. In another world there will be no hope of
   reformation or of escape from the result of sin. In eternity you will
   look up from under the fierce wrath of God and see no way of escape,
   for you will then be too wedded to evil to be able to escape from it!
   In that day which shall burn as an oven, what will you say to yourself
   for having sold your Lord? Oh, do not, for the sake of a man's frown or
   a woman's smile, forego eternal life! If God goes, all is gone! To lose
   your Savior is to be lost yourself! Oh, my Beloved, take the roughest
   road rather than part company with your Best Friend!

   The question is a very solemn one--"Is it true?" And if it is not true,
   I still stick to my advice--do not say that it is so, do not add to all
   your other sins, a lying profession--but act in all honesty as you
   stand before God.

   III. But now, thirdly, let us consider what follows IF IT IS TRUE. I
   hope that many here can lay their hands upon their hearts and quietly
   say, "Yes, it is true; we are determined not to bow before sin, come
   what may." Well, then, if it is true, I have this much to say to you,
   dear Brothers and Sisters--state this when it is demanded of you.
   Declare your resolve. This will strengthen it in yourself and be the
   means of supporting it in others. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego spoke
   out in the presence of the furious king. Perhaps they might have taken
   means to hide themselves from the ordeal, but they judged it to be
   their duty to come forward and take the consequences--and there they
   were.

   This word is meant for certain Christian people who come in and out of
   this house and join with us in public worship, but have never openly
   acknowledged themselves to be disciples of the Lord Jesus. Whenever we
   gather to the remembrance of our dying Lord, they either take their
   seats among the onlookers, or else they go home. This raises many
   anxious thoughts in our minds. We are especially exercised with this
   question--these people have a faith which they refuse to
   acknowledge--will such a faith save them? Scripture evidently lays
   great stress upon obedience to the Lord and taking up His Cross and
   following Him. Will Jesus save those who will not come out and bear His
   reproach? He claims of all His followers that they follow Him in the
   daylight. It is written, "If you shall confess with your mouth, the
   Lord Jesus, and shall believe in your heart that God has raised Him
   from the dead, you shall be saved. For with the heart man believes unto
   righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."

   He bade us preach this as His Gospel--"He that believes, and is
   baptized, shall be saved." These are not words of mine, but of the Lord
   Jesus, Himself! Take heed unto yourselves that you do not slight them!
   I dare not leave out part of His Gospel command when I am preaching it.
   If you believe in the Lord Jesus, stand on His side! Why are you slow
   to do so? I compared one, the other day, to a rat behind the wainscot
   which only comes out at night when the candles are put out and there
   are crumbs to be picked up. Too many Christians attempt to live in that
   style. Dare I call them Christians?

   Do not be such miserable creatures, but quit yourselves like men!
   Tremble lest you perish among "the fearful and unbelieving." Join with
   me, I pray you, in singing--

   "I'm not ashamed to acknowledge my Lord,

   Or to defend His cause!

   Maintain the honor of His Word,

   The Glory of His Cross."

   There are many dear children in this place, both boys and girls, who
   have not been ashamed in their early days to come forward and confess
   the Lord Jesus Christ! God bless the dear children! I rejoice in them.
   I am sure that the Church will never have to be ashamed of having
   admitted them. They, at least, show no cowardice--they take a solemn
   delight in being numbered with the people of God--and count it an honor
   to be associated with Christ and His Church. Shame on you older ones
   who still hold back! What ails you, that babes and sucklings are braver
   than you? By the love you bear to Christ, I charge you--come forth and
   confess His name among this evil and perverse generation!

   Is it true? Then joyfully accept the trial which comes of it. Shrink
   not from the flames. Settle it in your minds that, by Divine Grace, no
   loss, nor cross, nor shame, nor suffering shall make you play the
   coward. Say, like the holy children, "We are not careful to answer you
   in this matter." They did not cringe before the king and cry, "We
   beseech you, do not throw us into the fiery furnace! Let us have a
   consultation with you, O king, that we may arrange terms. There may be
   some method by which we can please you and yet keep our religion." No!
   They said, "We are not careful to answer you in this matter. If it is
   so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery
   furnace and He will deliver us out of your hands, O king. But if not,
   be it known unto you, O king, that we will not serve your gods, nor
   worship the golden image which you have set up."

   Dear Friends, let us be ready to suffer for Christ's sake. Some will
   say, "Do not be imprudent." It is always prudent to do your duty! We
   have not enough, nowadays, of the virtue nicknamed imprudence. I would
   like to see a display of old-fashioned imprudence in these cold,
   calculating, selfish days! Oh for the days of zeal, the days when men
   counted not their lives dear to them that they might win Christ! Men
   sit down and reckon up what it will cost them to do right and weigh
   their conduct as a matter of profit and loss--and then they call such
   wicked calculations prudence! It is sheer selfishness! Do right if it
   costs you your life! Where would England have been if the men who won
   our liberties in former ages had bartered with the world for gain? If
   they had saved their skins, they would have lost their souls and ruined
   the cause of God in England! He loves not Christ who does not love Him
   more than all things! Oh for men of principle who know no loss but loss
   of faith and desire no gain save the Glory of God! Be this your cry--

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

   You may lose a great deal for Christ, but you will never lose anything
   by Christ. You may lose for time, but you will gain for eternity! The
   loss is transient, but the gain is everlasting! You will be a gainer by
   Christ, even if you have to go to Heaven by the way of persecution,
   poverty and slander. Never mind the way--the end will make full amends.
   The treasures of Egypt are mere dross compared with the riches of
   endless bliss!

   If it is true that you are willing, thus, to follow Christ, reckon upon
   deliverance. Nebuchadnezzar may put you into the fire, but he cannot
   keep you there, nor can he make the fire burn you. The enemy casts you
   in bound, but the fire will loosen your bonds and you will walk at
   liberty amid the glowing coals! You shall gain by your losses! You
   shall rise by your casting down! Many prosperous men owe their present
   position to the fact that they were faithful when they were in humble
   employments. They were honest and, for the moment, they displeased
   their employers, but in the end earned their esteem. When Adam Clarke
   was put out as an apprentice and his master showed him how to stretch
   the cloth when it was a little short, Adam could not find in his heart
   to do it. Such a fool of a boy must be sent home to his mother and his
   godly mother was glad that her boy was such a fool that he could not
   stoop to a dishonest trick! You know what he became. [1760-1832 -
   Influential British Methodist famous for his preaching and Bible
   commentary.] He might have missed his way in life if he had not been
   true to his principles in his youth. Your first loss may be a lifelong
   gain!

   Dear young fellow, you may be turned out of your employment, but the
   Lord will turn the curse into a blessing. If all should go softly with
   you, you might decline in character and by doing a little wrong, learn
   to do yet more and more--and so lose your integrity and with it--and
   all hope of ever lifting your nose from the grindstone! Do right for
   Christ's sake, without considering any consequences, and the
   consequences will be right enough. If you take care of God's

   cause, God will take care of you! Rest assured that uprightness will be
   your preservation and not your destruction. It will be your highest
   wisdom to let all things go that you may hold fast your integrity and
   honor the name of the Lord!

   Lastly--and this is a consideration not to be forgotten. If you will
   stand up for Jesus and the right, and the true, and the pure, and the
   temperate, and the good--not only will you be delivered, but you will
   do great good! This Nebuchadnezzar was a poor piece of goods, yet he
   was compelled to acknowledge the power of these three decided and holy
   men. They were thrown into the furnace and they came out of it--and
   what did Nebuchadnezzar say? Before this, it was, "The image that I
   have set up," and now he declares that no man shall speak a word
   against the God of Israel on pain of being cut in pieces! There is no
   having influence over the great men, or the little men of this age
   except by being firm in your principles and decided in what you do! If
   you yield an inch you are beaten! But if you will not yield--no, not
   the splitting of a hair--they will respect you!

   The man who can hide his principles, conceal his beliefs and do a
   little wrong, is a nobody! He is a chip in the porridge--he will flavor
   nothing. But he who does what he believes to be right and cannot be
   driven from it--that is the man! You cannot shake the world if you let
   the world shake you, but when the world finds that you have grit in
   you, they will let you alone. Nebuchadnezzar was obliged to feel the
   influence of these men--and, even so, the most wicked and the most
   proud feel the force of the true-hearted, the brave and the good! For
   this let us pray God to give us new hearts and right spirits. For this
   let us cling to the blessed Cross of Christ and yield ourselves up to
   the power of the blood and water which flowed from His wounded side! So
   shall our lives be powerful! And if not illustrious in the eyes of men,
   they shall be acceptable in the eyes of God!
     __________________________________________________________________

One More Cast of the Great Net

   (No. 1931)

   A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1886,

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING,
   NOVEMBER 14, 1886.

   "And it shall come to pass that whoever shall call on the name of the
   Lord shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be
   deliverance, as the Lord has said, and in the remnant whom the Lord
   shall call." Joel 2:32.

   I THOUGHT within myself, "What shall be the topic for the last sermon
   before I depart to my quiet resting place?" Perhaps my sermons for the
   last day of this long stretch of work may be my last, altogether, for
   life is very frail. When I hear of first one and then another in strong
   health being suddenly taken away, I am made to know the uncertainty of
   life in my own case. It were wiser to trust a spider's web than the
   life of man! Brothers and Sisters, we live on the brink of eternity and
   had need behave ourselves as men who will soon face its realities. We
   may have to do so far sooner than we think. So I said within myself,
   "Shall I feed the flock of God in the rich pastures of choice promise?"
   Truly it would have been well to have done so, but then I thought of
   the stray sheep--must I not go after them? The 99 are not in the
   wilderness and, therefore, I shall not be leaving them in any danger.
   They are well folded and the Chief Shepherd will not forget them. God
   has given them to have life in themselves and the green pastures are
   with them in plenty--they can afford to be left alone better than the
   perishing ones. But as for the wandering ones, can I leave them among
   the wilds and wolves? I have tried to bring them to the great Bishop
   and Shepherd of souls, but they have not yet returned--how can I forget
   them? How can I endure to think of their being lost forever?

   So I thought I would go out once more after the lost ones hoping that
   the Lord would help me to find them, even now, and bring them to
   Himself! I earnestly ask your prayers that a very simple Gospel address
   may be blessed by God to the immediate conversion of those among us who
   have long halted and are hesitating even unto this day. I could not
   have chosen for such a purpose a more suitable text--it is one of the
   broadest declarations of Gospel doctrine that can be found in Holy
   Scripture.

   I shall handle it in the plainest manner. In a book of practical
   surgery, you do not look for figures of speech--all is plain as a
   pikestaff--such will my sermon be. I hand out the Bread of Heaven and
   you do not expect poetry from a bakery!

   When the Apostle Peter was preaching what I may call the inauguration
   sermon of the evangelical era, he could do no better than go to Joel
   for his text. See the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. He
   explained the wonders of the Pentecost by a reference to this prophetic
   passage. When Paul, in his famous Epistle to the Romans, would set out
   the Gospel in all its plainness, he could not do better than quote in
   his 10th chapter, at the 13th verse, this same text--"For whoever shall
   call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." If Apostles found this
   passage so suitable for the expression and confirmation of their Gospel
   message, what can I do but follow their wise example? How greatly do I
   hope that a blessing will rest upon all here present while I preach
   upon this precious portion of Scripture--even as a blessing rested upon
   the motley crowd in Jerusalem when Peter spoke to them! The same Spirit
   is with us and His sacred power is not in the least diminished. Why
   should He not convert 3,000 now, as He did on that occasion? If there
   is a failure, it will not arise from Him, but from ourselves.

   Look at the connection of our text in Joel and you will find that it is
   preceded by terrible warnings--"I will show wonders in the heavens and
   in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be
   turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the
   terrible day of the coming of the Lord." Nor is this all! This broad
   Gospel statement is followed by words of equal dread. "Let the heathen
   be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I
   sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put you in the sickle, for
   the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the
   fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. The sun and the moon
   shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining." It was
   true of the Prophets as of the Apostles that, knowing the terrors of
   the Lord, they persuaded men. They were not ashamed to use fear as a
   powerful motive with mankind. By the Prophet Joel, the diamond of our
   text is placed in a black setting and its brilliance is thereby
   enhanced. As a lamp is all the more valued when the night is dark, so
   is the Gospel all the more precious when men see their misery without
   it! To remove from men's minds the salutary fear of punishment for sin
   is to draw up the floodgates of iniquity. He who does this is a traitor
   to society. If men are not warned of the anger of God against iniquity,
   they will take license to riot in evil.

   Certain modern teachers pretend that they are so delicate that if they
   believed in the Scriptural Doctrine of Eternal Punishment, they could
   never smile again. Poor sufferers! One is therefore led to suppose that
   they are persons of superior piety who are so deeply in love with the
   souls of men that they weep over them day and night and labor to bring
   them to repentance. We should expect to see, in them, a perpetual agony
   for the good of their fellows since they judge themselves to be so
   qualified to instruct others in the art of compassion! But, my Brothers
   and Sisters, we have not been able to discover in these sensitive
   persons any very hallowed sympathy with the ungodly--no, we have heard
   of their having communion with the worldly in their sports rather than
   in their sorrow for sin!

   I have not seen in these men who forswear the use of the terrors of the
   Lord any remarkable powers of attracting men to Jesus by love. I have
   not noted any special zeal in them for the conversion of men, either by
   tender arguments, or by any other means. I question if they believe in
   conversion at all! On the other hand, the seraphic Evangelists who have
   journeyed around the earth to preach the Gospel and have worn
   themselves down with evangelical earnestness, are, in all cases, men
   who feel the pressure of the wrath to come. These, though sneered at by
   the superfine delicates, have shown a tender love to which their judges
   are strangers!

   He who speaks honestly concerning the judgment to come is the man of
   the most tender heart. He who pleads with sinners, even to tears,
   usually does so because he believes that they will be everlastingly
   ruined unless they repent. I do not believe that this modern zeal to
   conceal the Justice of God and hide the punishment of sin is
   accompanied by an overflowing compassion for souls. I fear that, on the
   contrary, it is little other than an incidental form of a flippant
   unbelief which treats all doctrines of God's Word as antiquated notions
   deserving to be jested at by men of advanced views. My brethren, the
   love of Jesus did not prevent His warning men of future woe! He cried
   aloud, amid a flood of tears, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would
   I have gathered your children together!" And He did not withhold the
   dreadful fact-- "Your house is left unto you desolate." The knowledge
   of the coming destruction of the city awakened His sympathy and He
   showed His pity, not by concealing the dreadful future, but by warning
   men of it!

   I venture to say that, so far as I have observed, no man ever preaches
   the Gospel at all unless he has a deep and solemn conviction that sin
   will be punished in a future state in a manner most just and terrible.
   Preachers gradually get further and further away from the Gospel and
   its atoning Sacrifice, in proportion as they delude themselves with the
   idea that, after all, sin is a small matter and its punishment a
   questionable severity. Those, also, who look for a future opportunity
   for the impenitent may well consider it to be of small consequence
   whether men believe in Jesus, or remain in unbelief. Such a taking of
   things easy cannot suggest itself to me, for I believe in everlasting
   punishment! O my Hearers, if you do not flee to Jesus, you will be
   eternally lost and this urges me to entreat you to be saved! That blood
   and fire, that darkening sun and crimsoned moon of which Joel speaks,
   awaken me to exhort you to seek deliverance! That Great White Throne
   and the dread sentence of Him that shall sit upon it, when He shall
   say, "Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for
   the devil and his angels," all move me to persuade you to flee to
   Jesus! Therefore it is my delight to come to you with a free, broad,
   blessed Gospel promise, in the earnest hope that those of you who are
   now in danger may at once escape for your lives and flee from the wrath
   to come!

   With that preface I come to the handling of my text, moved by a burning
   desire that God may bless it. First notice that it contains a glorious
   proclamation--"It shall come to pass that whoever shall call on the
   name of the Lord shall be delivered." But this is accompanied with an
   instructive declaration, to which we shall give a measure of attention
   as time permits--"In mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance,
   as the Lord has said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call."

   I. Listen, first, to THE GLORIOUS PROCLAMATION. As we have no time to
   spare, we will proceed at once to our theme.

   The blessing proclaimed in our text is precious--"Whoever shall call on
   the name of the Lord shall be delivered," or "shall be saved."
   Salvation is a very comprehensive blessing. It is, in fact, a
   constellation of favors--a mass of mercies condensed into a word. It is
   a gift which reaches from the door of Hell to the gate of Heaven. The
   salvation which we have to preach to you at this time is salvation from
   sin in all senses of that term. It is a diamond with many facets. You
   who dread the eternal consequences of iniquity will be glad to learn
   that there is salvation from the punishment of sin-- complete and
   eternal salvation! This is no small matter to a soul crushed beneath a
   consciousness of guilt and the certainty that the necessary
   consequences of sin must be overwhelming. The results of sin are not to
   be thought of without trembling. Verily, dismay may well take hold of
   the stoutest heart while reflecting upon the judgment to come. We
   preach salvation from the unutterable woe which follows on the heels of
   sin. Whatever may be the terrors of that tremendous day, for which all
   other days were made, we proclaim, in God's name, salvation from them
   all!

   Whatever may be the gloom of that bottomless abyss into which the
   guilty shall sink forever, we are enabled to proclaim complete
   deliverance from that endless fall--salvation for every soul that
   believes in Jesus Christ the Lord! No form of accusation shall be drawn
   up against the Believer. No sentence of condemnation shall ever be
   uttered against Him. Salvation sends the prisoner out of court
   completely cleared. All the penal consequences of all sin shall be
   turned aside from all who, by Divine Grace, are led to call upon the
   name of the Lord!

   Salvation also delivers from the guilt of sin. The Lord is able to
   justify the ungodly so that he shall be numbered with the righteous.
   Through the blood of Jesus, He makes the filthy whiter than the snow!

   He will not merely put away the sin itself, but all the defilement that
   has come of it to your moral manhood. O my Hearer, all the injury which
   you have already inflicted upon yourself by sin, the Lord can repair!
   Sin, even if it led to no penal consequences, is a disease which
   destroys the beauty of your manhood and makes us loathsome in the eyes
   of God-- yes, and shocking to the view of our own conscience when we
   see ourselves by the light of God's Spirit in the glass of His Word. O
   you on whose foreheads the leprosy is white, we preach perfect healing
   for you, a salvation which shall renovate your nature and make your
   flesh even as the flesh of a little child--as Naaman's was when he came
   up from the washing, having been obedient to the prophetic command.
   Brothers and Sisters, the salvation of the Lord removes every injurious
   result of sin upon heart and mind. Is not this a joy?

   We also preach salvation from the power of sin. Sin finds a nest in the
   carnal nature, but it hides there as a thief. It shall not have
   dominion over you, for you are not under Law, but under Grace! O you
   slaves, whose fetters clank in your ears--at this moment you may be
   free! Whether the bonds are those of drunkenness, or licentiousness, or
   worldliness, or despair, the Lord looses the prisoners! Jesus has come
   to break the manacles from your wrists, the fetters from your feet. If
   the Son shall make you free, you shall be free, indeed. He has come to
   set you free for holiness, for purity, for peace, for love. He will
   bless you with newness of life--He will cause Grace to reign in you
   unto eternal life. Salvation from the power of evil is a gift worthy of
   God! This is the salvation that we preach--we proclaim immediate
   deliverance from the curse of sin, present rescue from the power of sin
   and ultimate freedom from the very being of sin! To every man born of
   woman is this salvation proclaimed, provided they will obey the Gospel
   command which says--look unto Christ and live. "Whoever shall call on
   the name of the Lord shall be saved." Happy herald who has such a
   proclamation to make! The blessing is incalculably precious.

   Further, notice, in the next place, that the time of this proclamation
   is present, for Peter tells us that the time spoken of by the Prophet
   Joel began at Pentecost. When the rushing, mighty wind was heard, and
   the flaming tongues sat upon the disciples' heads, then was the Gospel
   dispensation opened in all its freeness. The Holy Spirit, who then came
   down to earth, has never returned! He is still in the midst of the
   Church, not working physical wonders, but performing moral and
   spiritual miracles in our midst, even to this day! Today, through His
   power, full remission is preached to every repenting sinner. Today is
   complete salvation promised to everyone that believes in Jesus. This
   day the promise stands true, "Whoever shall call on the name of the
   Lord shall be saved."

   I put aside as altogether unscriptural the notion that the day of Grace
   is past for any man who will call upon the name of the Lord. If you
   will call, you shall be heard, be the day what it may! Yes, though it
   goes to the 11th hour. The day of Grace is never past to any soul that
   lives, as long as it is willing to believe in Jesus! I am not told to
   go and say

   there is Grace for men up to a certain point and beyond that point
   there is none! No, there is no limit set to the willingness or ability
   of Christ to save those who call upon His name! Who dares to limit the
   Holy One of Israel in the deeds of His Grace? As long as faith is
   possible, salvation is possible. I have my Master's order to preach the
   Gospel to every creature. He has said to His servants, "As many as you
   shall find, bid to the marriage." We are bound to say to everyone, "He
   that believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believes not
   shall be damned." Whether you are a child of10, or a man of 50, I have
   the same message for you! If you have lived to be a hundred, the Gospel
   promise still holds good, despite the lapse of years. The times of your
   ignorance God has winked at, but He now commands all men everywhere to
   repent! He graciously declares of all who seek Him, "Him that comes to
   Me, I will in no wise cast out." Day of Grace past, indeed! It is a
   whisper of Satan! Have nothing to do with that lie, for the Savior
   still bids you come to Him and live! Even at the ebb of life He cries,
   "Come now, and let us reason together."--

   "Life is the time to seek His face--

   Through life He freely gives His Grace,

   And while that lamp holds out to burn,

   The vilest sinner may return."

   Whoever returns to the Father's house shall find a glad reception. If
   this very day, this 14th of November, you call upon the Lord, you shall
   be saved! God speaks by my mouth to you at this moment and declares
   that today, if you will hear His voice, your soul shall live! The
   proverb says, "there is no time like time present," and it speaks the
   truth. The present moment is the best moment in your possession! What
   other moment have you? Whoever, at this passing hour, calls upon the
   name of the Lord shall be saved. This is a Gospel well worth the
   preaching--blessed are our ears that we hear the joyful sound!

   Next, notice that as the gift is precious and the time is present, so
   the range of this proclamation is promising. It is full of good cheer
   to all who hear me this day. "Whoever shall call on the name of the
   Lord shall be saved." Whoever! I am afraid lest anything I should say
   to express the width of this word should only narrow it--just as the
   man who tries to explain eternity always makes it seem much shorter
   than we thought it to be and so defeats his own purpose. "Whoever."
   There is, in this word, no fence, or ditch, or boundary line. You are
   out upon the open mountains of Grace. In riding through Switzerland you
   will find gates put up here and there along the road, for no reason
   that I could see but to tax and worry travelers--many of the limits
   which are set to the Gospel proclamation answer no other purpose! Down
   with these toll bars on the road to Heaven! We cannot and dare not
   discourage any man from calling on the name of the Lord! The promise is
   to you and to your children--but it is also to all "that are afar off,
   even as many as the Lord our God shall call." In this matter there is
   no difference between Jew and Gentile! "Whoever" includes the slum
   people, even the poorest of the poor, but it does not exclude the
   carriage people, not even the richest of the rich! "Whoever" beckons to
   the educated and looks favorably upon the cultured and the
   refined--but, none the less, it invites the illiterate to whom all
   learning is an unattainable mystery. "Whoever" has a finger for babes
   and an arm for old men! It has an eye for the quick and a smile for the
   dull!

   Young men and maidens, "whoever" offers its embrace to you! Good and
   bad, honorable or disreputable, this "whoever" speaks to you all with
   equal truth! Kings and queens may find room in it and so may thieves
   and beggars. Peers and paupers sit on one seat in this word! "Whoever"
   has a special voice for you, my Hearer! Do you answer, "But I am an
   oddity"? "Whoever" includes all the oddities! I always have a warm side
   towards odd, eccentric, out-of-the-way people because I am one, myself,
   at least so I am often said to be! I am deeply thankful for this
   blessed text, for if I am a lot unmentioned in any other, I know that
   this includes me--I am beyond all question under the shade of
   "whoever!" No end of odd people come to the Tabernacle, or read my
   sermons, but they are all within the range of "whoever."

   "Alas!" cries one, "I am dreadfully desponding, I am too low-spirited
   to be intended by the promise of Grace!" Are you? I do not believe it!
   "Whoever" goes to the very depths of despair and up to the heights of
   Glory! "Alas!" murmurs another, "I am not sad enough on account of my
   sin. I am of too frivolous a nature!" Very likely, but, "whoever."
   includes you--if you call on the Lord, you shall be saved! You may go
   round the whole Tabernacle this morning and "whoever" will include all
   the thousands in it! After that you may hasten down the streets and
   tramp from end to end of London's mighty area and never find one left
   out! You may then take a tourist's ticket and travel through Europe,
   Africa and Asia till you have even traversed China and Japan! You may
   sweep the southern seas and search Australia--and then come home by way
   of San Francisco--and in all that circular tour you will not have met
   man, woman, or child, whether

   white, or black, or red, or yellow, or blue, or green, but what is
   encompassed by the circle of this word, "whoever." "Whoever shall call
   on the name of the Lord shall be saved." I hope I have not diminished
   the range of the text! Certainly I have not intended to do so. Mind
   that none of you shut the door in your own faces. I want each one to
   come in and find salvation at once. I beseech you do not forget to come
   to Jesus, yourself. Come, for you may come, you should come, you must
   come--

   "None are excluded therefore but those Who do themselves exclude!
   Welcome the learned and polite, The ignorant and rude. While Grace most
   freely saves the prince, The poor may take their share! No mortal has a
   just pretense To perish in despair."

   There is the text--"Whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be
   delivered," or, "saved." Believe it and obey it. It is a gracious
   gift--take it and be rich forever!

   Furthermore, the requirement is very plain. "Whoever shall call on the
   name of the Lord." You do not need a library to explain to you how you
   can be saved. Here it is--"Call on the name of the Lord." This is "The
   Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven." You will not need to go to the Sorbonne
   at Paris, nor to the University of Oxford to be tutored in the art of
   finding salvation. Believe and live! Is not that plain enough? "Whoever
   shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." What does calling
   upon the name of the Lord mean? To call on the name of the Lord means,
   first, to believe in God as He reveals Himself in Scripture. His
   Revelation of Himself is His "name." If you make a god of your own, you
   have no promise that he will save you--on the contrary, if you make
   him, he will be good for nothing, for he will be less than yourself! If
   you are now willing to come to the light and see the Lord as He
   displays Himself in His own Word, then you shall know a great God and a
   Savior. You are not merely to believe in a god, but in the living and
   true God--in Jehovah, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob--the
   God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If you accept Him
   as being what He states Himself to be, in Him you shall find salvation!

   The pity of it is that the most of people in these days worship a god
   of their own invention. They do not make an image of clay, or of gold,
   but they construct a deity in their minds according to their own
   thoughts. They proudly judge as to what God ought to be and they will
   not receive God as He really is. What is this but a god-making as gross
   as that which is performed by the heathen? What can be more wicked than
   to attempt to imagine a better god than the one true and living God? As
   the deity of your fancy has no existence, I would not recommend you to
   trust in him. There is one living and true God and that living God has
   revealed Himself in the two Books of the Old and New Testament. In
   these He is more clearly seen than in His works of creation or of
   Providence. In this God you must trust--and if you trust Him, He will
   not deceive you. "Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him."

   If you trust in "thought," or, "progress," or any other deity of your
   own making, you will perish! But if you rely upon the living God, He
   will not, cannot, forsake you. Trust in Father, Son and Holy Spirit and
   you shall be delivered! "He that believes on Him shall not be
   confounded." A simple, child-like trust in God as He reveals Himself in
   His Word and especially as He unveils Himself in the blessed Person of
   the Lord Jesus Christ will save you! In the Lord Jesus dwells all the
   fullness of the Godhead bodily--trust in Him and you are saved.

   To call on the name of the Lord also means to pray. That is the idea
   which naturally arises to the mind at the first sound of the word. You
   are lost in the woods. What are you to do? You are to call for help. "O
   God, hear my cry! Deliver me, for my trust is in You!" If I compare you
   to a wandering sheep, what can you do? You cannot find your way back to
   the fold--the brambles hold you fast and tear your flesh. Well, you can
   bleat and thus call for the Shepherd! Prayer--real, sincere, believing
   prayer will never fail! The Lord has said, "Call upon Me in the day of
   trouble, and I will deliver you."

   I recollect, in the time of my soul-trouble, how I lived on this text
   for months! It only looks like a lozenge, but it is made of the essence
   of meat and it will sustain life for many a day. Try the power of it.
   "Whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." I said to
   myself--"I do call on His name and I will continue to call on His name.
   Yes, if I perish, I will pray and perish only there!" Nor did I call
   upon the Lord in vain supplication. He heard me and saved me! Blessed

   be His holy name! Praying, believing, trusting--none can fail of
   salvation. The requirement is very plain--"Trust and pray."

   And when you have done this, then remember that to call upon the name
   of the Lord means, also, to confess that name. We read in the Old
   Testament, "Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord." Not that
   they then first prayed, but they then began to meet together avowedly
   to worship Jehovah. They came out from among men and named the sacred
   name as that of their God and Lord--declaring that whatever others did,
   they would serve Him. The Lord requires all saved ones to do this. You
   must confess that the Lord is your God and Jesus is your Savior. You
   must say, "This God is our God forever and ever." Our Lord put it, "He
   that believes and is baptized shall be saved." Paul says, "With the
   heart man believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is
   made unto salvation." You must, in some way or other, confess your
   faith--and the best way is that which the Lord has, Himself, ordained,
   saying, "Thus it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness." No longer
   wishing to live without God, no longer trusting to what you can see,
   hear and do, you must, from this day on, place your whole reliance upon
   God, alone, and acknowledge the Lord as your God and Father. No man
   doing this shall be left to perish! Out of temporal and eternal
   troubles you shall be delivered. God will help you all your life long
   if you trust Him. "He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His
   wings shall you trust, His truth shall be your shield and buckler."
   Whoever trusts, prays and avows Himself to be on the Lord's side, shall
   be saved!

   This requirement is simple enough and I do not see what less could be
   asked of any man. Would you have a man saved who will not trust his
   God? Would you have a man forgiven who will not obey his Lord? Has
   Christ come into the world to pardon our sin and save us while we
   continue in rebellion? God forbid! His Grace is manifested to make us
   loyal to God in everything and walk before the Lord in the land of the
   living! This, also, the Holy Spirit works in us to will and to do.

   I will spend a minute or two in reminding you that, as the requirement
   is plain, so the assurance of blessing is positive. "Whoever shall call
   on the name of the Lord shall be delivered," or, "saved." In this there
   are no provisos and may-bes. The text is not a bare hope, but a solemn
   assertion! If you believe, poor Soul, though you are altogether a mass
   of sin, you shall be saved! Do you not see how sure it is? God, who
   cannot lie, pledges His Word to you--risk your soul on it! Indeed,
   there is no risk. The only hope I have this day is in the promise of my
   faithful God which He makes to those who call upon His name. I dare not
   rest anywhere else, but on His bare Word. I gladly venture my eternal
   all. How can it be that a sincere trust in God's own promise can ever
   be rejected by the Lord? Sitting by the bedside of a dying man who was
   resting in Christ even as I am, I said to myself--Suppose we, who trust
   alone in Jesus, should perish, what then? Why, it would be to the
   everlasting dishonor of the Lord in whom we trusted! We would lose our
   souls, certainly, but He would lose His honor! Think of one of us being
   able to say in Hell, "I trusted in the boasted Savior's aid and rested
   myself on God, and yet I am lost." Sirs, Heaven itself would be
   darkened and the crown jewels of God would lose their luster if that
   could once be the case! But it cannot be! If you trust in the Lord God
   Almighty, He will save you as surely as He is God! No one shall ever
   think better of God than He is. Open your mouth as wide as you will and
   He will fill it.

   And now, to wind up as to the proclamation--remember that although it
   is so far-reaching as to embrace a wide world of Believers, yet it is a
   personal message to you at this hour. "Whoever" includes yourself and
   if you see it from the right angle, it peculiarly looks at you. You,
   calling upon God, shall be saved--you, even you! Friend, I do not know
   your name, nor do I need to know it, but I mean this word for you. You
   shall be saved if you call upon the name of the Lord. "Ah!" you say, "I
   wish my name was written down in the Bible." Would it comfort you at
   all? If it were written in the Scripture, "Charles Haddon Spurgeon
   shall be saved," I am afraid I should not get much comfort out of the
   promise, for I should go home and fetch out the London Directory and
   see if there was not another person of that name, or very similar to
   it! How much worse would it be for the Smiths and the Browns! No, my
   Brothers and Sisters, do not ask to see your name in the Inspired
   volume, but be content with what you do see, namely, your character!
   When the Scripture says, "Whoever," you cannot shut yourself out of
   that! Since it is written, "Whoever shall call on the name of the Lord
   shall be saved," call on that name and grasp the blessing! Despair,
   itself, can scarcely evade the comfort of this blessed text! O Holy
   Spirit, the Comforter, seal it upon each heart!

   But perhaps you have not called upon the name of the Lord. Then begin
   at once. Cry, "Lord, have mercy upon me!" and cry after that sort
   immediately. If you have never prayed, pray now! May God the Holy
   Spirit lead you to call upon the name of the Lord at this exact moment,
   without waiting to go home, or to get into another room! Though you
   have

   never believed in the Lord Jesus before, believe in Him now! If this is
   the first breath of faith that you have ever breathed, the promise is
   as sure to you as it is to those of us who have known the Lord these 40
   years. "Whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved," is
   a word to a careless fellow who has never prayed in his life!

   O my Hearer, the text speaks to you! How I wish I could get at you,
   take you by the hand and hold you till I had made you think! I remember
   when Mr. Richard Weaver preached at Park Street Chapel, in his younger
   days. He came down from the pulpit and ran over the pews to get at the
   people that he might speak to them individually and say, "you," and,
   "you," and, "you." I am not nimble enough on my legs to do that, and I
   do not think I would try it if I were younger! But I wish I could,
   somehow or other, come to each one of you and press home these glad
   tidings of great joy. You, my dear old Friend, it means you! You, young
   woman, over there to the right, it means you! You, dear child, sitting
   with your grandmother, it means you! "Whoever shall call on the name of
   the Lord shall be saved." O Lord, bless this word to every unconverted
   person to whom it comes!

   II. I could almost wish to close with this soft music, but I dare not
   maim a text. I will deal with the second part of it with exceeding
   brevity, but I dare not silence it altogether. The second portion of
   the text contains AN INSTRUCTIVE DECLARATION. "It shall come to pass
   that whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered."
   That was abundantly fulfilled at Pentecost, for on that day a great
   multitude believed, were baptized and were saved--thus those who called
   on the name of the Lord were delivered. But listen, "In mount Zion and
   in Jerusalem shall be deliverance." This, also, was literally true--the
   first preaching of the Gospel was to the Jews at Jerusalem itself!
   Salvation came to mount Zion and to the city of the great King! The
   fountain for sin and for uncleanness was opened at Jerusalem!

   There is something about that fact which strikes me very solemnly this
   morning, for though this deliverance came to some, yet the city was
   totally destroyed. The Kingdom of Heaven came near them, but they put
   it away and they were overthrown with a fearful destruction. The Jews
   had long been outwardly the Lord's chosen people, but in a measure He
   had cast them off, for the Romans ruled the land and they, in their
   willful blindness, crucified their King. The favored nation nailed the
   Messiah to the tree--and yet to Jerusalem sinners, salvation was first
   preached! Salvation was of the Jews and by Jews it was brought to us
   Gentiles. Sad calamity that they should bring us life and yet, as a
   nation, sink down to spiritual death!

   Notice that the Prophet says, "In mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be
   deliverance, as the Lord has said." He promised deliverance and He sent
   it according to His Word--if they would not have it--He sent it as He
   said and their blood was on their own heads when they refused it. The
   Lord went to the full length of His mercy in sending salvation to those
   leaders of iniquity who, with wicked hands, had crucified their own
   Messiah!

   As a result of the Lord's goodness, a remnant was saved. Notice it,
   "and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call." A remnant did call upon
   the Lord and live! Those 11 that stood up at Pentecost and bore witness
   to the Resurrection were all Jews! And those who met in the upper room,
   when the Holy Spirit came down, were Jews--this was the remnant. But
   the solemn thought is that it was only a remnant of God's favored
   people. Centuries of visitations, Prophets, miracles-- and only a
   remnant saved! God's Shekinah shining out among them and yet only a
   remnant obedient! The very Christ of God born of their nation and yet
   only a remnant saved! To this day we utter the Truth of God when we
   sing--

   "You chosen seed of Israel's race, A remnant weak and small."

   The Jewish Church is a very insignificant portion of the Jewish people.
   The Apostle tells us that "at this present time there is a remnant
   according to the election of Grace." And Isaiah says, "Except the Lord
   of Hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as
   Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah." Poor Israel, poor
   Israel! Most favored for many an age and yet only a remnant brought to
   call upon the saving Lord! Many come from distant lands and sit down
   with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God--but the children
   of the kingdom are cast out into outer darkness--all but a mere
   remnant!

   To my mind it is most instructive to notice that even that remnant
   never called upon the name of the Lord until the Lord called upon
   them--"The remnant whom the Lord shall call." We, all of us, need a
   miracle of Grace to make us perform the simple act of calling upon God!
   This was manifestly true in the case of Israel, for as a nation it
   rejected Jesus of Nazareth and only a few were converted by the power
   of the Holy Spirit. But whether Jews or Greeks, we are similarly

   depraved--and unless effectual calling shall call us out of our natural
   state--the very last thing that we shall ever do will be to come to
   Jesus and to rest in Him! Unhappy condition, to refuse the highest
   good!

   Believing Jews are a remnant to this day and only here and there is one
   called by Grace. You say, "What have we to do with that?" We have much
   to do with it! Let us pray for our Lord's own countrymen! Let us labor
   for them! This, also, let us do--let us learn from their fall. O you
   that are children of godly parents, you that habitually attend places
   of worship, you who sit in this House of Prayer year after year--you
   are much in the same position as Israel of old! Yours are the outward
   privileges--will you reject the hopes which they set before you? My
   fear is lest you should get so accustomed to hearing the Gospel that
   you should think that mere hearing is enough! I tremble lest you should
   grow so habituated to the externals of religion that you should be dead
   to all the internal parts of it and only a remnant of you should be
   saved! Think of the multitudes in England who hear the Gospel and of
   the comparatively few who are called by Grace to come and believe in
   Jesus Christ. It is sorrowful to think of the breadth of Gospel Grace
   and the narrowness of man's acceptance of it.

   The feast is great! The guests are few! I see an ocean of mercy without
   a shore and on it there floats an ark wherein but few are saved. Shall
   it always be so? Oh, come, and receive the gift of Free Grace! Alas, I
   see men sunk in the darkness of unbelief and only a remnant rising to
   the light of faith! Altogether, in this London, out of four or five
   millions, we have not half a million at worship at any one time! Out of
   that half million, how many do you think are real Christians? Truly, it
   is still a remnant. Oh, that you and I may be of that remnant!

   Let us further pray the Lord to gather in the multitude and so to
   accomplish speedily the number of His elect. Oh, that He would not only
   magnify the Sovereignty of His Grace, but reveal the largeness of it!
   Oh, that He would give the well-beloved Jesus to see of the travail of
   His soul till He is satisfied! O Lord, the oxen and the fatlings are
   killed, and all things are ready--let it not be again reported that
   those who are bidden are not worthy! Or, if it is so, enable us to go
   out into the highways and hedges and compel the outcasts to come in,
   that the wedding may be furnished with guests! Go forth, you messengers
   of Christ, into all the world! Rise up, my Brothers, from this service,
   and go forth, everyone of you, to call in as many as you find--yes, to
   compel them to come in! May the Lord cause that in London and in
   Britain there may be deliverance--yes, may His salvation be made known
   unto the ends of the earth! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Love's Law and Life

   (No. 1932)

   A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, DECEMBER 5, 1886,

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
   SEPTEMBER 30, 1886.

   "If you love Me, keep My commandments." John 14:15.

   THIS is a chapter singularly full of certainties and remarkably studded
   with "ifs." Concerning most of the great things in it there never can
   be an, "if," and yet, "if," comes up, I think, no less than seven times
   in the chapter and, "if," too, not about trifles, but about the most
   solemn subjects. It is, perhaps, worthy of mention that with each of
   these, "ifs," there is something connected, as following out of it, or
   appearing to be involved in it, or connected with it.

   Look at the second verse. "In my Father's house are many mansions: if
   it were not so, I would have told you." If there had been no place for
   us in the Glory Land, Jesus would have told us. If any Truth of God
   which had not been revealed would have made our hope a folly, our Lord
   Jesus would have warned us of it, for He has not come to lure us into a
   fool's paradise and, at the last, deceive us. He will tell us all that
   it is necessary for us to know in order to a wise faith and a sure
   hope. The Lord has not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the
   earth--He has not spoken in contradiction of His revealed Word. Nothing
   in His secret decrees or hidden designs can shake our confidence, or
   darken our expectation. "f it were not so, I would have told you." Had
   there been a secret thing which would have injured your prospects, it
   should have been dragged to light that you might not be deceived, for
   the Lord Jesus has no desire to win disciples by the suppression of
   distasteful Truths. If there were anything yet to be revealed which
   would render your hope a delusion at the end, you would have been made
   acquainted with it--Jesus, Himself, would break the sad news to you--He
   would not leave you to be horrified by finding it out for yourselves!
   He kindly declares, "I would have told you."

   Notice the third verse. Again we meet with, "if," and its consequence.
   "f I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you
   unto Myself." If the Lord Jesus should go away (and this is a
   supposition no longer, for He has gone), then He would return, again,
   in due time. Since He has gone, He will come again, for He has made the
   one to depend on the other. We make no question that He went up into
   Heaven, for He rose from out the circle of His followers and they saw
   Him as He went up into Heaven. They had no sort of doubt as to the fact
   that the cloud received Him out of their sight and, moreover, they
   received assurance out of Heaven, by an angelic messenger, that, "He
   shall so come in like manner as you have seen Him go into Heaven." "If
   I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you
   unto Myself." His going Home pledges Him to come and compels us to look
   for Him!

   The next, "if," comes at the beginning of the seventh verse--"f you had
   known Me, you should have known My Father, also." If we really know the
   Lord Christ, we know God. In fact, there is no knowing God aright
   except through His Son Jesus! It is evidently true that men do not long
   hold to theism pure and simple. If our scientific men get away from the
   Christ, the Incarnate God, before long they drift away from God
   altogether. They begin to slide down the mountain when they quit the
   Incarnate Deity--and there is no more foothold to stop them. No man
   comes to the Father but by the Son--and no man long keeps to the Father
   who does not keep to his faith in the Son. Those who know Christ know
   God, but those who are ignorant of the Savior are ignorant of God,
   however much they may pride themselves upon their religion! They may
   know another god, but the only living and true God is unknown except by
   those who receive Jesus. The Divine Fatherhood, of which we hear so
   much in certain quarters, is only to be seen through the window of
   Incarnation and Sacrifice. We must see Jesus before we can gain even so
   much as a glimpse at the Infinite, the Incomprehensible and the
   Invisible! God comes not within finite perception till He enters human
   flesh--and there we behold His Glory, full of Grace and truth.

   The next variety of, "if," you will find a little farther down in the
   chapter, namely, in the 14th verse--"f you shall ask anything in My
   name, I will do it." The, "if," in this case involves an uncertainty
   about our prayers, if an uncertainty at all. Taking it for granted that
   we ask mercies in the name of Jesus, a glorious certainty is linked to
   them. Jesus says, "I will do it." Here our Lord speaks after a
   Sovereign style. We may not say, "I will," but the, "I wills," pertain
   to Christ. He can answer and He has the right to answer--and,
   therefore. He says without reservation, "I will." "If you shall ask
   anything in My name, I will do it." Oh that we might put the first,
   "if," out of court by continually petitioning the Lord and signing our
   petitions with the name of Jesus! May we be importunate only in prayers
   to which we are warranted to set that august name and then, boldly
   using His name and authority, we need be under no apprehension of
   failure! The great Father in Heaven never denies the power of His Son's
   name, neither does the Son Himself draw back from the keeping of His
   own pledges! True prayer operates with the same certainty as the laws
   of Nature. "Delight yourself, also, in the Lord and He shall give you
   the desires of your heart." Oh that we did delight more in the Divine
   name and Charac-ter--and then our prayers would always speed to the
   Throne!

   Now comes the, "if," of our text, of which I will say nothing for the
   moment. "If you love Me, keep My commandments." Something, you see, is
   to come out of this, "if," as out of all the others. If something, then
   something--"f you love me," then carry it out to the legitimate
   result--"keep My commandments."

   You have the next, "if," in verse 23--"Jesus answered and said to him,
   If a man loves Me, he will keep My words." Respect to His wisdom and
   obedience to His authority will grow out of love. "The love of Christ
   constrains us." We hear that passage often misquoted, "The love of
   Christ ought to constrain us," but that is a corruption of the text.
   The Apostle tells us that it does constrain us and, if it really enters
   the heart, it will do so. It is an active, moving power, influencing
   the inner life and then the external conduct--

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

   "If a man loves Me, he will keep my words." He will believe in the
   verbal inspiration of His Lord. He will regard His teaching as
   Infallible. He will attend to it and remember it. More than this, he
   will, by his conduct, carry out the words of his Lord and so keep them
   in the best possible manner by enshrining them in his daily life.

   The chapter almost closes at the 28th verse by saying, "If you loved
   Me, you would rejoice because I said, I go unto My Father, for My
   Father is greater than I." Where there is an intelligent love to
   Christ, we rejoice in His gains even though we, ourselves, appear to be
   losers thereby. The corporeal absence of our Lord from our midst might
   seem to be a great loss to us, but we rejoice in it because it is for
   His own greater Glory. If He is enthroned in Glory, we dare not lament
   His absence. Our love agrees to His departure, yes, rejoices in it, for
   anything which conduces to His exaltation is sweet to us. Let us at
   this moment, because we love Him, rejoice that He has gone to the
   Father!

   So you see the chapter, if you read it, though enriched with heavenly
   certainties, is yet besprinkled with, "ifs." Like little pools of
   sparkling water among the ever abiding rocks, these, "ifs," gleam in
   the light of Heaven and refresh us even to look upon them.

   Let us now think of our own text and may the Holy Spirit lead us into
   the secret chambers of it! "If you love Me, keep My commandments."

   The present, "if" is a serious one. Let that stand as our first head.
   Secondly, the test which is added concerning it is a very judicious
   one--"If you love Me, keep My commandments." In the third place, I will
   give you the reading of the Revised Version, and say, that test will be
   endured by love, for the words may be interpreted--"If you love Me, you
   will keep my commandments." Obedience will follow upon love as a matter
   of certainty.

   I. To begin, then, THE "IF" IN OUR TEXT IS A VERY SERIOUS ONE. It goes
   to the very root of the matter. Love belongs to the heart and every
   surgeon will tell you that a disease of the heart may not be trifled
   with. A clever doctor said to me, "I feel at my ease with any matter if
   it does not touch the head or the heart." Solomon bids us keep the
   heart with all diligence, "for out of it are the issues of life." If
   the mainspring fails, all the works of a watch refuse to act. We
   cannot, therefore, think little of a question which concerns our love,
   for it deals with a vital part. O Friends, I hope there is no question
   about our love for Jesus!

   Observe how our Savior puts this, "if," concerning love in such a way
   as to teach us that love must be prior to obedience. The text is not,
   "Keep My commandments and then love Me." No, we do not expect pure
   streams till the fountain is

   cleansed. Nor does He say--"Keep My commandments and love Me at the
   same time," as two separate things, although that might, in a measure,
   correspond with truth. But love is put first because it is first in
   importance and first in experience. "If you love Me"--we must begin
   with love--then, "keep My commandments." Obedience must have love for
   its mother, nurse and food. The essence of obedience lies in the hearty
   love which prompts the deed rather than in the deed itself. I can
   conceive it possible that a man might, in his outward life, keep
   Christ's commandments and yet might never keep them at all so as to be
   accepted before God. If he became obedient by compulsion, but would
   have disobeyed if he dared, then his heart was not right before God and
   his actions were of little worth. The commandments are to be kept out
   of love to Him who gave them. In obedience, to love is to live--if we
   love Christ we live Christ. Love to the Person of our Lord is the very
   salt of our sacrifices. To put it most practically--I often say to
   myself, "Today I have performed all the duties of my office, but have I
   been careful to abide in my Lord's love? I have not failed as to doing
   all that was possi-ble--I have gone from early morning till late at
   night, packing as much work as possible into every hour and trying to
   do it with all my heart. But have I, after all, done this as unto the
   Lord and for His sake?"

   I tremble lest I should serve God merely because I happen to be a
   minister and am called to preach His Word, or because the natural
   routine of the day carries me through it. I am concerned that I may be
   impelled by no force but the love of Jesus! This fear often humbles me
   in the dust and prevents all glorying in what I have done. Only as we
   love our Lord can our obedience be true and acceptable. The main care
   of our lives should be to do right and to do it because we love the
   Lord. We must walk before the Lord as Abraham did and with the Lord as
   Enoch did. Unless we are under the constant constraint of love to the
   Lord Jesus Christ we shall fail terribly--

   "Knowledge, alas! is all in vain,

   And all in vain our fear,

   In vain our labor and our pain

   If love is absent there."

   See, dear Friends, how inward true religion is--how far it exceeds all
   external formalism? How deep is the seat of true Grace! You cannot hope
   to do that which Christ can smile upon until your heart is renewed. A
   heart at enmity with God cannot be made acceptable by mere acts of
   piety. It is not what your hands are doing, nor even what your lips are
   saying. The main thing is what your heart is meaning and intending.
   Which way are your affections tending? The great flywheel which moves
   the whole machinery of life is fixed in the heart--therefore this is
   the most important of all suggestions-- "If you love Me."

   "If you love Me" is a searching sound. I start as I hear it! He that
   believes in the Lord Jesus Christ for his salvation produces, as the
   first fruit of his faith, love to Christ--this must be in us and
   abound, or nothing is right. Packed away within that box of sweets
   called, "love," you shall find every holy thing, but if you have no
   love, what have you? Though you wear your fingers to the bone with
   service, weep your eyes out with repentance, make your knees hard with
   kneeling and dry your throat with shouting, yet if the heart does not
   beat with love, your religion falls to the ground like a withered leaf
   in autumn! Love is the chief jewel in the bracelet of obedience! Hear
   the text, and mark it well--"If you love Me, keep My commandments."

   O Sirs, what a mass of religion is cast out as worthless by this text!
   Men may keep on going to Church and going to Chapel and they may be
   religious, yes, throughout a whole life and, apparently, they may be
   blameless in their moral conduct--and yet there may be nothing in them
   because there is no love to the ever-blessed Christ at the bottom of
   the profession! When the heathen killed their sacrifices in order to
   prophesy future events from the entrails, the worst sign they ever got
   was when the priest, after searching into the victim, could not find a
   heart--or if that heart was small and shriveled. The soothsayers always
   declared that this omen was the sure sign of calamity. All the signs
   were evil if the heart of the offering was absent or deficient. It is
   so in very deed with religion and with each religious person. He that
   searches us searches principally our hearts! He who tries mankind tries
   chiefly the reins of the children of men. The Master is in our midst,
   tonight, walking down these aisles with noiseless tread, girt about the
   paps with a golden girdle and robed in snow-white garments down to His
   feet. Look! He stops before each one of us and gently asks, "Do you
   love Me?" Three times He repeats the question! He waits for an answer.
   It is a vital question--do not refuse a reply. Oh that the Spirit of
   the Lord may enable you to answer in sincerity and truth and say,
   "Lord, You know all things; You know that I love

   You!"

   This matter of love to Jesus is put prior to every other because it is
   the best reason for our obedience to Him. Notice-- "If you love Me,
   keep My commandments." Personal affection will produce personal
   obedience. Do you not see the drift of the words? The blessed Jesus
   says, "If you love Me, keep My commandments" because, truly, operative
   love is mainly love to a person and love to our Lord's Person begets
   obedience to His precepts! There are some men for whom you would do
   anything--you will to yield to their will. If such a person were to say
   to you, "Do this," you would do it without question. Perhaps he stands
   to you in the relation of master and you are his willing servant.
   Perhaps he is a venerated friend and because you esteem and love him,
   his word is law to you. The Savior may much more safely than any other
   be installed in such a position! From the throne of your affections He
   says, "If you love Me--if your heart really goes out to Me--then let My
   word be a commandment. Let My commandment be kept in your memory and
   then further kept by being observed in your life." So you see the
   reason why the Master begins with the heart--because there is no hope
   of obedience to Him in our actions unless He is enshrined in our
   affections! This is the spring and source of all holy living-- love to
   the Holy One. Dear friends, have you been captured by the beauties of
   Jesus and are you held in a Divine captivity to the adorable Person of
   your redeeming Lord? Then you have within you the impulse which
   constrains you to keep His commandments!

   It was greatly necessary for our Lord thus to address His disciples.
   Yes, it was necessary to speak, thus, even to the Apostles. He says to
   the chosen 12, "If you love Me." We should never have doubted one of
   them. We now know by the result that one of them was a traitor to his
   Lord and sold Him for pieces of silver, but no one suspected him, for
   he seemed as loyal as any one of them. Ah, if that question, "If you
   love Me," needed to be raised in the sacred college of the 12, much
   more must it be allowed to sift our Churches and to test ourselves!
   Brothers and Sisters, this word is exceedingly necessary in the present
   assembly! Hear its voice--"If you love Me." The mixed multitude here
   gathered together may be compared to the heap on the threshing floor
   and there is need of the winnowing fan. Perhaps you have almost taken
   it for granted that you love Jesus--but it must not be taken for
   granted! Some of you have been born in a religious atmosphere, you have
   lived in the midst of godly people and you have never been out into the
   wicked world to be tempted by its follies--therefore you come to an
   immediate conclusion that you must assuredly love the Lord! This is
   unwise and perilous! Never glory in armor which you have not tested,
   nor rejoice in love to Christ which has not sustained trial!

   What an awful thing if you should be deceived and mistaken! It is most
   kind of the Savior to raise a question about your love and thus give
   you an opportunity of examining yourself and seeing whether you are
   right at heart. It will be far better for you to err upon the side of
   too great anxiety than on that of carnal security. To be afraid that
   you are wrong and so to make sure of being right, will bring you to a
   far better end than being sure that you are right and, therefore,
   refusing to look into the ground of your hope! I would have you fully
   assured of your love for Jesus, but I would not have you deceived by a
   belief that you love Him if you do not. Lord, search us and try us!

   Remember, if any man loves not the Lord Jesus Christ he will be
   anathema maranatha--cursed at His coming! This applies to every man,
   even though he is most eminent. An Apostle turned out to be a son of
   perdition--may not you? Every man, even though he is a learned bishop,
   or a popular pastor, or a renowned evangelist, or a venerable elder, or
   an active deacon, or the most ancient member of the most orthodox
   assembly, may yet turn out to be no lover of the Lord! Though he has
   gathered to break bread in the sacred name with a select company, yet
   if he does not truly love the Lord Jesus Christ, the curse rests upon
   him, whoever he may me. So let us take from the Master's lips the
   heart-searching words at this time, "If you love Me, keep My
   commandments." Let us take them personally home, as if addressed to
   each one of us personally and alone.

   While considering the text, let each one view himself apart. What have
   you to do in this matter with keeping the vineyards of others? See to
   your own hearts. The text does not say, "If the Church loves Me," or,
   "If such-and-such a minister loves Me," or, "If your brothers love Me."
   No, but it is, "Ifyou love Me, keep My commandments." The most
   important question for each one to answer is that which concerns his
   personal attachment to his Redeemer and the personal obedience which
   comes out of it. I press this enquiry upon each one. It may seem a
   trite and commonplace question, but it needs to be put again and again
   before all in our congregations. The preacher needs to be thus
   questioned--he gets into the habit of reading his Bible for other
   people. The Sunday school teacher needs this enquiry--he, also, is apt
   to study the Scriptures for his class rather than for himself. We all
   need the Truth of God to come home to us with personal and forcible
   application, for we are always inclined to shift unpleasant enquiries
   upon others. In the case of very deaf

   people, when they hold up their horns, we speak right down into
   them--and I wish to speak home pointedly to each one of you at this
   time. Let the text sound into your individual ear and heart--"If you
   love Me, keep My commandments."

   The question is answerable, however. It was put to the Apostles and
   they could answer it. Peter spoke as all the 11 would have done when he
   said, "You know that I love You." It is not a question concerning
   mysteries out of range and beyond judgement--it deals with a plain
   matter of fact. A man may know whether he loves the Lord or not and he
   ought to know. He who is jealous of himself and is, therefore, half
   afraid to speak positively, may all the more truly be a lover of the
   Lord. Holy caution may raise a question where the answer is far more
   certain than in the breasts of those who never even make the enquiry
   because they are carnally secure. Do not be content with merely longing
   to love Jesus or with longing to know whether you love Him. Not to know
   whether you love the Lord Jesus is a state of mind so dangerous that I
   exhort you never to go to sleep until you have escaped from it! A man
   has no right to smile--I had almost said, he has no right, either to
   eat bread or drink water so long as that question hangs in the
   balances! It ought to be decided. It can be decided! It can be decided
   at once. Not love Jesus? It were better for me not to live than not to
   love Him! Not love Christ? May the terrible fact never be hidden from
   my weeping eyes! Perhaps the dread discovery may drive me to better
   things. If I do love my Lord, I can never rest with the shadow of a
   doubt darkening the life of my love. A question on such a matter is
   unbearable--

   "Do not I love You from my soul?

   Then let me nothing love. Dead be my heart to every joy,

   When Jesus cannot mo ve.

   Would not my heart pour forth its blood In honor of Your name And
   challenge the cold hand of death

   To dampen the immortal flame?

   You know I love You, dearest Lord, But oh, I long to soar Far from the
   sphere of mortal joys, And learn to love You more."

   Brothers and Sisters, hear the question suggested by this little word,
   "if!" Consider it well and rest not until you can say, "I love the Lord
   because He has heard my voice and my supplication." So much, then,
   concerning the serious nature of

   this, "if."

   II. In the second place, let me observe that THE TEST WHICH IS PROPOSED
   IN THE TEXT IS A VERY JUDICIOUS ONE. "If you love Me, keep My
   commandments." This is the best proof of love.

   The test indicated does not suggest a lawless liberty. It is true we
   are not under the Law, but under Grace, but yet we are under Law to
   Christ and if we love Him we are to keep His commandments. Let us never
   enter into the counsel of those who do not believe that there are any
   commandments for Believers to keep. Those who do away with duty, do
   away with sin and, consequently, with the Savior! It is not
   written--"If you love Me, do whatever you please." Jesus does not
   say--"So long as you love Me in your hearts, I care nothing about your
   lives." There is no such doctrine as that between the covers of this
   Holy Book! He that loves Christ is the freest man out of Heaven, but he
   is also the most under bonds. He is free, for Christ has loosed his
   bonds, but he is put under bonds to Christ by grateful love! The love
   of Christ constrains him from this day on to live to the Lord who loved
   him, lived for him, died for him and rose again. No, dear Friends, we
   do not desire a lawless life. He that is not under the law as a power
   for condemnation, yet can say that with his heart he delights in the
   Law of God! He longs after perfect holiness and in his soul yields
   hearty homage to the precepts of the Lord Jesus. Love is Law--the Law
   of love is the strongest of all Laws! Christ has become our Master and
   King and His commandments are not grievous!

   The text also contains no fanatical challenge. We do not read, "If you
   love Me, perform some extraordinary act." The test required is not an
   outburst of extravagance, or an attempt to realize the ambitious
   project of a fevered brain. Nothing of the kind! Hermits, nuns and
   religious mad-caps find no example or precept here! Some persons think
   that if they love Jesus they must enter a convent, retire to a cell,
   dress themselves oddly, or shave their heads. It has been the thought
   of some men, "If we love Christ we must strip ourselves of everything
   we possess, put on sackcloth, tie ropes round our

   waists and pine in the desert." Others have thought it wise to make
   light of themselves by oddity of dress and behavior. The Savior does
   not say anything of the kind--"If you love Me, keep My commandments."
   Every now and then we find members of our Churches who must leave their
   trades and their callings to show their love for Jesus--children may
   starve and wives may pine but their mad whimsies must be carried out
   for love of Jesus! Under this influence, they rush into all sorts of
   foolery and soon ruin their characters because they will not take the
   advice of sobriety and cannot be satisfied with the grand test of love
   which our Lord, Himself, herein lays down! The text does not condemn
   these lightheaded projects in detail, but it does so in the gross by
   proposing a far more reasonable test--"If you love Me, keep My
   commandments." Do not spin theories in your excited brains and vow that
   you will do this desperate thing and the other. The probability is that
   you are not seeking the Glory of the Lord, but you are wanting
   notoriety for yourself! You are aiming at supreme devotion so that you
   may become a distinguished person and that people may talk about your
   superior saintship. You may even go so far as to court persecution from
   selfish motives. The Savior, who was wise and knew what was in men and
   knew, also, what would be the most sure test of true love to Himself,
   says, "If you love Me, keep My commandments." This is a much more
   difficult thing than to follow out the dictates of a crazy brain.

   Why does the Savior give us this as a test? I think that one reason is
   because it is one which tests whether you are loving Christ in His true
   position, or whether your love is to a Christ of your own making and
   your own placing. It is easy to crave a half Christ and refuse a whole
   Christ. It is easy, also, to follow a Christ of your own construction
   who is merely an antichrist. The real Christ is so great and glorious
   that He has a right to give commandments! Moses never used an
   expression such as our Savior here employs. He might say, "Keep God's
   commandments," but he would never have said, "Keep my commandments."
   That dear and Divine Person whom we call Master and Lord here says,
   "Keep My commandments." What a commanding person He must be! What
   lordship He has over His people! How great He is among His saints! If
   you keep His commandments, you are putting Him into the position which
   He claims. By obedience you acknowledge His sovereignty and Godhead and
   say with Thomas, "My Lord and my God."

   I am afraid that a great many people know a Christ who is meek and
   lowly, their servant and Savior, but they do not know the Lord Jesus
   Christ. Alas, my Friends, such people set up a false Christ! We do not
   love Jesus at all if He is not our Lord and God. It is all cant and
   hypocrisy, this love to Christ which robs Him of His Deity! I abhor
   that love to Christ which does not make Him King of kings and Lord of
   lords. Love Him and belittle Him? It is absurd! Follow your own will in
   preference to His will and then talk of love to Him? Ridiculous! This
   is but the devil's counterfeit of love--it is a contradiction of all
   true love. Love is loyal! Love crowns its Lord with obedience. If you
   love Jesus aright, you view His every precept as a Divine Commandment.
   You love the true Christ if you love a commanding Christ as well as a
   saving Christ and look to Him for the guidance of your life as well as
   for the pardon of your sin.

   This test, again, is very judicious, because it proves the living
   presence of the object of your love. Love always desires to have its
   object near and it has a faculty of bringing its object near. If you
   love anybody, that person may be far away and yet to your thoughts, he
   is close at hand. Love brings the beloved one so near that the thought
   of him acts upon its life. A gentleman has faithful servants. He goes
   away and leaves his house in their charge--he has gone abroad and yet
   he is at home to his servants, for every day their work is done as if
   he were there to see! He is coming home soon--they hardly know when,
   but they keep all things in readiness for his return, let it happen
   when it may. They are not eye-servants and so they work none the less
   because he is absent. If he does not see them, yet the eyes of their
   love always see him and, therefore, they work as if he were at home.
   Their affection keeps him always near.

   A dear father is dead and he has left his property to a son who honors
   his memory. What does the son do? He is generous, like his father, and
   when he is asked why, he replies, "I do exactly what I believe my dear
   father would have done if he had been here." "Why?" "Because I love
   him." When a man is dead, he lives to those who love him! So the living
   Christ, who is not dead, but has gone away, is made present to us by
   our realizing love--and the proof of our love is that Jesus is so
   present that He constrains our actions, influences our motives and is
   the cause of our obedience! Jesus seems to say--"If you love Me, now
   that I am gone, you will do as you would have done if I were still with
   you and looking at you. You will continue to keep My commandments, as
   in My Presence."

   It is a most judicious test, again, because, by keeping our Lord's
   commandments, we are doing that which is most pleasing to Him and will
   most glorify Him! Some enthusiastic Methodist cries--

   "Oh, what shall I do my Sa vior to praise?"

   Listen, my Brother--if you love your Savior, keep His commandments!
   This is all you have to do and a great all, too. Among the rest, you
   may come and be baptized while you are thus earnest to praise your
   Lord. "If you love Me, keep My commandments." There is the answer to
   every rapturous enquiry! Jesus is more glorified by a consistent
   obedience to His commands than by the most extravagant zeal that we can
   possibly display in what is only will-worship because He has never
   commanded it. If you wish to break the alabaster box and fill the house
   with sweet perfume. If you wish to crown His head with rarest gems, the
   method is before you--"Keep My commandments." You cannot do your Lord
   so great a favor, or, in the long run, bring to Him so real an honor,
   as by a complete, continual, hearty obedience to every one of His
   commandments!

   Moreover, the Savior knew, when He bade us try this test, "If you love
   Me, keep My commandments," that it would prepare us for honoring and
   glorifying Him in many other ways. Read the context--"If you love Me,
   keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you
   another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever." You can greatly
   glorify Christ if you are filled with the Holy Spirit. But you cannot
   be filled with the Holy Spirit if you do not keep Christ's
   commandments! The Spirit of God as a Comforter will come only to those
   to whom He comes as a Sanc-tifier. By making us holy, He will qualify
   us for being useful. The Savior says, "If you love Me, keep My
   commandments," because we shall then obtain that Divine Gift by which
   we can glorify His name! If there is any service which your love would
   aspire to, obedience to your Lord is the way to it!

   But, indeed, I need not stand here and argue. When a friend is dying
   and he asks you to prove your love by such-and-such a deed, he may ask
   what he wills--you give him carte blanche. It may be the simplest thing
   or the hardest thing, but if he will prescribe it as a test of love,
   you will not tell him no. If your wife should say to you, "You are
   going to journey far from me and I shall not see you again for many
   days. I beg you, therefore, to carry my portrait within your
   watch-case," you would not fail to do so. It would be a simple thing,
   but it would be sacred to you. Baptism and the Lord's Supper will never
   be slighted by those whose hearts are fully possessed with love to
   Jesus! They may seem trifles, but if the Lord Jesus commands them, they
   cannot be neglected! To leave off your wedding ring might be no great
   crime and yet no loving wife would do it. Even so, none who regard
   outward ordinances as love tokens will think of neglecting them. Ours
   is not to ask for reasons. Ours is not to dispute about whether the
   deed is essential or non-essential. Ours is to obey right lovingly!
   Bridegroom of our hearts, say what You will and we will obey You! If
   only You will smile and strengthen us, nothing shall be impossible if
   great, nothing trifling if small!

   III. Time has well-near gone, or we would dwell upon the third head,
   which we must now leave, only praying God to prove the truth of it. The
   third head is this--TRUE LOVE WILL ENDURE THIS TEST. "If you love Me,
   you will keep My commandments." This is the Revised Version and I hope
   it will be written out in capitals upon our revised lives! We will
   obey, we must obey since we love Him by whom the command is given!

   Come then, Brothers and Sisters, as the time has gone, let me say this
   much to you. If you love Christ, set to work to find out what His
   commandments are. Study the Scriptures upon every point upon which you
   have the slightest question. This sacred oracle must guide you.

   Next, be always true to your convictions about what Christ's
   commandments are. Carry them out at all hazards and carry them out at
   once. It will be wicked to say, "Until now I have obeyed, but I shall
   stop here." We are committed to implicit obedience to the whole of the
   Master's will, involve what it may. Will you not agree to this at the
   outset? If you love Him, you will not object.

   Take note of every commandment as it concerns you. Let me mention one
   or two, and beg you to obey them as you hear them. "Go you into all the
   world and preach the Gospel to every creature." Is not this a call to
   you, my Brother, to be a missionary? Do you hear it? Will you not say,
   "Here am I, send me"? Another person has come into this house tonight
   full of enmity--somebody has treated him very badly and he cannot
   forget it, I pray him to hear the Lord's command--"Therefore if you
   bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother has
   anything against you; leave there your gift before the altar and go
   your way. First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer
   your gift." And again, "Little children, love one another." If any of
   you are in debt, obey this commandment--"Owe no man anything, but to
   love one another." If you neglect the poor and live in a stingy way,
   hear this commandment--"Give to him that asks you and from him that
   would borrow of you turn not away." At the back of all comes this
   is--"If you love Me, keep My commandments." I might stay here all
   night, and mention, one after another, the commandments which

   would be specially applicable to each one of my hearers, but I pray the
   Holy Spirit to bring all things to your remembrance.

   If there is a commandment which you do not relish, it ought to be a
   warning to you that there is something wrong in your heart that needs
   setting right. If you ever quarrel with one of Christ's commands, end
   that quarrel by especially attending to it beyond every other! Do as
   the miserly man did when he conquered his avarice, once and for all. He
   was a Christian and he promised he would give a pound to the Church,
   but the devil whispered, "You need your money, do not pay." The man
   stamped his foot and said, "I will give two!" Then the devil said,
   "Surely you are going mad! Save your money." The man replied that he
   would not be conquered, he would give four pounds. "Now," said Satan,
   "you must be insane." Then said the man, "I will give eight and if you
   don't stop your tempting, I will give 16 for I will not be the slave of
   covetousness." The point is to throw your whole soul into that very
   duty wherein you are most tempted to be slack. Jesus does not say, "If
   you love Me, keep this commandment or that." Out of love obey every
   command!

   Many of you do not love my Lord Jesus Christ. I have not preached to
   you, but that very fact should make you thoughtful. Go home and
   consider that the preacher said nothing to you because you do not love
   the Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, cannot keep His commandments.
   Write down in black and white--"/ do not love the Lord Jesus Christ.''"
   If it is really so, be honest enough to make a note of it and think it
   over. If you love Jesus, you may joyfully write out, "I love the Lord
   Jesus. Oh for Grace to love Him more!" But if you do not love Him, it
   will be honest to put it upon record. Write it boldly--"/ do not love
   the Lord Jesus Christ." Look at it and look again--and oh, may God the
   Holy Spirit lead you to repent of not loving Jesus who is the
   Altogether Lovely One and the great lover of men's souls! Oh that you
   may begin to love Him at once! Amen and Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

"Your Rowers Have Brought You Into Great Waters"

   (No. 1933)

   A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, DECEMBER 12, 1886,

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
   SEPTEMBER 10 1885.

   "Your rowers have brought you into great waters." Ezekiel 27:26.

   THIS was spoken by the Prophet concerning Tyre, that great mercantile
   city where all the commerce of the East found its outlet towards the
   West. Tyre, when the Chaldeans invaded Palestine, had greatly rejoiced
   at the fall of Jerusalem. She said, "Aha, she is broken that was the
   gates of the people: I shall be replenished now she is laid waste." It
   was a cruel and selfish exultation. After a while the city in the sea
   came to feel the weight of the great oppressor's arm, for thus said the
   Lord, "I will bring upon Tyrus, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, a king
   of kings, from the north. He shall set engines of war against your
   walls and with his axes he shall break down your towers." For 13 years
   the city endured a siege under Nebuchadnezzar and it was concerning
   this calamity that the Prophet said, "Your rowers have brought you into
   great waters" The merchant princes of Tyre had so managed the affairs
   of the State that they brought the Tyrians into desperate straits. They
   had incited them to stand out against the great king and they
   discovered, in due time, that they were striving against a power too
   strong for them. Their policy had been a mistake. Comparing Tyre to one
   of its own galleys propelled with oars, the Prophet declares, "Your
   rowers have brought you into great waters."

   All the glories and the woes of Tyre are now over. "What city is like
   Tyrus, like the destroyed in the midst of the sea?" That page of
   history has long ago been turned over to give place to the rise and
   fall of other cities and empires, but the prophetic expression is still
   full of power. To many persons in our own day we may well cry with
   Ezekiel, "Your rowers have brought you into great waters."

   I. First and foremost, this is truly applicable to SINNERS WHO ARE
   BEGINNING TO TASTE THE RESULT OF THEIR SINS--ungodly persons who have
   chosen their own ways and followed their own devices--and now, at last,
   are finding that the way of transgressors is hard. Sinners may go
   unpunished for many a bright hour of the morning of life, but as the
   day grows older, the shadows fall and their way is clouded over. I meet
   with many who may be well assured that God will ultimately punish sin
   because the first flakes of the endless fire shower have begun to fall
   upon them and they cannot escape. They are now beginning to reap the
   first ripe ears of that awful harvest whose sheaves of woe shall fill
   their bosoms, world without end. In those who sin with the flesh, the
   result of their vices is seen and felt to a horrible degree in their
   own bodies. Many a man bears in his bones the sins of his youth. Around
   us are many who already wish that they had never been born because of
   the condition into which their wantonness has brought them. The sin
   which at first seemed a dainty luxury, sweet to their palate, has now
   developed into a corrosive poison in their heart, eating their flesh as
   with fire and burning up their spirits. Lust was their pilot--the siren
   of pleasure lured them on and now they are wrecks--breaking to pieces
   on the rocks. Despondent, ashamed, haunted with nameless terrors,
   afraid to hope, they dare neither live nor die. They are overcome with
   alarm as they look forward, for if it is darkness behind and night
   around, tenfold blackness lies before them by reason of their
   transgression and their sins. O sinner spent with sin, "Your rowers
   have brought you into great waters."

   Certain transgressors are beginning to feel the result of wrong-doing
   in their circumstances. They have brought themselves from wealth to
   poverty by drunkenness, dishonesty, or vice. The owner of a fair estate
   is compelled to herd with the lowest of the low in a filthy lodging. He
   who was educated for a profession and is skilled in learned languages--
   employs his superior knowledge to beg and cheat--and even then remains
   in loathsome rags. Not even in this world does sin pay its servants
   good wages! Drunkenness and idleness clothe a man with rags--these are
   the livery of sin. Those godly men who spend their lives in the painful
   business of seeking out the fallen often harrow our feelings with the
   dread stories of those who are truly prodigals, not merely in parable,
   but in literal fact, who have wasted their substance in riotous living
   and now, if it were possible, would be glad to fill their belly with
   the husks that swine eat and no man gives to them.

   Many a broken-down sinner has, in this house, found his way back to the
   Great Father. Oh, that it may be so during this service! Sorely tossed
   about in sickness and in need, both of them the result of your sin, you
   are in a sorry plight at this hour. "Your rowers have brought you into
   great waters." You would not take Christ to be your Pilot in your
   youth--you were too proud to accept your father's God, your mother's
   Savior--you must have your own way and follow your own devices! And now
   the desperate tugging of your passions have brought you into deep
   waters, indeed. You said in your pride, "I will not be tied to my
   mother's apron strings," but you are now a captive, fastened with bonds
   of steel to one who will be no mother to you, but a destroyer! You gave
   up your boat to pirate rowers and now look where they have brought you!
   The waters about you are dark and tempestuous and no port is near. One
   thing you can do, and I would have you do it--warn others lest they
   come into your place of danger! With broken health and lost estate, at
   least be humane--when you are most in your misery, call to yourself the
   young who have not yet known your evil ways and charge them to shun
   your course! If you cannot be an example, I would use you as a beacon.
   "Though hand join in hand, yet shall not the wicked be unpunished"--and
   you are a proof of the same. "Your rowers have brought you into great
   waters."

   Others who have not yet been afflicted by any outward Providence are
   beginning to feel the sting of sin upon their conscience. This will, I
   trust, be used for their good. I trust the Lord has a kind intent
   towards them and is condemning them in the inward court of conscience
   that they may not be judged and condemned with the godless world at the
   Last Great Day. The Lord's eyes perceive many that once were at ease in
   their iniquities who are now sorely troubled by their own reflections.
   Like the troubled sea, they cannot rest. Their memories are constantly
   casting up the mire and dirt of their former transgressions. There is
   no peace for them, day or night. They know that they must die. They
   have also heard of judgment to come--the blast of the trumpet of doom
   is sounding in their ears and, therefore, they cannot sleep at night,
   nor be at rest by day. A tempest is hurrying up. Black masses of clouds
   hang overhead. Thunder mutters from afar and the lightning lights up
   the sky. Sin is always before them. It casts ashes into their bread and
   gall into their drink. Their merry comrades cannot make them out, for
   they were once as wild as any. Men wonder why it is that for them there
   seems to be no music in the lute, no pleasure in the bowl, no joy in
   the dance. They know not the voice which cries to the troubled
   one--"Your rowers have brought you into great waters."

   O Soul, you have now come where your sins compass you about and shut
   you in on every side! They seemed as if they were all forgotten, like
   dead men, out of mind, but they have risen again and in their rising
   you have fallen! As a man pursued by wolves in the steppes of Russia
   seeks to escape from the hungry pack which hurry on so swiftly, so are
   you trying to escape from your sins--but all in vain! You hear their
   howls behind you as they chase you with untiring feet-- what can you
   do? The sins of 20 years ago are upon you! Fierce sins of your hot and
   youthful blood which seemed so harmless then--they are demons now from
   which you can not hide! What would you give to forget them? But they
   will not be forgotten! The devourers are near you; their hot breath
   comes upon you! Their fangs are in your flesh! They taste your blood!
   Verily, you have made a poor business of life to become the prey of
   such horrors! At a time of life when many a Christian man is in full
   vigor of usefulness, you are worn out and near death--and near Hell!
   Your sins are upon you. Even now they overtake you and what will you
   do? O gallant boat of the silken sail and the painted hull, where are
   you now? "Your rowers have brought you into great waters."

   Listen to me, then, while I speak to you words which may seem harsh,
   but they are all meant in love to you. Listen, I say, and take warning
   from your present sorrows.

   If the waters are great, today, what will they be before long? If now
   you cannot bear the wages of sin, what will you do when they are paid
   to you in full? "What will you do in the swelling of Jordan?" What will
   you do when they wipe the clammy sweat from your brow and tell you that
   a few more gasps will send you into eternity? O man, woman, however
   great the waters are now, they are as nothing compared with what they
   will be at the last! You are only running with the footmen now and yet
   they weary you! What will you do when you contend with horses? When the
   Lord shall walk

   through the sea with His horses, through the heap of great waters--what
   will become of you? Your case is lamentable. My heart weeps for you.
   "Your rowers have brought you into great waters."

   Learn, I pray you, this piece of timely wisdom. Your rowers have
   brought you into no quiet waters. They have found you no harbors of
   delight--shall they any longer be your rowers? Do this one thing to
   your own soul if you have any sense left, or any pity for yourself--cry
   out against those who are ruining you! Now say, "I will go no further
   with these rowers. God helping me, the helm shall be reversed." If such
   is your resolve and the great Pilot shall come to your help, you will
   never drink again of the accursed cup and you will shun the company
   which has lured you to your present wretchedness! Hear me while I cry
   to you, "Escape for your life! Look not behind you!" for maybe you will
   never have another hope of escaping--but you will, from this day on,
   drift from bad to worse, till the worst of all shall come. "Your rowers
   have brought you into great waters"--have no more to do with them! Oh
   that the Spirit of the Lord may help you to break the oars and cast the
   rowers into the sea!

   Remember, also, that they have rowed you into the stormy waters, but
   they cannot row you out of them. You can find no rest by continuing in
   sin, neither can you save yourself from your present forlorn condition.
   O man, cry mightily unto God! He will hear you! He has revealed a way
   of deliverance for you in the Person of His dear Son--all your hope
   lies there! Have you not heard of Jesus, who can still the wind and
   bring your vessel into an instant calm? While there is life in you,
   there is hope in Christ for you! You are not yet in torment--not yet in
   Hell--still does His good Spirit strive, with the chief of sinners
   dwell. Therefore, though the sun is gone down for this day, I pray you
   suffer it not to rise again until you have committed your soul into the
   hands of your Redeemer! In desperate jeopardy of eternal destruction,
   cry unto the mighty God for succor and He will make bare His arm and
   rescue you from your destructions! Despair not! There is a Savior, and
   a great one, and He has come here to seek and to save that which was
   lost! Trust in Him who is mighty to save. By the terror of your
   destruction, I beseech you believe in the great salvation. Cry--

   "Jesus, lover of my soul,

   Let me to Your bosom fly,

   While the nearer waters roll,

   While the tempest still is high!

   Hide me, O my Savior, hide,

   Till the storm of life is past!

   Safe into the ha ven guide

   Oh receive my soul at last." I have spoken very feebly, but I pray the
   Lord to bless it to every unconverted person within these walls.

   II. And now, secondly, I think that I see another ship. It is not black
   with the grime of the world. It resembles the gilded barge of a mighty
   prince, but still, for all that, its rowers have brought it into great
   waters. This represents THE

   SELF-RIGHTEOUS BROUGHT INTO DISTRESS. Many men are fondly persuaded
   that either they need no saving or

   that they can save themselves. Either in whole or in part, their
   natural goodness, or their benevolent actions, or their careful
   attention to external religion will secure their safety. They suppose
   that by going to hear the Gospel, by participating in sacraments, by
   contributing towards Church work and the like, they will find
   themselves borne securely towards the desired haven. This ship is
   rarely built. It resembles that to which Ezekiel likens Tyre--"They
   have made all your planks of fir trees from Senir: they have taken
   cedars from Lebanon to make a mast for you. Of the oaks of Bashan have
   they made your oars; they have made your benches of ivory inlaid in
   boxwood, from the isles of Kittim. Of fine linen with embroidered work
   from Egypt was your sail, that it might be to you for an ensign; blue
   and purple from the isles of Elishah was your awning." There is no end
   to the gallant show which self-righteousness can exhibit! No ship of
   Tyre can excel it.

   Yet to this glorious ship a trying voyage is appointed. Alas, my
   Friend, your rowers have brought you into great waters. I would like
   you to think of the difficult journey which lies before you. The
   proposal is that you shall row yourself by your good works across yon
   sea of sin to the Port of Glory. Before you enter upon a matter, it is
   well to count the cost. Do you not know that if you are to be saved by
   obedience to the Law of God, your obedience must be absolutely perfect?
   If there is a breach of one single commandment, although all the others
   should be scrupulously kept, yet the Law is broken and the course of it
   descends. If you have a chain and you break one link, it is of no
   further use. It is idle to say, "All the other links are strong." The
   miner would not risk his life upon a chain with one dangerous link--and
   the

   strength of the whole chain must be measured, not by its strongest, but
   by its weakest part! Do you think, my Friend, that you can perfectly
   keep the Law of God? Can you do it as long as you live? I should like
   you to think what great waters the rowers are proposing to take you
   into if you are to win salvation by an obedience which shall never fail
   or falter! You see from Holy Scripture that God gave His Son Jesus
   Christ to die for us that we might be saved by His Grace. Do you
   suppose that this gift of Jesus was a superfluity? There would have
   been no need for that great offering on the part of our Lord Jesus
   Christ if men can save themselves by their own merits! Calvary is a
   blot upon the Character of Deity if salvation by self is possible! His
   own Son put to death without a stern necessity for it were the grossest
   charge that could be brought against the Great Father! You certainly
   are attempting a very singular work if you are to perform that which
   cost the glorious Son of God His life! Great waters, dear
   Friend--waters too great for your frail vessel.

   Look, Sirs, you who have been resting in your own righteousness, have
   you never once sinned? Take even today to pieces--has no evil thought,
   or wrong desire, or wanton imagination defiled its hours? Have you
   never spoken a sinful, unkind, untruthful, or proud word? Do you claim
   to have been absolutely perfect before your Maker from your childhood?
   Surely, you must have a brow of brass to make such a boast! What does
   He say to you? "There is not a just man upon earth, that does good, and
   sins not." "All we like sheep have gone astray." "If we say that we
   have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." Verily,
   my Friend, "Your rowers have brought you into great waters." If you are
   to be saved by your works, look where you are! Any day you may slip and
   stumble--and then what becomes of all your past life? For, "When the
   righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity,
   all his righteousness that he has done shall not be mentioned: in his
   trespass that he has trespassed, and in his sin that he has sinned, in
   them shall he die." If this is your style of standing before God, it is
   a poor standing, indeed! Can you ever be sure that you will be safe in
   an hour's time? Come, my Friend, can you be sure that you have done
   enough, felt enough, prayed enough, given enough alms and gone a
   sufficient number of times to the Meeting House, or to the Church? Can
   you be sure that it is well with you even now? And if your faith is in
   a priest, can you be sure that he who baptized you and confirmed you
   had the apostolic succession? Can you be sure that he that gave you the
   sacrament was truly ordained? When you lie dying, a thousand questions
   will haunt you! You will have to ask yourself about this, that and the
   other--and on your present way of going to work you can never be sure!

   The religion of self-righteousness never proposes such a thing as
   security. It does not give the quiet of faith, much less the deep
   repose of full assurance. "Your rowers have brought you into great
   waters." Uncertainty follows uncertainty and the wind of fear tosses
   the billows of doubt. You will have to slave your fingers to the bone
   with incessant efforts and then never have done. Your life will be one
   perpetual treadmill and you will never be an inch the higher. You might
   as well attempt to sail across the Atlantic on a sere leaf of autumn as
   hope to reach Heaven by your own works! You have no good works--you are
   incapable of good works! Your motive is tainted and it pollutes all you
   do. Self-salvation is your aim and, therefore, you are serving yourself
   and not your God. The motive is the essence of the deed. Now, the grand
   motive which makes virtue, virtue, is absent in the selfish heart. The
   motive of love is necessary to acceptance with God and you know nothing
   of it. As of now all your labor comes of a joyless servitude--it is
   slave's work for a slave's wage--and the wage you will get, because you
   are a sinner--will be no more than death when all is done. "Your rowers
   have brought you into great waters."

   I remember when I reached those same terrible seas. I used, as a youth,
   to think, sometimes, that I was as good as other lads and, perhaps, I
   was, for I had not fallen into the grosser vices. I fancied that if
   anybody was saved by a moral life, I might be. But oh, when God lifted
   the veil of my nature and I saw what my heart really was, I sang
   another tune! I had been down into the cellar of my heart a great many
   times in the dark and it seemed pretty fair, but when the Holy Spirit
   opened the shutters and let in the light, what loathsome abominations I
   saw there! My life, too, no longer appeared to be the goodly thing I
   had imagined it. Ah, no, my comeliness was turned into corruption! Let
   but a man get the Light of God streaming into His soul, convicting Him
   of sin, of righteousness and of judgment to come--and all reliance upon
   self, in any form, will seem to him to be the most hateful of crimes!
   What crime is there that is more like the pride of Lucifer than the
   pride of a wretched rebel who talks about meriting Heaven and finding
   entrance among glorified spirits without washing his robes in the blood
   of Jesus--under the pretence that they were never foul? Does he imagine
   that he will be admitted to the courts of the Eternal King to sing his
   own praises and thus insult the Lord? While oth-

   ers come there through rich and free and Sovereign Grace and,
   therefore, rapturously adore almighty love, is he to reach the blissful
   shores to magnify his own excellence?

   I tell you, Sir, that if you have put to sea in the boat of
   self-righteousness, however strong the rowers who tug those three banks
   of oars and make the vessel leap through the waves, the day shall come
   when you will hear a voice across the waters crying, "Your rowers have
   brought you into great waters: the east wind has broken you in the
   midst of the seas." The voyage is too great for you! Shipwreck is sure!
   May God give you Grace to shun the attempt! Flee from your own works to
   Christ's work! Place your trust where God has placed His love, namely,
   in the Lord Jesus! Then shall you have good works, indeed, but they
   shall be the cargo which you carry, not the ship which carries you.
   They shall then be grounded upon the motive of gratitude and not of
   selfishness. And then shall real virtue be possible to you--virtue
   based on love to God. When you are delivered from your sin and safe in
   the righteousness of Christ, then will you say, as each Believer does
   when his heart is warm with affection--

   "Loved of my God, for Him again

   With love intense I burn!

   Chosen of Him before time began,

   I choose Him in return."

   Thus have we seen two gallant ships in grievous straits and we have
   hearkened to counsels by which we may avoid their dangers. May God
   bless my simple words!

   III. But now, very briefly, there is a third case, THE ERRORIST IN HIS
   DIFFICULTIES. This is a very common sight in these wayward times. I
   might say to many a man who has ventured out to sea under the strong
   impulse of curiosity, trusting to his own proud intellect, "Your rowers
   have brought you into great waters." The only safe course for a
   thoughtful man is to trust in God and to accept the Scriptures as
   Infallible Truth of God. There is our anchor! Every mind needs a fixed
   point--we must have Infallibility somewhere--my Infallible Guide is
   Holy Scripture. I know of no other anchor. The Revelation of God to
   man, in the Person of the Son of God, even Christ Jesus, is the one and
   only hope of men. And the Word of the Lord in which we have the Divine
   testimony to the appointed Savior is our oracle and court of appeal.

   But there are men who cannot abide this and, first of all, I think that
   they begin to get into great waters when they resolve to be guided by
   their own judgment and their own intellect, without submitting to the
   teachings of Christ. It is proud and dangerous work to set up to be
   your own guide. You are undertaking a very large responsibility when
   you refuse to sit at Jesus' feet and prefer to assume the teacher's
   chair. If you will rely upon your own wisdom, wit and will, you choose
   a highland road--rough, rugged and full of perils. You cast away the
   possibility of that sweet peace which comes of reposing on superior
   wisdom. You miss, in fact, that joy of faith, that sweet rest of mind
   which is the reward of the lowly of heart. Simple trust in Christ is,
   to me, the wellspring of comfort. To believe because the Lord speaks is
   rest to my heart! I could not live except as I leave questions with God
   and accept His Word instead of all reasoning.

   O my wise and thoughtful Friend, do you know what will soon happen to
   you? You will probably fall under the domination of another's
   intellect--you will become the shadow of some greater man. The man who
   will be guided by nobody is usually guided by someone more foolish or
   more knavish than himself. I have seen both cases. I have seen a man of
   superior abilities crouching at the feet of a semi-idiot who seemed, to
   the other, to be a profound mystic! And I have also seen the deep,
   designing man of brazen impudence towering above an abler man and
   cowing him into submission. He swore that he would be independent and
   to be so he cast off all old beliefs and fettered himself to foolish
   lies. He would not stay at home with his father to partake of the
   joyous heritage, for he longed for freedom. Alas, before long a master
   sent him into his fields to feed swine. He could not believe the
   simplicities of the Truth of God, but now he groans beneath the
   monstrosities of superstition!--

   "Hear the just law, the judgment of the skies! He that hates Truth
   shall be the dupe of lies, And he that wiil be cheated to the last,
   Delusion, strong as Hell, shall bind him fast."

   The man has given up the old doctrine because it was difficult and has
   accepted new doctrine which is 10 times more difficult! He would not be
   credulous and now he is a hundred times more so. Creation staggered him
   and he tries to believe in evolution! Faith in Jesus seemed hard, but
   he must now accept Agnosticism. The difficulties of unbelief are 10

   times greater than the difficulties of faith. We may require a great
   stretch of faith to accept all that the Holy Spirit teaches, but once
   believe in His faithful Word and you have found a way of life! If you
   do not do this, you have continually to enlarge the gullet of your
   credulity and remain forever receptive of mere wind which can never
   fill the mind. Unbelief calls you to go from improbability to
   impossibility, from extravagance to romance, from romance to raving! I
   appeal to candid persons who have ventured from the moorings of faith
   to sport upon the waves of modern speculation, whether they are not
   conscious of a great loss? When faith evaporates, there is a speedy
   departure of spiritual power. The new notions intoxicate, but they do
   not sustain. The near approach to God is gone when the old faith in the
   Atonement is shaken--and the enjoyment of hallowed communion ceases
   when the din of perpetual controversy frightens away the dove of peace!

   I have heard it remarked that the modern "apostles," when they preach,
   often discourse very prettily--for they are clever men--but all sense
   of enjoyment of what they preach is lacking. They are not, themselves,
   feeding upon what they hand out. There is no beaming light upon their
   faces as of men who are enamored by the doctrines they proclaim! Small
   delight can their teachings cause them and you see that it is so. They
   are not heralds arrayed to adorn a banquet, but surgeons gathered to an
   operation! Well may they be without enjoyment, for there is nothing to
   enjoy. Who smiles as he sits down to a meatless, marrowless bone? Who
   rejoices as he lifts a shining cover which has nothing beneath it? In
   the dogmas of modern thought, there is not enough mental meat to bait a
   mousetrap! As to food for a soul, there is none of it-- an ant would
   starve on such small grain! No Atonement, no regeneration, no eternal
   love, no Covenant--what is there worth thinking upon? "They have taken
   away my Lord and I know not where they have laid Him."

   They have taken away the light, the life, the love, the liberty of Free
   Grace and they have given us nothing to replace them but pretty toys
   which they, themselves, will break before many days are past. O Sirs,
   it is all very fine to be amused in the heyday of our health with
   "bubbles from the brunnen" of superior intellects, but times will come
   when the soul will have to do business on great waters and then it will
   need substantial help. When a man comes face to face with eternity, he
   demands certainties about which his heart has no shadow of question.

   I have lain by the hour together consciously looking into death in as
   bitter suffering of body and mind as a man might well endure and I tell
   you nothing will then satisfy the heart but the atoning Sacrifice!
   Nothing will avail to clear the sky but a distinct view of Jesus as a
   Substitute and a vicarious Sacrifice for human sin! Nothing cheers me
   at such times but the Eternal Covenant, ordered in all things and sure;
   promises founded upon the faithfulness of God; Grace given by the
   Sovereignty of God to guilty and undeserving men! You may do with
   lighter things, but I must have these and nothing less! Grace, with
   Omnipotence and Immutability to back it, will bear my spirit up and
   nothing else! But if you will let go the old Gospel. If you will go
   from one new theory to another--after a short time you will come into
   misery of the direst order! I have seen men give up, first of all, the
   communion of saints. Then all belief in the Word of God. After that,
   they have gone into the common pleasures of worldlings and so they have
   drifted and drifted till, at length, the seat of the scorner, the song
   of the drunkard, or the stews of the unchaste have afforded them
   carrion suited to their taste. How many who only meant to go a little
   from the old ways of the Truth of God have gone too far aside even for
   themselves? Truly, my speculative Friend, "Your rowers have brought you
   into great waters."

   I am not intending to follow you. You are so wise that I am satisfied
   to be a fool, because I would wish to be the reverse of what you are. I
   am content to be weak, for your strong mind is bringing you small
   profit. I would not, at any time, rest my soul's eternal hope upon a
   theory, or upon the workings of my own brain. I need a firmer
   foundation. On the Truths of God revealed in this Book, on the clear
   and certain verities of Holy Scripture I dare risk my soul for time and
   for eternity, without the shadow of a doubt! I would earnestly entreat
   you to do the same, lest, by-and-by, your rowers bring you into great
   waters!

   Why, to me it seems very great waters to be brought into to be forced
   to say that I know nothing! One walking with me observed, with some
   emphasis, "I do not believe as you do. I am an Agnostic." "Oh," I said
   to him "that is a Greek word, is it not? The Latin word, I think, is
   ignoramus." He did not like it at all. Yet I only translated his
   language from Greek to Latin! These are strange waters to get into,
   when all your philosophy brings you is the confession that you know
   nothing and the stolidity which enables you to glory in your ignorance!
   As for those of us who rest in Jesus, we know and have believed
   something, for we have been taught eternal truths by Him who cannot
   lie! Our Master was not known to say, "It may be," or, "It may not be,"
   but He had an authoritative style and testified, "Verily, verily, I say

   unto you." Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one jot or tittle
   of what He has taught us shall cease to be the creed of our souls! We
   feel safe in this assurance but should we quit it, we should expect,
   soon, to find ourselves in troubled waters.

   IV. Now I pass on to dwell for a moment upon another sight which is as
   sad as any of the others--perhaps more sad.

   Behold THE BACKSLIDER FILLED WITH HIS OWN WAYS. O wanderer from the
   Lord your God, "Your rowers

   have brought you into great waters." I have seen and talked with some
   to whom this text has become an awful truth. There are some here,
   tonight, who, if I brought them upon this platform and they had the
   courage to speak, could unfold a tale of measureless misery which they
   have brought upon themselves by departing from the Lord! Look at yonder
   woman! She once rejoiced in the Gospel as one that finds great spoil.
   It is 30 years ago, but at that time she knew the Truth of God and
   loved it. She was the joy of the pastor who brought her to Christ, for
   she was earnest, intense, devoted. There were years of gracious walking
   and then there came a temptation. She grew cold in heart. She was poor.
   She was infatuated. She turned aside--she was wretched and found
   comfort in the glass. Drop the veil. It is many years ago since that
   fall and she plunged on in suffering, misery and sin such as I will not
   attempt to describe. She became a mere wreck! Death stared her in the
   face. She returned to us and said, "Let me be taken into the Church
   before I die, for I have never lost, after all, the life of God in my
   soul but, oh, I stepped aside and from that day sorrow has pursued me.
   Restore me to the Church, for I am, by Grace, restored to God." As you
   looked at her, you said, "Poor weather-beaten boat! It was an ill day
   for you when your rowers brought you into these great waters."

   You know how it begins--first of all, that holy, joyful walk with God
   is lost. You used to sing from morning to night for joy of heart, for,
   like Enoch, you walked with God! Alas, that music came to a close. It
   did not seem much-- merely to lose rapturous enjoyment--but it was much
   in itself and it meant more. Then there came a loss of relish for the
   means of Grace. The services were long and the ministry grew dull. The
   Prayer Meeting was not worth attending and weeknight services were too
   much of a good thing. Secret prayer was neglected and the Bible was
   unread. The forms of religion were kept up longer than the enjoyment of
   it, but there was no life, no power in them. After that there came a
   general fault-finding with Brothers and Sisters in Christ--a constant
   quibbling at this and that. Nothing was good enough. The soul was
   drifting and it fancied that the Church and the world were no longer
   what they were, just as men in a boat fancy that the shore is moving.
   How many endeavor to be blind to their own declensions by pretending to
   see fault and falsehood in other people! Then there came a distaste for
   Christian company--godly people were too commonplace and prosaic. The
   love of something "brighter" called them away from solid conversation.
   Occasionally they were found in places doubtfully virtuous and
   unquestionably irreligious. Songs other than those of Zion began to be
   relished and teachings not of the Bible were listened to.

   All the while there was an inward unrest and there was a yearning of
   the spirit for better things. The man felt, every now and then, that he
   was losing sight of shore and floating into dangerous places. He was
   uneasy as to where the currents would carry him and he did not feel
   safe under his new pilot. Then on a black day there were rocks
   ahead--rocks from which, in former years, his vessel had steered clear
   with ease. And now a current and a wind drove the ship that way and
   before he was well aware of it, the man was wrecked! To quit our
   figure, the sin which the man once hated he now played with. He did not
   mean to yield, but he gave way a little and soon became the slave of
   appetite. He that sat at the sacramental table was now to be seen
   intoxicated. She that would have communed only with believers in Christ
   was now found in very dubious society.

   At last it went further--it came to actual and open sin--and ruin
   followed. I cannot tell how long that sinner may remain in his sin. How
   long David continued impenitent I need not mention, but oh that he had
   never fallen into it! Oh that he had never idled that day away upon his
   bed so as only to rise at eventide to see a sight that led him to rush
   headlong into foul transgression! O Brothers and Sisters, when you
   begin to get a little away from Christ, you do not know how far you may
   yet go, nor how soon you may commit the grossest crimes! There may be
   some here, tonight, who once were preachers of the Gospel, or earnest
   Sunday school teachers, or Christian women devoted to the cause of God,
   but now, alas, they are separated from the fellowship of the Church,
   aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, outcasts from the communion of
   saints!

   O Friend, "Your rowers have brought you into great waters." Oh that He
   would come who owns your boat, who shed His blood for you! Oh that He
   would step into your vessel and take the helm and turn you around,
   tonight, by a

   great stroke of His almighty Grace, and turn your head to the Port of
   Peace! Do you ask, "Will He receive me again?" Listen to His voice! He
   says to you, "Turn, O backsliding children, says the Lord; for I am
   married unto you." Take with you words and come to Him at once, for He
   is ready to receive you. Do not linger! But O backslider in heart,
   before you become filled with your own ways, come home, come home and
   say, "Return unto your rest, O my Soul." Remember that if you are a
   child of God you will never be happy in sin! You are spoiled for the
   world, the flesh and the devil. In the day when you were regenerated
   there was put into you a vital principle which can never die nor be
   content to dwell in the dead world. You will have to come back if,
   indeed, you belong to the family--prodigal as you are, you are still a
   child! Though you return with every bone broken, you will have to
   return!

   He that is married to you has not forgotten the marriage bond. Though
   you have forsaken Him and defiled yourself with many lovers, yet it is
   written, "He hates putting away." He cannot endure divorce! His
   almighty love will win you back. He cannot and He will not give you up.
   Read those memorable passages in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, where the Holy
   Spirit uses that simile which I scarcely dare use tonight, where the
   most defiled and corrupt of adulterous souls are still bid to come back
   to their first husband because the marriage bond still holds good and
   the Lord will neither let them go nor suffer them to continue in sin.
   "Your rowers have brought you into great waters." Oh for a steersman to
   guide you into port! Return, return! I leave my text and those to whom
   it applies with the God of all Grace. May He bless you all, for
   Christ's sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

"And We Are"--a Jewel from the Revised Version

   (No. 1934)

   A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, DECEMBER 19, 1886,

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, JULY
   19, 1885.

   "Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we
   should be called the sons of God." 1 John 3:1

   So far we keep to our Authorized Version. Now read the Revised Version,
   and note the words added-- "Behold what manner of love the Father has
   bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God: and such we
   are."

   DEAR friends, the most of my text will be found in our Old Version, but
   for once I shall ask you to look elsewhere for a part of it. A genuine
   fragment of Inspired Scripture has been dropped by our older
   translators and it is too precious to be lost. Did not our Lord say,
   "Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost"? The half
   lost portion of our text is restored to us in the Revised Version.
   Never did a translation of the New Testament fail more completely than
   this Revised Version has done as a book for general reading, but as an
   assistant to the student, it deserves honorable mention, despite its
   faults! It exhibits, here and there, special beauties and has, no
   doubt, in certain places, brought into notice words of sacred Scripture
   which had fallen out. We have a notable instance in my present text.
   Turn to the First Epistle of John, the third chapter, at the first
   verse--

   The word "such" is not in the original. We therefore leave it out and
   then we get the words--AND WE ARE. There are only two words in the
   Greek--"and we are." That the addition is correct I have not the
   slightest doubt. Those authorities upon which we depend--those
   manuscripts which are best worthy of notice--have these words and they
   are to be found in the Vulgate, the Alexandrian and several other
   versions. They ought never to have dropped out. In the judgment of the
   most learned and those best to be relied on, these are veritable words
   of Inspiration. So far as doctrine is concerned, it does not matter,
   much, whether they are or are not in the original text because we get
   the same words farther on. "Beloved, now are we children of God, and it
   is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that if He shall be
   manifested, we shall be like He; for we shall see Him even as He is."

   The point that struck me as being most worthy of notice was that when
   the Apostle had said, "We shall be called children of God," he then
   adds--We are not only to be called so, but we are so. The glory of it
   is that we now have this thing. We have it in possession--"and we are."
   This little interjected assertion, "and we are," brings most forcibly
   before my own mind the truth of our present sonship towards God--"That
   we should be called children of God: and we are."

   Let me now introduce to you my text as I mean to preach from it--

   "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we
   should be called children of God: and we are."

   Our text begins with the exclamation "Behold." This word, "Behold," is
   a word of wonder. John had lived among wonders. John's life, from the
   time of his conversion, was a life of wonders, not only in what he saw
   with his natural eyes, but in all the sights that the Lord gave him to
   see with his spiritual eyes when He appeared to him in "the isle which
   is called Patmos." His life was crowned with wonders in his memorable
   escape from martyrdom, when, according to tradition he was cast into a
   caldron of boiling oil, but came out unharmed--his Master having
   determined that he was not by martyrdom to glorify His name. If ever
   there was a Seer among men to whom wonders became common things, it was
   John! Yet as he wrote this heavenly Epistle, he could not help bursting
   out in exclamations of amazement such as do not generally come from
   writers so much as from speakers--"Behold," he says, "Behold, what
   manner of love!"

   I believe, my Brothers and Sisters, that if we realized the truth of
   our own adoption into the family of God, we would never leave off
   marveling at it. That any man of mortal race should become a child of
   God might astound us, but that we, ourselves, should be such should
   amaze us beyond degree! We ought to cry, "Behold! Behold!" Let us begin
   to talk of it now, for we shall never cease to speak of it when we
   reach the New Jerusalem. Our regeneration and adoption are complex
   miracles of Grace--a cluster of wonders condensed into one. It would
   seem too good to be true if the Lord, Himself, had not revealed it! We
   will call upon angels, principalities and powers and say to them with
   delighted wonder, "Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed
   upon us." Admire, O sanctified intelligences, that God should do this
   for unworthy sons of Adam!--

   "Behold what wondrous Grace

   The Father has bestowed

   On sinners of a mortal race

   To call them sons of God!"

   But this, "Behold," is also a note of instruction. It is as if the man
   of God said, "Stand still and consider the extraordinary love of God."
   Do not speak of it, for some of these things slip glibly from the
   tongue. No, rather sit down and ponder, and weigh, and mark and behold!
   Behold, what manner of love. Here, take your glass and look at it
   microscopically. Study it. Wonder at it. Study it with every faculty
   concentrated upon it, for you shall find new excellences in it every
   time you look into it. "Behold, what manner of love"--the very manner
   of it is exceedingly sublime and adorable! Do not merely glance and go
   your way, but stop and rest and pry into this secret, comparing this
   love with all other loves, and the manner of it with the manner of men.
   Come here and dig where there are nuggets of pure gold to reward every
   moment of your industry! Here sink your shafts and go into the depths
   to bring up this priceless treasure. Behold-- read, mark, learn,
   inwardly digest and still behold again! Look, and look, and look
   on--for there will be no end to the discoveries you will make. When you
   have looked, remember that you have not been gazing upon a mere
   appearance, but have beheld an actual fact--"Behold what manner of love
   the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children
   of God." When you have beheld this, then look again and behold with
   equal admiration that it is no supposition, or fancy, or romance--the
   Lord calls us children--"and we are'"

   Thus having introduced the text with its own note of exclamation, I
   invite you to behold the two wonders which are enshrined within it. I
   would first say--Let us behold with joyful wonder our being called the
   sons of God. And then, secondly, let us behold the equal wonder of our
   being really so, expressed in those three words, "and we are."

   I. First, then, behold THE WONDER OF OUR BEING CALLED THE SONS OF GOD.

   Who calls us so? That is the wonder! Men take upon themselves great
   names without any right to them. There are degrees among men that are
   degrees of shame because the persons who claim them were never justly
   entitled to them. It is one thing for us to call ourselves children of
   God and another thing for the Father to bestow His love so that we are
   truly called the sons of God. From where does this princely title of
   "sons of God" come? Who calls the saints, the sons of God?

   The Father Himself does! He speaks unto them as unto children. He deals
   with them as with sons. He is pleased in infinite love to bid them say,
   "Our Father," and He answers to them by calling them children and
   heirs. He acknowledges their sonship and pities them as a father pities
   his children. He has called them sons, saying, "I will be a Father unto
   you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord God
   Almighty." Oh, what a blessing it is to have God calling you His
   child--the great Almighty and Infinite One looking upon you with a
   Father's love and saying, "You are My son!" He speaks the truth and we
   may believe it and be sure! He knows His own children and gives the
   name of sons to none whom He will, in the end, disown. He calls us His
   children--and we are!

   Who has called us the sons of God? Jesus Himself, the first-born among
   many Brethren, has called us so! Did He not speak of, "My Father and
   your Father"? What did He mean when He was not ashamed to call us
   Brothers and Sisters? Everywhere our dear Lord and Master speaks of us
   as belonging to the one family of which He is the Head. By sweetly
   taking us into union with Himself, Jesus practically calls us Sons of
   God--and we are!

   The Holy Spirit also dwells in all the heirs of Heaven and thereby
   calls them sons of God. He bears witness with our spirit that we are
   the sons of God and it is He who is given to us to be "the Spirit of
   adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." That, "Abba, Father," of ours
   is prompted by the Spirit of Grace who would never prompt a stranger
   and an alien to claim kinship with the Lord. Oh no! The witness of the
   Holy Spirit is the witness of truth! A filial spirit implanted by the
   Spirit of God cannot deceive us. Thus Father, Son and Holy Spirit call
   us the children of God--and we are!

   With these the holy angels are in full accord. Not in words, perhaps,
   but in acts and deeds which speak quite as loudly, they declare us to
   be the children of God. They bear us up in their hands, lest we dash
   our foot against a stone and this they do because we belong to the
   Divine family! "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to
   minister for them

   who shall be heirs of salvation"? They acknowledge that we are heirs of
   God and, therefore, they act as our waiting servants.

   All Providence, Brothers and Sisters, acknowledges us to be children of
   God, if we are, indeed, so. This is specially true of chastening
   Providences. When they come to us, they gently whisper, "What son is
   there whom the Father chastens not?" Yes, trials and afflictions,
   especially such as come for the Truth of God's sake and because of our
   love to Christ, are tokens of sonship. The persecution which is
   involved in holy and separated living is the witness of Providence that
   we are no longer of the evil seed, but are adopted sons of God.

   Yes, and I trust that there are some here who can modestly say that
   they have, even, the witness of men, for they are called the children
   of God even by men who do not know much about the mysteries of the new
   birth. "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the
   children of God"--they shall not only be so, but they shall extort from
   others the confession that they are so. I am sure that when William
   Penn dealt so kindly and peacefully with the Indians when everybody
   else was false to them, the untutored man of the woods felt that the
   Quakers were children of the Great Spirit. Their peacefulness was a
   mark of their descent from the God of Peace. Any man or woman who shall
   be well known to bear injuries with patience and to make no return but
   that of doing good for evil shall be recognized, even by scoffers and
   blasphemers, as a child of God! God is Love--and wherever there is
   love, men with more or less of intelligence trace it to God. They
   cannot help it. Blessed are you, Beloved, if you have the witness,
   even, of your enemies, that you are the children of God--and you will
   have that witness if your lives are conformed to the holy Law of Love!

   Behold, then, how God's people are called the sons of God--called with
   a Divine calling to which all things bear corroborating witness so that
   they believe--and are sure! And in reply to all voices attesting their
   sonship they cry, "and we are!"

   Enquire next, what is involved in this calling them to be the children
   of God? What is there conspicuous in it? Read the

   passage. "Behold, what manner of_. "What is the word? "What manner of
   gift the Father has bestowed upon us

   that we should be called the children of God"? It might have been so
   written and have been quite correct. But it is not so written. "Behold
   what manner of honor the Father has bestowed"? No, no! "Behold what
   manner of LOVE the Father has bestowed upon us"--as much as to say that
   the adopting of a man to be a son of God is an act which involves so
   much of love that you are bid, especially, to fix your eyes on the love
   of it and to notice its manner. "Behold what manner of love the Father
   has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God."

   Now just think for a minute what intense love is manifested to that man
   who is favored to be called a child of God. It is love in the highest
   degree! What love you would have in your heart if you were to take a
   wanton and malicious enemy and say, "You shall be my son!" If one had
   wronged you and despised you and defied your authority--and you should
   say to him, "You shall be my child from this time forth"--what an
   amazing deed of love this would be! Yet it might not be very much for
   you to do, my dear Friend, for you may be, after all, nothing very
   great! It would, however, be the utmost your love could devise! Only
   think of what it must be for God--even that Infinite and Eternal
   Spirit--to say, "You shall be My child. I will take you, though you are
   an heir of wrath, and make you Mine." Herein, indeed, is love! Love
   worth the beholding!

   It is certainly an undeserved love because no man can possibly deserve
   to be made into a child of God. Grace in this instance is the sole
   source of the stream of goodness. You might think it possible that you
   could deserve some ordinary gift, but such a blessing as to be made a
   son of God you could not deserve! If you had never sinned, I do not see
   that you could have had any right to sonship. The most faithful service
   does not make a servant into a son. Had you been perfect, what would
   you have given to God as purchase money for this high dignity? He is
   great and glorious without your service! To be promoted to be a prince
   of the blood royal of Heaven--it is not possible for any man to deserve
   this! No works can climb to this lofty place--only faith can reach it
   by the power of Grace. "But as many as received Him, to them gave He
   power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His
   name." This power, this privilege, this honor of sonship before God is
   gained in no other way but that of faith--and that is the gift of God!

   And oh, see the blessed manner of love there must be in it, since there
   is everlasting love in it for, if God makes you to be called a son of
   God, that is done and done forever--and it never can be undone. Here is
   the joy of it. The servant abides not in the house forever--but a son
   abides always. The relationships that come of service begin and end.
   You know it is so among men. You can say to a hired servant--"There,
   take your money and be gone." But you cannot say

   that to your son! Whatever you give him, or do not give him, if he is
   your son, he is your son and always must be so. Especially is this true
   of the children of God--that they are not only called the children of
   God, but it is added--"and we are'" In very deed we are and always
   shall be His sons! We are made really to be what we are said to be. We
   are called the children of God and we are the children of God--and this
   cannot be undone. How greatly do I rejoice in the final perseverance of
   the saints! As I have often said, I would not go across the street to
   pick up the other kind of salvation which only saves me for a while and
   afterwards lets me slip through! Grace brings me into the family of God
   and keeps me there. When the Lord calls me His son, I know what He
   means--He intends all that we mean by the relationship and more! He
   does not mean that He will cast His children away, or suffer them to
   perish, but He means this--"I will put My fear in their hearts and they
   shall not depart from Me." Or, as the Lord Jesus puts it, "I give unto
   My sheep eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any
   man pluck them out of My hand."

   "Behold," then, "what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us,
   that we should be called the sons of God." It is infinite love that
   knows no end. It is the love of the Father--that glorious Person of the
   blessed Trinity in whom the fountain of all Grace is seen. It is the
   Father who in boundless love has called us to be His sons! How I
   delight to trace this love up to the Fountainhead! Jesus says, "the
   Father Himself loves you." It is not the death of Jesus which moved the
   heart of the Father to love us, as some fondly dream--the truth is that
   the Father's love is the reason why Jesus was given. "Behold, what
   manner of love the FATHER has bestowed upon us." How it unveils the
   heart of the Father when we see that He who gave His Son for us has
   also bestowed upon us this manner of love that we should be called His
   sons! Let us adore and love the great Father of our spirits, whose love
   is the first cause of all our blessings.

   Now, while I am asking for your wonderment in answer to the
   questions--Who calls us sons? and, What is involved in the call? I will
   reply to another question--"Who are the persons thus called sons?"
   "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we
   should be called children of God." It is bestowed upon us men and
   women. We are poor creatures when we make the best of ourselves and yet
   He calls us sons of God. "Unto which of the angels said He at any time,
   You are My son?" Brethren, this dignity is reserved for us whom He has
   made a little lower than the angels! Think of what His Only-Begotten
   Son is like--that glorious Son of God of whom He says, "Let all the
   angels of God worship Him." Behold how in splendor of beneficence He
   deigns to call us, also, His sons and so to put us side by side with
   the Only-Begotten--not on an equality as far as His Godhead is
   concerned, for that cannot be--but yet bestowing on us that same love
   with which He loves His Son! He loves us in Christ even as He loves
   Christ Himself! Behold, what manner of love it is, that we should be
   adopted and regenerated by the living God!

   And this is true, remember, of that poor man who does not know where
   tomorrow's bread shall come from. You say he is not respectable, but I
   say that he is right honorable, for God has called him His son! I mean
   that man whose name was never heard of, who lives in a room in a back
   street and when he dies will be buried in the corner of the cemetery,
   "unwept, unhonored, and unsung." Yes, God has bestowed this manner of
   love upon him--that he is called one of His sons! Yes, I mean that poor
   consumptive girl--I mean that lame, decrepit youth! I mean that blind
   man who begs his bread. Behold, what manner of love the Father has
   bestowed on such as these! Poor cottagers, hard-working men and women,
   cobblers and tinkers! Chimney sweepers and laborers--such as these He
   calls the sons of God when He has renewed them by His Grace! Ah, and I
   mean those who are lying yonder in the hospital and in the workhouse
   infirmary who are nearing their last hour upon beds found for them by
   charity. These are God's children if they believe in Jesus! They pine
   away till bedsores make it hard to move and harder to lie still.
   Dissolved by pain, they are melting away into eternity--but behold what
   manner of love the Father has bestowed upon such poor, frail mortals as
   these, that they should be called the sons of God--and they are!

   Yet the wonder rises a stage higher when we recollect that these are
   not only men and women, but sinners. Behold, what manner of love the
   Father has bestowed upon us sinful ones, that we should be called the
   children of God! He has taken us from the dunghill and washed us--and
   then made us to sit at His royal table! You know the story in Ezekiel
   of the infant cast out in the open field, defiled in its own blood and
   how He that passed by looked on it, and said, "Live," and washed it,
   and swaddled it, and fed it. It is just what the Lord has done for us
   poor sinful men and women. We were cast out under condemnation, but
   behold what manner of love He has bestowed upon us guilty ones to make
   us children of God! Alas, even after we are made His sons, we are not
   free from evil--we still need that abundant Grace should have

   patience with us. We still grieve Him by lukewarmness and
   backsliding--and yet He calls us children! Behold what manner of love
   He has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God!

   There! I do not feel as if I wanted to preach about it. I long to sit
   down and cry over it for very joy of heart. That ever God should have
   put me among His children shall be my everlasting wonder! How could He
   love such a vain, frail, sinful, troubled creature, full of all manner
   of infirmities! Yet the Spirit of adoption makes me cry with boldness,
   "Doubtless You are my Father!" I cannot help it. I know that I am His
   and I dare not question it. But what manner of love, what manner of
   love, He has bestowed on me! Do you not say the same? Does not the
   gracious Spirit of God now move on your soul and make you stand in
   amazement at Divine Grace? Do you not melt with humble gratitude? What
   was there in you? What is there in you that you should be a son of God?
   If children, then heirs--heirs of God, joint-heirs with Jesus
   Christ--why are we lifted to such a privilege? The blessing of sonship
   has earth and Heaven wrapped up in it and all this is ours! If we know
   ourselves, we mourn our lack of worthiness and yet we rejoice that we
   are the Lord's dear children. When we consider the persons who are
   called the children of God, there is, indeed, reason to say, "Behold,
   what manner

   of love!"

   And, once more, let me just go over the ground again, and show you what
   is connected with being called the children of God.

   It is, as it were, God's public acknowledgment of His relation to
   us--He acknowledges us as sons! Sometimes we hear of clandestine
   marriages which may be valid, but the man seems to be ashamed to
   acknowledge his wife. He pleads that he be permitted to not introduce
   her into the noble family to which he belongs and so he keeps the
   marriage in the dark. And he does not admit there are children. This is
   after the manner of wicked men! But God is not ashamed of us when He
   takes us to be His children. It is written concerning our Lord Jesus,
   "For this cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren." I have heard
   of some fine gentleman in London, dressed in all his best, walking out
   in the park. He had a poor old father who lived in the country and who
   came up dressed in his rustic raiment to see his son. As the son was
   not at home when the father reached the house, he went into the park to
   find him. Now, the fine gentleman did not absolutely disown his father,
   but he went out of the park at a pretty sharp trot, for fear anybody
   should say, "Who is that country fellow you were talking with?"

   He did not like to acknowledge his father because he was a laborer.
   That is mean as the mud in the kennel, is it not? We would not thus
   wonder if the glorious Lord refused to acknowledge us! There is such a
   come-down from the loftiness of His holiness to the depth of our
   faultiness. But yet He has such love, such a manner of love, that He
   bestows upon us this honor, that we should be openly called the sons of
   God! He Himself tells us so in our text. His Spirit makes the avowal.
   "There," He says, "you poor people that love Me. You sick people, you
   unknown, obscure people, without any talent--I have published it before
   Heaven and earth and made the angels know it--you are My children and I
   am not ashamed of you! I Glory in the fact that I have taken you for My
   sons and daughters."

   There is, moreover, this involved in it, that He claims our loving
   obedience. Do not put dishonor upon your Father's name! Stand up for
   your Father. It is one of the marks of a true child that he cannot bear
   to say or do anything that would place his Father's name under a cloud.
   God, as it were, stakes His honor upon the character of everyone of His
   people. He has said, "They shall be called My children." Now, if you do
   anything that is wrong or base, what will men think of your Father? He
   has condescended to call you a child--do not let His name be evilly
   spoken of through you. He has put this high honor upon us, that we
   should be called His sons and daughters--let us seek so to behave
   ourselves that men may see our good works and glorify our Father who is
   in Heaven! I have taken up all this time with the first part of the
   verse, but we must not forget the second part of it, "and we are." I
   shall only introduce it to your meditation and, indeed, this is all
   that is needed if you are able to repeat the words on your own account
   and say, "and we are."

   II. The second and greatest wonder is THE WONDER OF OUR REALLY BEING
   THE SONS OF GOD. "And we are."

   Adoption gives us the name of God's children. The new birth gives us
   the Nature of God's children. And so in both senses we are. Adoption is
   the legal act by which our Father receives us. Regeneration is that
   spiritual deed by which we receive the nature of our Father. Every man
   that is really adopted into the family of God also really becomes a son
   of God by being begotten, again, unto a lively hope. I want to put it
   to you, my Hearers, whether you can, on this double ground, join in
   these Inspired Words, and say, "And we are"?

   Let us work out the question. Are we really the children of God? We
   must answer that question by another--Do we truly believe in the Lord
   Jesus Christ? I have already quoted the Inspired Declaration--"But as
   many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God,
   even to them that believe on His name." We can answer that question.
   Are we believing in the Lord Jesus Christ with all our heart? Is He our
   confidence? Do we trust in His blood and righteousness? If so, if we
   believe in Him, then He has given us the right and the power to become
   the sons of God!

   That question, alone, might settle it, but let us go a little farther.
   If we indeed can say, "and we are," then we have received some measure
   of the Nature of God. Have you, Brothers and Sisters, become spiritual?
   God is a spirit. Do you hate sin? God is holy. Do you love that which
   is right? Let your conscience speak. Do you endeavor to act generously?
   Does love rule you? Do you seek to be full of pity, tender, courteous
   and kind? Have you love to God and love to men? For, if not, you have
   not the Nature of God, for God is Love. Have you somewhat of that
   Nature and is there within you a longing and a striving to have the
   whole Nature of God in you, as far as it can dwell in mortal man?
   Remember, no person can be a child of God if he has not something of
   likeness to God. If you are not in the least like your Father, then you
   make a mistake if you profess to be His child. "You are made partakers
   of the Divine Nature," says one of the Apostles, "having escaped the
   corruption that is in the world through lust."

   Am I a child of God? Then listen--I have a love to my Father. If you
   are truly born from above, your heart goes out in longings after Him to
   whom you owe your heavenly birth! If you are no child of God, you can
   live without Him. Indeed, you will try to do so! To the most of men,
   God is virtually non-existent. They look up to the skies and view the
   wondrous lights of Heaven, but they never think of Him who shines
   through them. They do not believe that there is such a Being, or else
   they have to admit that there must be a design and a Designer--and that
   is an end of the matter with them. Whether there is a God or not is no
   matter of importance to them. How different is it with the regenerate!
   To us God is All in All. To love God is the great fact of my life! The
   tears run down my cheeks when I think of Him. He is everything to me--

   "Do not I love You from my soul?

   Then let me nothing love! Dead be my heart to every joy,

   When Jesus cannot mo ve.

   Have You a lamb in all your flock

   I would disdain to feed?

   Have You a foe, before whose face

   I fear Your cause to plead?"

   It cannot long be a question with the child of God whether he loves his
   Father or not. It may occasionally happen that he has to make the
   enquiry, for times and circumstances will test him, but before long he
   comes to the solemn conclusion, "You know all things; You know that I
   love You."

   More than that--if I am a child of God, I learn to trust my Father. I
   do not know a more delightful act of childhood than trustfulness in a
   parent. And how often, if we trust God, we shall be rewarded! A
   circumstance happened to me yesterday. I cannot help telling it to you.
   I received a note from one of the trustees of the Orphanage to say that
   the running account was so low that when the checks were paid on Friday
   morning, we should have overdrawn our banking account. I did not like
   that state of things, but I did not fret about it. I breathed a prayer
   to God that He would send money to put into the bank to keep the
   account right. Last night, at nearly ten o'clock, I opened a letter
   that came from Belfast and it had in it a check for £200, being the
   amount left as a legacy. I wrote across my acknowledgment, "O magnify
   the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together!"

   That amount put the account square for the time being and though the
   Orphanage has no ready money to go on with, still that does not
   matter--God will send more means during the week and at all other times
   when the expenditure calls for it. At the moment when I opened the
   letter and found the £200, I felt as if my hair stood on end because of
   the conscious nearness of the Lord my God! My Brother, Hugh Hannah,
   when he sent that check and sent it on that particular day, did not
   know that it would come just when I was praying to God for help in a
   time of trouble--yet it came exactly when it was sought for! If I were
   to tell my own personal experience of the way in which God hears
   prayer, it would seem to you as if it could not be true--it would
   appear too romantic. But oh, it is a blessed thing to take everything
   to

   God, little or big, and leave all with Him! I am resolved to live and
   die trusting in the living God and you shall all mark for yourselves
   whether He forsakes me, or bears me through!

   Look how your child trusts you. He comes to you, and cries, "Please,
   father, I have a thorn in my finger." Or, "Please, father, I have lost
   my pocket handkerchief." No matter what his trials are, the child
   brings them all to father or mother. You turn from your business and
   attend to him. You say, "My dear, I will see to you directly." You love
   your little boy and, therefore, his little concerns are not too little
   for you. And God, who gave us to be called the sons of God, teaches us
   to cry, "and we are," and leads us in that confidence to go to Him with
   each day's burden and care--and prove for ourselves that we are the
   objects of the Father's love!

   Now, the true child of God not only shows love and trust, but he also
   suffers sorrow when he has grieved his Father. If you grieve over sin,
   if you grieve over error, if you grieve over your omissions, if you go
   to God with tears in your eyes because you are not what He would have
   you to be, this sorrow proves that you are one of His children. He that
   can sin without sorrow will one day sorrow without hope! A broken heart
   is one of the most sure signs of sonship. We have this grief and this
   proves that we are sons of God, "and we are."

   You may also know a child by his joys. If a child has joy when his
   father is glad, when his father's name is honored, oh, then you believe
   that he is his father's child! I thought to myself one day, "Well, I
   have preached this Gospel to vast crowds of people but is it my own?
   Perhaps I have only an official hold of it and have no personal grip of
   it for myself." I had a day's respite and I went in to hear the Word of
   God in a humble, out-of-the-way room. I sat down on a form and heard a
   working-man preach the Gospel very sweetly. By the way, the sermon was
   originally my own, and this the preacher acknowledged most freely! But
   as he preached it, I found myself melted down with the story of God's
   Love. My heart was so hot within me that I was ready to shout,
   "Hallelujah!" when I heard the preacher magnifying the name of Christ
   Jesus, my Lord! And I said to myself, "Oh, you are a child of God,
   after all! You love this food as well as the other children do! And
   though you generally have to stand at the table and be a waiter and
   sometimes wish you could sit and have a meal, yourself, you still do
   love this heavenly Bread! You have a taste for the things that God
   provides for His people." Yes, I could talk thus to myself and of
   myself--and feel myself to be a child of God. I came away comforted,
   for I felt that I had a share in the joys of the heirs of salvation!

   Need I go on to tell you what are the sure evidences of being a child
   of God? The man who is truly such cries, "Why, everything is an
   evidence." Wherever he is, God is with him! And if he thinks that he
   has wandered away from God five minutes, he cries to be back again. He
   sees his Father everywhere--where the infidel cannot see Him at all. He
   spies Him in the clouds. He hears Him in the thunder. He beholds His
   flaming Glory in every lightning flash and His tender pity in every
   dewdrop. With God and on God the Believer lives! In God he lives and
   God lives in him! All his expectations are from God. Everywhere, in
   every time and in every way, he proves that he is a child of God
   because he continues to draw his life from his Divine Father!

   Then God gives him one more seal of his being His child and that is
   that He chastens him. I know an old friend who used to tell me that for
   60 years he had never known a day's illness. A splendid healthy old man
   he was--and about three months ago the old man took typhoid fever. I
   went to see him and when he got better, he came to see me and, sitting
   down, he said, "Well, Sir, you see I am not the man I was, but I have
   made a great advance through this sickness. I have never known any
   weakness before, but now I have been brought very low. The Bible says,
   'If you are without chastisement, of which all are partakers, then are
   you bastards, and not sons.' Oh," he said, "I am not a bastard after
   all! I have had my chastening and I hope I shall take up my sonship
   more than I ever did before." God grant that every chastened child may
   gather assurance from the Covenant rod! You, dear child of God, will
   not be long without a touch of the rod! May you have as little of it as
   the Lord judges to be proper! As for myself, I owe everything to the
   furnace and the hammer. I have made no progress in heavenly learning
   except when I have been whipped by the Great Schoolmaster! The best
   piece of furniture in my house has been the Cross! My greatest enricher
   has been personal pain and for that I desire to thank God. I can sing
   with the poet--

   "God in Israel sows the seeds Of affliction, pain and toil. These
   spring up and choke the weeds Which would else overspread the soil.
   Trials make the promise sweet!

   Trials give new life to prayer!

   Trials bring me to His feet,

   Lay me low, and keep me there." The children of God under the rod can
   say, "And we are!" Thank God for anything which emphasizes that
   affirmation-- "And we are." It is wondrous love that we should be
   called the children of God, "and we are." The bastard kicks against his
   father's stroke, but the wise child kisses the rod and blesses the hand
   that uses it--and cries, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."
   This is a sure seal of our true sonship.

   The text says, "And we are." I must turn it round, and ask, "Are we?"
   And when you have worked that out and you can say, "Yes," then I want
   you all to get to be very positive about this matter--"Now are we the
   sons of God." I pray that you may be able to say boldly, "And we are."
   When you are depressed and your spirit hangs fire, say, "We are." When
   the devil says, "If you are the children of God," give him a slap in
   the face with this, "And we are." And when the world says, "What? You
   call yourselves sons of God?" say, "Yes, and we are." Whenever doubts
   and fears come in, drive these evil birds away from eating your ripe
   fruit and let this be the shout you use, "And we are." "Behold what
   manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be
   called children of God: and we are." Called by His name, may we enjoy
   the full assurance of faith through believing in Jesus! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

"Where Are The Nine?"--or, Praise Neglected

   (No. 1935)

   A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, DECEMBER 20, 1886,
   DELIVERED

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, OCTOBER
   7, 1886.

   "And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with
   a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face atHis feet,
   givingHim thanks. Andhe was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said, Were
   there not 10 cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there not any found
   that returned to give glory to God, except this foreigner? And He said
   to him, Arise, go your way: your faith has made you whole." Luke 17:15
   -19.

   You have often heard the leprosy described--it was a very horrible
   disease, I should think the worst that flesh is heir to. We ought to be
   much more grateful than we are that this fell disease is scarcely known
   in our favored country. You have also heard what an instructive symbol
   it is in human flesh of what sin is in the human soul, how it pollutes,
   how it destroys. I need not go into that sad subject. But here was a
   sight for the Savior--10 men that were lepers! A mass of sorrow,
   indeed! What sights our Lord still sees every day in this sin-defiled
   world! Not 10 men that are sinners, nor even merely 10 millions are to
   be found all the world over, but on this earth there are a thousand
   millions of men diseased in soul! It is a miracle of condescension that
   the Son of God should set foot in such a lazar house as this.

   Yet observe the triumphant Grace of our Lord Jesus to the 10 men that
   were lepers. It would make a man's fortune, it would crown a man with
   lifelong fame to heal one leper--but our Lord healed 10 lepers at once!
   So full a fountain of Grace is He, so freely does He dispense His
   favor, that the 10 are told to go and show themselves to the priests
   because they are healed--and on the way to the priests they find it is
   so! None of us can imagine the joy they felt when they perceived that
   they were healed. Oh, it must have been a sort of new birth to them to
   find their flesh made fresh as that of a little child! It would not
   have been amazing if the whole 10 had hurried back and fallen at Jesus'
   feet and lifted up their voices in a tenfold Psalm! The sad thing about
   it is that nine of them, though they were healed, went on their way to
   the priests in the coolest possible manner--we never hear of their
   return--they drop out of the story altogether. They have obtained a
   blessing, they go their way and that is an end of them.

   Only one of them, a Samaritan, returned to express his thanks. Misery
   has strange bedfellows and so the nine lepers of the seed of Israel
   consorted with an outcast Samaritan--and he, strange to tell it, was
   the only one who, seized by a sudden impulse of gratitude, made his way
   to his Benefactor, fell down at His feet and began to glorify God!

   If you search the world around, among all choice spices you shall
   scarcely meet with the frankincense of gratitude. It ought to be as
   common as the dewdrops that hang upon the hedges in the morning but,
   alas, the world is dry of thankfulness to God! Gratitude to Christ was
   scarcely enough in His own day! I had almost said it was 10 to one that
   nobody would praise Him, but I must correct myself a little--it was
   nine to one! One day in seven is for the Lord's worship, but not one
   man in 10 is devoted to His praise! Our subject is thankfulness to the
   Lord Jesus Christ.

   I. I begin with the point that I have already touched upon, namely, THE
   SINGULARITY OF THANKFULNESS.

   Here note there are more who receive benefits than ever give praise for
   them. Nine persons healed, one person glorifying God. Nine persons
   healed of leprosy, mark you, and only one person kneeling down at
   Jesus' feet and thanking Him for it! If for this surpassing benefit,
   which might have made the dumb to sing, men only thank the Lord in the
   proportion of one in 10, what shall I say of what we call God's common
   mercies--only common because He is so liberal with them, for each of
   them is inestimably valuable? Life, health, eyesight, hearing, domestic
   love, the continuance of friendships--I cannot attempt a catalog of
   benefits that we receive every day--and yet is there one man in 10 that
   praises God for these?

   A cold, "Thank God!" is all that is given. Others of us do praise Him
   for these benefits, but what poor praises! Dr. Watts' hymn is sadly
   true--

   "Hosannas languish on our tongues, And our devotion dies."

   We do not praise the Lord fitly, proportionately, intensely. We receive
   a continent of mercies and only return an island of praise. He gives us
   new blessings every morning and fresh ones every evening--great is His
   faithfulness--and yet we let the years roll round and seldom observe a
   day of praise. Sad is it to see God all goodness and man all
   ingratitude! The tribe who receives benefits may say, "My name is
   legion," but those who praise God are so few that a child may write
   them.

   But there is something more remarkable than this--the number of those
   who pray is greater than the number of those who praise. For these 10
   men that were lepers all prayed. Poor and feeble as their voices had
   become through disease, yet they lifted them up in prayer and united in
   crying--"Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" They all joined in the
   litany, "Lord, have mercy upon us! Christ, have mercy upon us!" But
   when they came to the Te Deum, magnifying and praising God, only one of
   them took up the note! One would have thought that all who prayed would
   praise, but it is not so. Cases have been where a whole ship's crew, in
   time of storm, has prayed, and yet none of that crew have sung the
   praise of God when the storm has become a calm. Multitudes of our
   fellow citizens pray when they are sick and near to dying, but when
   they grow better, their praises grow sick unto death! The angel of
   mercy, listening at their door, has heard no canticle of love, no song
   of thankfulness. Alas, it is too sadly true that more pray than praise!

   I put it in another shape to you who are God's people--most of us pray
   more than we praise. You pray little enough, I fear, but praise, where
   is that? At our family altars we always pray, but seldom praise. In our
   closets we constantly pray, but do we frequently praise? Prayer is not
   so heavenly an exercise as praise--prayer is for time, but praise is
   for eternity! Praise, therefore, deserves the first and highest place,
   does it not? Let us commence the employment which occupies the
   celestials. Prayer is for a beggar, but I think he is a poor beggar who
   does not also give praise when he receives an alms. Praise ought to
   naturally follow upon the heels of prayer, even when it does not, by
   Divine Grace, go before it. If you are afflicted, if you lose money, if
   you fall into poverty, if your child is ill, if chastisement visits you
   in any form, you begin to pray and I do not blame you for it. But
   should it be all praying and no praising? Should our life have so much
   salt and so little sweet in it? Should we get for ourselves so often a
   drink from the rock of blessing and so seldom pour out a drink offering
   unto the Lord Most High? Come, let us chide ourselves as we acknowledge
   that we offer so much more prayer than praise!

   On the same head, let me remark that more obey ritual than ever praise
   Christ. When Jesus said, "Go show yourselves to the priests," off they
   went, all 10 of them! Not one stayed behind. Yet only one came back to
   behold a personal Savior and to praise His name. So today--you will go
   to Church, you will go to Chapel, you will read a book, you will
   perform an outward religious action, but oh, how little praising God,
   how little lying at His feet and feeling that we could sing our souls
   away for gratitude to Him who has done such great things for us!
   External religious exercises are easy enough and common enough, but the
   internal matter, the drawing out of the heart in thankful love--how
   scarce a thing it is! Nine obey ritual where only one praises the Lord!

   Once more, to come yet closer home, there are more that believe than
   there are that praise, for these 10 men did believe, but only one
   praised the Lord Jesus. Their faith was about the leprosy and,
   according to their faith, so it was unto them. This faith, though it
   only concerned their leprosy, was yet a very wonderful faith. It was
   remarkable that they should believe the Lord Jesus though He did not
   even say, "Be healed," nor speak a word to them to that effect, but
   simply said, "Go show yourselves to the priests." With parched skins
   and death burning its way into their hearts, they went bravely off in
   confidence that Jesus must mean to bless them. It was admirable
   faith--and yet none of the nine who thus believed ever came back to
   praise Christ for the mercy received! I am afraid that there is much of
   faith, better faith than theirs, which concerns spiritual things which
   has yet to flower into practical gratitude. Perhaps it blooms late in
   the year, like the chrysanthemum, but certainly it has not flowered in
   springtime like the primrose and the daffodil. It is a faith which
   bears few blossoms of praise!

   I chide myself, sometimes, that I have wrestled with God in prayer,
   like Elijah upon Carmel, but I have not magnified the name of the Lord
   like Mary of Nazareth. We do not laud our Lord in proportion to the
   benefits received! God's

   treasury would overflow if the revenue of thanks were more honestly
   paid. There would be no need to plead for missions and stir up God's
   people to self-denial if there were praise at all proportionate to our
   faith. We believe for Heaven and eternity and yet do not magnify the
   Lord as we should for earth and time! It is real faith, I trust--it is
   not for me to judge it--but it is faulty in result. Faith was only real
   in these lepers so far as their leprosy was concerned. They did not
   believe in our Lord's Divinity, or believe for eternal life. So also
   among ourselves, there are men who get benefits from Christ, who even
   hope that they are saved, but they do not praise Him. Their lives are
   spent in examining their own skins to see whether their leprosy is
   gone. Their religious life reveals itself in a constant searching of
   themselves to see if they are really healed. This is a poor way of
   spending one's energies. This man knew that he was healed. He had full
   assurance upon that point and the next impulse of his spirit was to get
   back to where Jesus stood who had been his glorious Physician, to fall
   at His feet and praise Him with a loud voice, glorifying God! Oh, that
   all my timorous, doubting hearers may do the same!

   I have said enough, I think, upon the scantiness of thanksgiving. Let
   us go over those points again. More receive benefits than praise God
   for them. More pray than praise. More obey ritual than praise God with
   the heart and more believe and receive benefits through faith, than
   rightly praise the Giver of those benefits.

   II. I have a great deal to say and little time to say it in, therefore,
   briefly let us note THE CHARACTERISTICS OF TRUE THANKFULNESS. This
   man's simple act may show the character of praise. It does not take the
   same shape in everybody. Love to Christ, like living flowers, wears
   many forms--only artificial flowers are all alike. Living praise is
   marked by individuality. This man was one of 10 when he was a leper,
   but he was all alone when he returned to praise God. You can sin in
   company, you can go to Hell in company--but when you obtain salvation,
   you will come to Jesus all alone. And when you are saved, though you
   will delight to praise God with others if they will join you, yet if
   they will not, you will delight to sing a solo of gratitude! This man
   quits the company of the other nine and comes to Jesus. If Christ has
   saved you and your heart is right, you will say, "I must praise Him! I
   must love Him!" You will not be kept back by the chilly state of nine
   out of 10 of your old companions, nor by the worldliness of your
   family, nor by the coldness of the Church. Your personal love to Jesus
   will make you speak even if Heaven, earth and sea are all wrapped in
   silence.

   You have a heart burning with adoring love and you feel as if it were
   the only heart under Heaven that had love to Christ in it and,
   therefore, you must feed the heavenly flame. You must indulge its
   desires, you must express its longings. The fire is in your bones and
   must have vent. Since there is an individuality about true praise,
   come, Brothers and Sisters in Christ, let us praise God, each one, in
   his own way!--

   "Oh, may the sweet, the blissful theme,

   Fill every heart and tongue,

   Till strangers lo ve Your charming name,

   And join the sacred song!"

   The next characteristic of this man's thankfulness was promptness. He
   went back to Christ almost immediately, for I cannot suppose the Savior
   lingered at the village gate for hours that day. He was too busy to be
   long in one spot--the Master went about doing good. The man was soon
   back and when you are saved, the quicker you can express your gratitude
   the better. Second thoughts are best, they say, but this is not the
   case when the heart is full of love to Christ! Carry out your first
   thoughts. Do not stop for the second, unless, indeed, your heart is so
   on fire with heavenly devotion that second ones consume the first! Go
   at once and praise the Savior. What grand designs some of you have
   formed of future service for God! What small results have followed! Ah,
   it is better to lay one brick, today, than to propose to build a palace
   next year! Magnify your Lord in the present for present salvation. Why
   should His mercies lie in quarantine? Why should your praises be like
   aloes which take a century to flower? Why should praise be kept waiting
   at the door, even for a night? The manna came fresh in the morning, so
   let your praises rise early! He praises twice who praises at once, but
   he who does not praise at once never praises.

   The next quality of this man's praise was spirituality. We perceive
   this in the fact that he paused on his way to the priests. It was his
   duty to go to the priests--he had received a command to do so--but
   there is a proportion in all things and some duties are greater than
   others. He thought to himself--"I was ordered to go to the priests, but
   I am healed and this new circumstance affects the order of my duties.
   The first thing I ought to do is to go back and bear witness to the
   people, glorifying God in the midst of them all, and falling down at
   Christ's feet." It is well to observe the holy law of

   proportion. Carnal minds take the ritualistic duty first--that which is
   external outweighs, with them, that which is spiritual. But love soon
   perceives that the substance is more precious than the shadow--and that
   to bow at the feet of the Great High Priest must be a greater duty than
   to go before the lesser priests! So the healed leper went first to
   Jesus. In him the spiritual overrode the ceremonial. He felt that his
   main duty was to adore in person the Divine Person who had delivered
   him from his fell disease. Let us go first to Jesus! Let us in spirit
   bow before HIM. Ah, yes! Come to our services, join in our regular
   worship, but if you love the Lord, you will need something besides
   this--you will pine to get to Jesus, Himself, and tell Him how you love
   Him! You will long to do something for Him by yourself, by which you
   can show forth the gratitude of your heart to the Christ of God!

   True thankfulness also manifests itself in intensity. Intensity is
   perceptible in this case. He turned back and with a loud voice
   glorified God. He could have praised, could he not, in a quieter way?
   Yes, but when you are just cured of leprosy and your once feeble voice
   is restored to you, you cannot whisper out your praises! Brothers and
   Sisters, you know it would be impossible to be coolly proper when you
   are newly saved! This man, with a loud voice, glorified God! And you,
   too, feel forced to cry--

   "Gladly would I sound it out so loud That earth and Hea ven could
   hear!" Some of our converts are very wild, at times, and they grow
   extravagant. Do not blame them! Why not indulge them? It will not hurt
   you. We are, all of us, so very proper and orderly that we can afford
   to have an extravagant one among us now and then. Oh, that God would
   send more of that sort to wake the Church up that we, also, might all
   begin to praise God with heart and voice, with soul and substance, with
   might and main! Hallelujah! My own heart feels the glow!

   In true thankfulness, next, there is humility. This man fell down at
   Jesus' feet. He did not feel perfectly in his place until he was lying
   there. "I am nobody, Lord," he seemed to say and, therefore, he fell on
   his face. But the place for his prostration was, "at His feet." I would
   rather be nobody at Christ's feet than everybody anywhere else! There
   is no place so honorable as down at the feet of Jesus! Ah, to lie there
   always and just love Him wholly--and let self die out! Oh, to have
   Christ standing over you as the one figure overshadowing your life from
   this day on and forever! True thankfulness lies low before the Lord.

   Added to this there was worship. He fell down at Jesus' feet,
   glorifying God and giving thanks to Him. Let us worship our Savior! Let
   others think as they like about Jesus, but we will put our finger into
   the print of the nails and say, "My Lord and my God!" If there is a
   God, He is God in Christ Jesus to us. We shall never cease to adore Him
   who has proved His Godhead by delivering us from the leprosy of sin!
   All worship be to His supreme majesty!

   One thing more about this man I want to notice as to his thankfulness
   and that is, his silence as to censuring others. When the Savior said,
   "Where are the nine?" I notice that this man did not reply. The Master
   said, "Where are the nine? Were there not any found that returned to
   give Glory to God, except this foreigner?" But the adoring stranger did
   not stand up and say, "O Lord, they are all gone off to the priests! I
   am astonished at them that they did not return to praise You!" O
   Brothers and Sisters, we have enough to do to mind our own business
   when we feel the Grace of God in our own hearts! If I can only get
   through my service of praise, I shall have no mind to accuse any of you
   who are ungrateful. The Master asks, "Where are the nine?" but the poor
   healed man at His feet has no word to say against those cruel nine! He
   is too much occupied with his personal adoration!

   III. I have not half done and yet you cannot possibly stay beyond the
   appointed hour of closing. Therefore I must compress my third division
   as closely as I possibly can--let us consider THE BLESSEDNESS OF
   THANKFULNESS. This man was more blessed, by far, than the nine. They
   were healed, but they were not blessed as he was. There is a great
   blessedness in thankfulness. First, because it is right. Should not
   Christ be praised? This man did what he could and there is always an
   ease of conscience and a rest of spirit when you feel that you are
   doing all you can in a right cause, even though you fall far short of
   your own desire. At this moment, my Brethren, magnify the Lord--

   "Meet and right it is to sing,

   In every time and place,

   Glory to our heavenly King,

   The God of truth and Grace.

   Join we, then, with sweet accord,

   All in one thanksgiving join!

   Holy, holy, holy Lord, Eternal praise be Yours."

   Next, there is this blessing in thankfulness, that it is a
   manifestation of personal love. I love the Doctrines of Grace, I love
   the Church of God, I love the Sabbath, I love the ordinances, but I
   love Jesus most. My heart never rests until I can glorify God,
   personally, and give thanks unto the Christ, personally. The indulgence
   of personal love to Christ is one of the sweetest things out of Heaven
   and you cannot indulge that personal love so well as by personal
   thankfulness both of heart and mouth and act and deed!

   There is another blessedness about thankfulness--it has clear views.
   The thankful eye sees far and deep. The man healed of leprosy, before
   he went on glorifying God, gave thanks to Jesus. If he had thanked
   Jesus and stopped there, I would have said that his eyes were not well
   open. But when he saw God in Christ and, therefore, glorified God for
   what Christ had done, he showed a deep insight into spiritual truth. He
   had begun to discover the mysteries of the Divine and Human Person of
   the blessed Lord. We learn much by prayer. Did not Luther say, "To have
   prayed well is to have studied well"? I venture to add a rider to what
   Luther has so ably said--"To have praised well is to have studied
   better." Praise is a great instructor! Prayer and praise are the oars
   by which a man may row his boat into the deep waters of the knowledge
   of Christ.

   The next blessedness about praise is that it is acceptable to Christ.
   The Lord Jesus was evidently pleased. He was grieved to think the other
   nine did not come back, but He was charmed with this one man that he
   did return. The question, "Where are the nine?" bears within it a
   commendation of the one. Whatever pleases Christ should be carefully
   cultivated by us. If praise is pleasant to Him, let us continually
   magnify His name! Prayer is the straw of the wheat, but praise is the
   ear. Jesus loves to see the blade grow up, but He loves, better, to
   pluck the golden ears when the harvest of praise is ripe.

   Next, notice that the blessedness of thankfulness is that it receives
   the largest blessing, for the Savior said to this man what He had not
   said to the others, "your faith has made you whole." If you would live
   the higher life, be much in praising God! Some of you are in the lowest
   state as yet, as this man was, for he was a Samaritan--but by praising
   God he rose to be a songster rather than a stranger! How often have I
   noticed how the greatest sinner becomes the greatest praiser! Those
   that were farthest off from Christ, hope and purity--when they become
   saved they feel that they owe the most and, therefore, they love the
   best. May it be the ambition of every one of us, even if we are not,
   originally, among the vilest of the vile, to feel that we owe Jesus
   most! And then we will praise Him most and thus shall we receive the
   richest blessing from His hands!

   I have done when I have said three things. Let us learn from all this
   to put praise in a high place. Let us hold Praise Meetings. Let us
   think it as great a sin to neglect praise as to restrain prayer.

   Next, let us pay our praise to Christ Himself. Whether we go to the
   priests or not, let us go to Him. Let us praise Him personally and
   vehemently! Personal praise to a personal Savior must be our life's
   objective!

   Lastly, if we work for Jesus and we see converts who do not turn out as
   we expected, do not let us be cast down about it. If others do not
   praise our Lord, let us be sorrowful, but let us not be disappointed.
   The Savior had to say, "Where are the nine?" Ten lepers were healed,
   but only one praised Him. We have many converts who do not join the
   Church. We have numbers of persons converted who do not come forward to
   Baptism or to the Lord's Supper. Numbers get a blessing, but do not
   feel love enough to acknowledge it. Those of us who are soul-winners
   are robbed of our wages by the cowardly spirits who hide their faith. I
   thank God that of late we have had many avowing their conversion, but
   if the other nine would come, we would need nine Tabernacles! Alas for
   the many who have gone back after professing their faith! Where are the
   nine?

   So you that hold Cottage Meetings; you that go round with tracts--you
   are doing more good than you will ever hear of! You do not know where
   the nine are, but even if you should only bless one out of 10, you will
   have cause to thank God.

   "Oh," says one, "I have had so little success. I have had only one soul
   saved!" That is more than you deserve. If I were to fish for a week and
   only catch one fish, I would be sorry, but if that fish happened to be
   a sturgeon, a royal fish, I would feel that the quality made up for
   lack of quantity. When you win a soul it is a great prize! One soul
   brought to Christ--can you estimate its value? If one is saved, you
   should be grateful to your Lord and persevere! Though you wish

   for more conversions, you will not despond so long as even a few are
   saved and, above all, you will not be angry if some of them do not
   thank you personally, nor join in Church fellowship with you.
   Ingratitude is common towards soul-winners.

   How often a minister has brought sinners to Christ and fed the flock in
   his early days! But when the old man grows feeble, they want to get rid
   of him and try a new broom which will sweep cleaner! "Poor old
   gentleman, he is quite out of date!" they say, and so they get rid of
   him, as gypsies turn an old horse out on the common to feed or starve,
   they care not which! If anybody expects gratitude, I would remind them
   of the benediction, "Blessed are they that expect nothing, for they
   will not be disappointed." Even our Master did not get praise from the
   nine--therefore do not fret if you bless others and others do not bless
   you! Oh, that some poor soul would come to Christ, tonight--some leper
   to be healed of sin-sickness! If he does find healing, let him come out
   and, with a loud voice magnify the Lord who has dealt so graciously
   with him!
     __________________________________________________________________

The Unkept Vineyard--or, Personal Work Neglected

   (No. 1936)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 19, 1886,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "They made me the keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard have I
   not kept." Song of Solomon 1:6.

   The text is spoken in the first person singular--"They made me."
   Therefore let the preaching, tonight, be personal to you, dear
   Friends--personal to the preacher, first, and then to each one of this
   mixed multitude. May we at this hour think less of others than of
   ourselves! May the sermon be of practical value to our own hearts! I do
   not suppose that it will be a pleasing sermon. On the other hand it may
   be a saddening one. I may bring unhappy memories before you, but let us
   not be afraid of that holy sorrow which is health to the soul. Since
   the spouse in this text speaks of herself, "They made me the keeper of
   the vineyards, but my own vineyard have I not kept," let each one of us
   copy her example and think of ourselves.

   The text is the language of complaint. We are all pretty ready at
   complaining, especially of other people. Not much good comes of picking
   holes in other men's characters and yet many spend hours in that
   unprofitable occupation! It will be well for us, at this time, to let
   our complaint, like that of the text, deal with ourselves. If there is
   something wrong at home, let the father blame himself. If there is
   something evil with the children, let the mother look to her own
   personal conduct as their instructor. Do not let us lend out our ears,
   but let us keep them at home for our own use. Let us clear out an open
   passage to the heart so that everything that is said shall go down into
   the spirit--and purify our inner man. Let us from the heart make the
   confession--"They made me the keeper of the vineyards, but my own
   vineyard have I not

   kept."

   Let us make the text practical. Do not let us be satisfied to have
   uttered the language of complaint, but let us get rid of the evils
   which we deplore. If we have been wrong, let us labor to be right. If
   we have neglected our own vineyard, let us confess it with due
   humiliation, but let us not continue to neglect it. Let us ask God that
   holy results may flow out of our self-lamentations so that before many
   days we may begin to keep our own vineyards carefully by the Grace of
   God! And then we shall better carry out the office of keeper of the
   vineyards of others, if we are called to such an employment.

   There are two things upon which I am going to dwell at this time. The
   first is that there are many Christian people--I hope they are
   Christian people--who will be compelled to confess that the greater
   part of their life is spent in labor which is not of the highest kind
   and is not properly their own. I shall point out the worker who has
   forgotten his heavenly calling. And when I have done with this
   case--and I am afraid that there will be much about it that may touch
   many of us--I shall then take a more general view and deal with any who
   are undertaking other works and neglecting their own proper vocation.

   I. First, then, let me begin with THE CHRISTIAN WHO HAS FORGOTTEN HIS
   HIGH AND HEAVENLY CALLING. In the day when you and I were born again,
   my Brothers and Sisters, we were born for God. In the day when we saw
   that Christ died for us, we were bound, from that day on, to be dead to
   the world. In the day when we were quickened by the Holy Spirit into
   newness of life, that life was bound to be a consecrated one. For a
   thousand reasons it is true that, "You are not your own: you are bought
   with a price." The ideal Christian is one who has been made alive with
   a life which he lives for God. He has risen out of the dominion of the
   world, the flesh and the devil. He reckons that "if one died for all,
   then were all dead: and that He died for all, that they which live
   should not, from this day on, live unto themselves, but unto Him which
   died for them and rose again." This you will not deny. Christian
   Friends, you admit that you have a high, holy and heavenly calling!

   Now let us look back. We have not spent our life idly--we have been
   forced to be keepers of the vineyards. I hope I am not addressing
   anybody here who has tried to live without employment and labor of some
   kind. No, we have worked and we have worked hard. Most men speak of
   their wages as "hard-earned," and I believe that in many cases they
   speak the bare truth. Many hours in the day have to be spent upon our
   occupations. We wake up in the morning and think of what we have to do.
   We go to bed wearied at night by what we have done. This is as it
   should be, for God did not make us that we might sport and play like
   leviathan in the deep. Even in Paradise man was told to dress the
   garden. There is something to be done by each man and specially by each
   Christian.

   Come back to what I began with. In the day when we were born again, as
   many of us as are new creatures in Christ Jesus, we began to live to
   God and not to ourselves. Have we carried out that life? We have
   worked, we have even worked hard--but the questions come to us--What
   have we worked for? Who has been our master? With what objective have
   we toiled? Of course, if I have been true to my profession as a
   Christian, I have lived and worked for God, for Christ, for the Kingdom
   of Heaven. But has it been so? And is it so now? Many are working very
   hard for wealth, which means, of course, for self, that they may be
   enriched. Some are working simply for compensation which means, if it
   goes no farther, still for self. Others work for their families, a
   motive good enough in its way, but still only an enlargement, after
   all, of

   self.

   To the Christian there must always be a far higher, deeper, purer,
   truer motive than self in its widest sense--or else the day must come
   when he will look back upon his life and say, "They made me the keeper
   of the vineyards, but my own vineyard"--that is, the service of Christ,
   the Glory of Him that bought me with His blood--"have I not kept." It
   seems to me to be a terrible calamity to have to look back on 20 years
   and say, "What have I done in all those 20 years for Christ? How much
   of my energy has been spent in striving to glorify Him? I have had
   talents--how many of those talents have been used for Him who gave them
   to me? I have had wealth, or I have had influence. How much of that
   money have I spent distinctly for my Lord? How much of that influence
   have I used for the promotion of His Kingdom?" You have been busy with
   this notion and that motive and the other endeavor--but have you lived
   as you will wish to have lived when you stand at His right hand amidst
   His glories? Have you so acted that you will then judge yourself to
   have well lived when your Lord and Master shall come to call you to
   account?

   Ask yourself, "Am I an earnest laborer together with God, or am I,
   after all, only a laborious trifler, an industrious doer of nothing,
   working hard to accomplish no purpose of the sort for which I ought to
   work, since I ought to live unto my Lord, alone?" I invite all my
   fellow servants, in retrospect, to see whether they have kept their own
   vineyards. I suppose that they have worked hard. I only put the
   question--Have they kept their own vineyards? Have they served the Lord
   in all things?

   I am half afraid to go a step farther. To a very large degree we have
   not been true to our own professions--our highest work has been
   neglected--we have not kept our own vineyards. In looking back, how
   little time has been spent by us in communion with God! How little a
   part of our thoughts has been occupied with meditation, contemplation,
   adoration and other acts of devotion! How little have we surveyed the
   beauties of Christ--His Person, His work, His sufferings, His Glory! We
   say that it is, "Heaven below," to commune with Christ--but do we do
   it? We profess that there is no place like the Mercy Seat. How much are
   we at that Mercy Seat? We often say that the Word of God is
   precious--that every page of it glows with a heavenly light. Do we
   study it?

   Friends, how much time do you spend upon it? I venture to say that the
   bulk of Christians spend more time in reading the newspaper than they
   do in reading the Word of God! I trust that I am too severe in this
   statement, but I am afraid, greatly afraid, that I am not. The last new
   book, perhaps the last sentimental story will win attentive reading,
   when the Divine, mysterious, unutterable depths of heavenly knowledge
   are disregarded by us. Our Puritan forefathers were strong men because
   they lived on the Scriptures. None stood against them in their day, for
   they fed on good meat, whereas their degenerate children are far too
   fond of unwholesome food! The chaff of fiction and the bran of the
   quarterlies are poor substitutes for the old corn of Scripture, the
   fine flour of spiritual Truths of God! Alas, my Brothers and Sisters,
   too many eat the unripe fruit of the vineyards of Satan--and the fruits
   of the Lord's vines they utterly despise!

   Think of our neglect of our God and see whether it is not true that we
   have treated Him very evilly. We have been in the shop, we have been on
   the exchange, we have been at the markets, we have been in the fields,
   we have been in the pub-

   lic libraries, we have been in the lecture room, we have been in the
   forum of debate--but our own closets and studies, our walk with God and
   our fellowship with Jesus--we have far too much neglected.

   Moreover, we have too much left the vineyard of holy service for God to
   go to ruin. I would ask you--How about the work your God has called you
   to do? Men are dying--are you saving them? This great city is like a
   seething caldron, boiling and bubbling up with infamous iniquity--are
   we doing anything by way of antidote to the Hell-broth concocted in
   that caldron? Are we, indeed, a power working towards righteousness?
   How much good have we done? What have I done to pluck brands from the
   burning? What have I done to find the lost sheep for whom my Savior
   laid down His life? Come, put the questions and answer them honestly!
   No, do not back out and say, "I have no ability." I fear you have more
   ability than you will give an account of with joy at the Last Great
   Day! I remember a young man who complained that the little Church over
   which he presided was so small. He said, "I cannot do much good. I have
   not above 200 hearers." An older man replied, "Two hundred hearers are
   a great many to have to give an account of at the Last Great

   Day."

   As I came in at yonder door, this evening, and looked into these
   thousands of faces, I could not help trembling! How shall I answer for
   this solemn charge, for this enormous flock in that Last Great Day? You
   have all a flock of some kind, larger or smaller. You have all, as
   Christian people, somebody for whom you will have to answer. Have you
   done your Master's work in reference to those entrusted to you? O men
   and women, have you sought to save others from going down into the Pit?
   You have the Divine remedy--have you handed it out to these sick and
   dying ones? You have the heavenly Word of God which can deliver them
   from destruction--have you spoken it in their ears, praying all the
   while that God might bless it to their souls? Might not many among you
   say to himself, "I have been a tailor," or, "I have been a
   shop-keeper," or, "I have been a mechanic," or, "I have been a
   merchant," or, "I have been a physician, and I have attended to these
   callings--but my own vineyard, which was my Master's, which I was bound
   to look to first of all, I have not kept"?

   Well, now, what is the remedy for this? We need not talk of our fault
   any more--let us make, each one, his own personal confession and then
   seek amendment. I believe the remedy is a very sweet one. It is not
   often that medicine is pleasant, but at this time I prescribe for you a
   charming potion. It is that you follow up the next verse to my text.
   Read it-- "My own vineyard have I not kept. Tell me, O You whom my soul
   loves, where You feed, where You make your flock to rest at noon; for
   why should I be as one that turns aside by the flocks of Your
   companions?" Get to your Lord and in Him you will find recovery from
   your neglects! Ask Him where He feeds His flock and go with Him! They
   have warm hearts who commune with Christ! They are prompt in duty who
   enjoy His fellowship!

   I cannot help reminding you of what I have often spoken of, namely, our
   Lord's language to the Church at Laodicea. That Church had come to be
   so bad that He said, "I will spue you out of My mouth." And yet what
   was the remedy for that Church? "Behold, I stand at the door and knock:
   if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and
   will sup with him, and he with Me." After supping with Christ you will
   not be lukewarm! Nobody can say, "I am neither cold nor hot" when they
   have been in His company! Rather they will enquire, "Did not our hearts
   burn within us while He talked with us by the way?" If there is an
   angel, as Milton sings, whose name is Uriel, who lives in the sun, I
   will guarantee you he is never cold! And He that lives in Christ and
   walks with Him is never cold, nor slow in the Divine service! Away to
   your Lord, then!

   Hasten to your Lord and you will soon begin to keep your vineyard, for
   in the Song you will see a happy change effected. The spouse began to
   keep her vineyard, directly, and to do it in the best fashion. Within a
   very short time you find her saying, "Take us the foxes, the little
   foxes, that spoil the vines." See, she is hunting out her sins and her
   follies! Farther on you find her with her Lord in the vineyard, crying,
   "Awake, O north wind and come, you south; blow upon my garden, that the
   spices thereof may flow out!" She is evidently keeping her garden and
   asking for heavenly influences to make the spices and flowers yield
   their perfume. She went down to see whether the vines flourished and
   the pomegranates budded. Soon, with her Beloved, she rises early to go
   to the vineyard and watch the growth of the plants! Farther on you find
   her talking about all manner of fruits that she has laid up for her
   Beloved. Thus you see that to walk with Christ is the way to keep your
   vineyard and serve your Lord. Come and sit at His feet! Lean on His
   bosom! Rest on His arm and make Him to be the joy of your spirit!

   The Lord grant, dear Brothers and Sisters, that this gentle word which
   I have spoken as much to myself as to you, may be blessed to us all!

   II. Now, I turn to the congregation in general and speak with THE MAN
   WHO IN ANY PLACE HAS TAKEN

   OTHER WORK AND NEGLECTED HIS OWN. He can use the words of the
   text--"They make me the keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard
   have I not kept."

   We know many persons who are always doing a great deal and yet do
   nothing--fussy people, people to the front in every movement, persons
   who could set the whole world right, but are not right themselves. Just
   before a general election there is a manifestation of most remarkable
   men--generally persons who know everything and a few things besides,
   who, if they could but be sent to Parliament, would turn the whole
   world upside down and put even Pandemonium to rights! They would pay
   the National Debt within six months and do any other trifle that might
   occur to them. Very eminent men are these! I have come across
   impossibly great men. None could be so great as these feel themselves
   to be. They are an order of very superior persons--reformers, or
   philosophers who know what nobody else knows, only, happily, they have
   not patented the secret and are prepared to tell it to others and,
   thereby, illuminate us all!

   I suggest to our highly-gifted friends that it is possible to be
   looking after a great many things and yet to be neglecting your own
   vineyard. There is a vineyard that a great many neglect and that is
   their own heart. It is well to have talent; it is well to have
   influence; but it is better to be right within yourself. It is well for
   a man to see to his cattle and look well to his flocks and to his
   herds--but let him not forget to cultivate that little patch of ground
   that lies in the center of his being. Let him educate his head and
   intermeddle with all knowledge, but let him not forget that there is
   another plot of ground called the heart, the character, which is more
   important, still! Right principles are spiritual gold and he that has
   them and is ruled by them is the man who truly lives. He has not life,
   whatever else he has, who has not his heart cultivated and made right
   and pure.

   Have you ever thought about your heart? Oh, I do not mean whether you
   have palpitations! I am no doctor. I am speaking now about the heart in
   its moral and spiritual aspect. What is your character and do you seek
   to cultivate it? Do you ever use the hoe upon those weeds which are so
   plentiful in us all? Do you water those tiny plants of goodness which
   have begun to grow? Do you watch them to keep away the little foxes
   which would destroy them? Are you hopeful that yet there may be a
   harvest in your character which God may look upon with approval? I pray
   that we may all look to our hearts. "Keep your heart with all
   diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." Pray daily, "Create
   in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me," for if
   not, you will go up and down in the world and do a great deal--and when
   it comes to the end you will have neglected your noblest nature--and
   your poor starved soul will die that second death which is the more
   dreadful because it is everlasting death!

   How terrible for a soul to die of neglect! How can we escape who
   neglect this great salvation? If we pay every attention to our bodies,
   but none to our immortal souls, how shall we justify our folly? God
   save us from suicide by neglect! May we not have to moan out eternally,
   "They made me the keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard have I
   not

   kept!"

   Now, pass over that point and think of another vineyard. Are not some
   people neglecting their families? Next to our hearts, our households
   are the vineyards which we are most bound to cultivate. I shall never
   forget a man whom I knew in my youth who used to accompany me, at
   times, in my walks to the villages to preach. He was always willing to
   go with me any evening, but I did not need to ask him, for he asked
   himself until I purposely put him off from it. He liked, also, to
   preach much better than others liked to hear him, but he was a man who
   was sure to be somewhere to the front if he could. Even if you snuffed
   him out, he had a way of lighting himself up again. He was good-natured
   and irrepressible. He was, I believe, sincerely earnest in doing good.
   But two boys of his were well known to me and they would swear
   horribly. They were ready for every vice and were under no restraint.
   One of them drank himself into a dying state with brandy, though he was
   a mere boy. I do not believe his father had ever spoken to him about
   the habit of intoxication, though he certainly was sober and virtuous,
   himself. I had no fault to find with him except this grave fault--that
   he was seldom at home, was not master of the house and could not
   control his children. Neither husband nor wife occupied any place of
   influence in the household--they were simply the slaves of their
   children--their children made themselves vile and they restrained them
   not!

   This Brother would pray for his children at the Prayer Meeting, but I
   do not think he ever practiced family prayer. It is shocking to find
   men and women speaking fluently about religion and yet their houses are
   a disgrace to Christianity! I suppose that none of you are as bad as
   that but, if it is so, please reread this text over--"They made me the
   keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard have I not kept." The most
   careful and prayerful father cannot be held accountable for having
   wicked sons, if he has done his best to instruct them. The most anxious
   and tearful mother cannot be blamed if her daughter dishonors the
   family, provided her mother has done her best to train her up in the
   right way. But if the parents cannot say that they have done their best
   and their children go astray, then they are blameworthy. If any of them
   have come to the Tabernacle, tonight, and their boys and girls
   are--they do not know where--let them go home quickly and find them! If
   any of my hearers exercise no parental discipline, nor seek to bring
   their children to Christ, I do implore them to give up every kind of
   public work till they have first done their work at home! Has anybody
   made you a minister and are you not trying to save your own children? I
   tell you, Sir, I do not believe that God made you a minister, for if He
   had, He would have begun with making you a minister to your own family!

   "They made me the keeper of the vineyards." "They" ought to have known
   better and you ought to have known better than to accept the call! How
   can you be a steward in the great household of the Lord when you cannot
   even rule your own house? A Sunday school teacher, teaching other
   people's children and never praying with her own? Is not this a sad
   business? A teacher of a large class of youths who never has taken a
   class of his own sons and daughters? Why, what will he do when he lives
   to see his children plunged into vice and sin and remembers that he has
   utterly neglected them? This is plain dealing, but I never wear gloves
   when I preach! I know not where this knife may cut, but if it wounds, I
   pray you, do not blunt its edge. Do you say that this is "very
   personal"? It is meant to be personal! And if anybody is offended by
   it, let him be offended with himself--and mend his ways. No longer let
   it be true of any of us, "They made me the keeper of the vineyards, but
   my own vineyard have I not kept."

   Besides that, every man who knows the Lord should feel that his
   vineyard lies, also, round about his own house. If God has saved your
   children, then, dear Friend, try to do something for your neighbors,
   for your employees, for those with whom you associate in daily labor.
   God has appointed you to take care of those nearest home. They say the
   cobbler's wife goes barefoot. Do not let it be true! Begin at home and
   go on with those nearest home. Manifest Christian love to your
   neighbors! It is a great pity that yonder Christian man, living in a
   very dark part of London, comes to the Tabernacle and does good in our
   societies but never speaks a word for Jesus in the court where he
   lives. Poor stuff, poor stuff, is that salt which is only salt when it
   is in the saltbox! Throw that kind of salt away! We want a kind of salt
   that begins to bite into any bit of meat it touches! Put it where you
   like, if it is good salt, it begins to operate upon that which is
   nearest to it!

   Some people are capital salt in the box--they are also good in the
   cake--they are beautifully white to look at and you can cut them into
   ornamental shapes. But they are never used--they are merely kept for
   show. If salt does not preserve anything, throw it away! Ask the farmer
   whether he would like it for his fields. "No," he says, "there is no
   goodness in it." Salt that has no saltiness in it is of no use. You can
   make the garden path of it. It is good to be trod underfoot by men, but
   that is the only use to which you can put it. O my beloved fellow
   Christians, do not let it be said that you reside in a place to which
   you do no good whatever! I am sure if there were individual, personal
   work on the part of Christians in the localities where they reside, God
   the Holy Spirit would bless the unanimous action of His earnest,
   quickened Church and London would soon know that God has a people in
   the midst of it! If we keep away from the masses of souls--if we cannot
   think of laboring in a district because it is too low or too poor--we
   shall have missed our vocation and, at the last, we shall have to
   lament, "They made me the keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard
   have I not kept."

   You and I must cry mightily to the Holy Spirit to help us to live
   really and truly the lives which our professions demand of us. A day
   will come when all Church attendance, and Chapel attendance, preaching,
   singing and sacraments will seem fluff and useless stuff if there has
   not been the substance of real living for Christ in all our
   religiousness! Oh that we would awaken ourselves to something like a
   Divine earnestness! Oh that we felt the grandeur of our heavenly
   surroundings! We are no common people! We are loved with no common
   love! Jesus died for us! He died for us! He died for us! And is this
   poor life of ours, so often dull and worldly, our sole return? Behold
   that piece of land! He that bought it paid His life for it, watered it
   with bloody sweat and sowed in it a Divine Seed! And what is the
   harvest? We naturally expect great

   things. Is the poor starveling life of many a professor a fit harvest
   for Christ's sowing His heart's blood? God the Father, God the Son and
   God the Holy Spirit--all in action--what is the result? Omnipotence
   linking hands with love and working out a miracle of Grace! What comes
   of it?

   A half-hearted professor of religion. Is this all the result? O Lord,
   was there ever so small an effect from so great a cause? You might
   almost need a microscope to discover the result of the work of Grace in
   some people's lives. Ought it to be so? Shall it be so? In the name of
   Him that lives and was dead, dare you let it be so? Help us, O God, to
   begin to live, and keep the vineyard which You, Yourself, have given to
   us to keep, that we may render in our account, at last, with joy and
   not with grief! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Mingled Strain

   (No. 1937)

   A SERMON DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be
   whiter than snow." Psalm 51:7.

   IN what state of heart should we come to the Communion Table? It is no
   light matter--in what manner shall we come before the Lord in so sacred
   an ordinance? By the very nature of the sacred supper we are taught
   that there should be a mixture of emotions. The bitter and the sweet,
   the joyful and the sorrowful are here intermingled. The Sacrifice of
   Christ for sin--is it more a subject of sorrow or of joy? Can we look
   to the Cross without mourning for sin? Can we look at it without
   rejoicing in pardon bought with blood? Is not the most suitable state
   of heart for coming to the Communion Table just this--mourning for our
   transgression and joy because of the great salvation? There is a double
   character about this holy rite. It is a festival of life and yet it is
   a memorial of death. Here is a cup--it is filled with wine. This surely
   betokens gladness. Listen to me! That wine is the symbol of blood!
   This, surely, betokens sorrow! In my hand is bread--bread to be eaten,
   bread which strengthens man's heart--shall we not eat bread with
   thankfulness? But that bread is broken, to represent a body afflicted
   with pain and anguish--there must be mourning on account of that agony!
   At the Paschal Supper, the lamb of the Lord's Passover had a special
   sweetness in it--yet the commandment expressly ran--"with bitter herbs
   they shall eat it." So is it at this table. Here we, with joy,
   commemorate the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world--but
   with deep sorrow we recall the sin which, though taken away, causes us,
   in the recollection of it, to repent with great bitterness of heart.

   Our text is the expression of one who is deeply conscious of sin and
   yet is absolutely certain that God can put away that sin. Thus it
   holds, in one sentence, a double thread of meaning. Here is a depth of
   sorrow and a still greater deep of hopeful joy--"deep calls unto deep."
   I thought that this expression of mixed feeling might guide us as to
   our emotions at this holy festival.

   I. I shall handle the text by making three observations. The first will
   be this--THERE ARE TIMES WHEN THE LANGUAGE OF A SINNER IS MOST SUITABLE
   TO A CHILD OF GOD. There are seasons when it is about the only language
   that he can use, when he seems shut up to it and he uses it without the
   slightest suspicion that it is out of place upon his lips and, indeed,
   it is not out of place at all. I suppose that everybody will agree that
   the language of David in this Psalm was most suitable to his condition.
   When he prayed, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me,
   and I shall be whiter than snow," he prayed a proper prayer, did he
   not? Surely no one is going to quibble with David over this petition
   and yet I cannot be sure. The modern way of handling the Bible is to
   correct it here and amend it there--tear it to pieces--give a bit to
   the Jews, a bit to the Gentiles, a bit to the Church and a bit to
   everybody--and then make it out that sometimes the old servants of God
   made great blunders!

   We, in modern times, are supposed to be more spiritual and to know a
   great deal better than the Inspired saints of the Old and New
   Testaments. But still, I should not think that anybody would say that
   David was wrong, but if he did, I would reply, "This is an Inspired
   Psalm and there is not half a hint given that there is any
   incorrectness in the language of it, or that David used language under
   an exaggerated state of feeling which was not truly applicable to a
   child of God." I think that nobody will doubt that David was a child of
   God and that, even when he had defiled himself, he was still dear to
   the great Father's heart. I gather, therefore--I feel sure of it--that
   he was quite right in praying the language of this 51st Psalm and
   saying, "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your loving kindness;
   according unto the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my
   transgressions; wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me
   from my sin!"

   Yet this is precisely the way in which an unconverted man ought to
   pray, just the way in which every soul that comes to God may pray. It
   is only an enlargement of the prayer of the publican, "God be merciful
   to me a sinner!" This language, so suitable to the sinner, was not out
   of place in the mouth of one who was not only a Believer, but an
   advanced Believer, an experienced Believer, yes, an Inspired Believer
   and a teacher of others, who, with all his faults, was such a one as we
   shall rarely see the likes of again! Yes, among the highest of saints
   there was a time with one of them, at least, when the lowliest language
   was appropriate to his condition! There is a spirit abroad which tells
   us that children of God ought not to ask for pardon of their sins, for
   they have been pardoned, that they need not use such language as this,
   which is appropriate for sinners, for they stand in a totally different
   position. What I want to know is this--where are we to draw the line?
   If, on account of a certain sin, David was perfectly justified in
   appealing to God in the same style as a poor, un-forgiven sinner would
   have done, am I never justified in doing so? Is it only a certain form
   of evil which puts a man under the necessities of humiliation?

   It may be that the man has never fallen into adultery, or any other
   gross sin, but is there a certain extent of sin to which a man may go,
   before, as a child of God, he is to pray like this? And is all that
   falls below that high-water mark of sin a something so inconsiderable
   that he need not go and ask any particular forgiveness for it, or pray
   like a sinner at all about it? May I, under most sins, speak very
   confidently as a child of God, who has already been forgiven, to whom
   it is a somewhat remarkable circumstance that he should have done
   wrong, but still, by no means, a serious disaster? I defy anybody to
   draw the line! And if they do draw it, I will strike it out, for they
   have no right to draw it! There is no hint in the Word of God that for
   a certain amount of sin there is to be one style of praying and for a
   certain lower amount of sin another style of praying!

   I venture to say this, Brothers and Sisters, going farther, that, as
   this language is certainly appropriate in David's mouth and as it would
   be impossible to draw any line at which it would cease to be
   appropriate, the safest and best plan for you and for me is
   this--seeing that we are sinners, if we have not been permitted to
   backslide as much as David, yet we had better come in the same way--we
   had better take the lowest place, urge the lowliest plea and so make
   sure work of our salvation! It is safest to assume the greatest
   supposable need. Let us put ourselves into the humblest position before
   the Throne of the heavenly Grace and cry, "Have mercy upon me, O God,
   according to Your loving kindness: according unto the multitude of Your
   tender mercies blot out my transgressions!"

   But is not a man of God forgiven? Yes, that he is! Is he not justified?
   Yes, that he is! "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?"
   Let that all stand true in the highest sense that you can give to it
   but, for all that, the sinner's cry is not thereby hushed into silence!
   True children of God cry and let me tell you they cry after a stronger
   fashion than other children! They have their confessions of sin and
   these are deeper and more intense than those of others. Whatever our
   confidence may be, our Lord Jesus Christ never told us to pray, "Lord,
   I thank You that I am forgiven and, therefore, have no sin to confess.
   I thank You that I need not come to You as a sinner!" But He put into
   the mouth of His disciples such words as these--"Our Father, which are
   in Heaven, forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass
   against us." I reckon that the Lord's Prayer is never out of date! I
   expect to be able to pray it when I am on the brink of Heaven and, if I
   should ever be sanctified to the fullest extent, I shall never turn
   round to the Savior and say, "Now, my Lord, I have got beyond Your
   prayer! Now, Savior, I can no more address my Father who is in Heaven
   in this language, for I have outgrown Your prayer!"

   Brothers and Sisters, the notion sounds to me like blasphemy! Never
   shall I say to my Savior, "I have no necessity, now, to come to Your
   precious blood, or to say to You, 'Wash me, and I shall be whiter than
   snow.'" Listen, Brethren-- "If we walk in the light, as He is in the
   light, we have fellowship, one with another," and what then? Why, even
   then, "the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin." We
   still need the blood when walking in the light, as God Himself is in
   the light!

   While we are here below, we shall need to use just such language as
   David did. Appropriate as our text is to the sinner, it is equally
   appropriate to the saint and we may continue to use it till we get to
   Heaven! Remember, Brothers and Sisters, that when our hearts cannot
   honestly use such language, we may think that we are raised up by
   faith, but it is possible that we may be blown up by presumption! When
   we do not bow into the very dust and kiss the Savior's feet and wash
   them with our tears, we may think that it is because we are growing in
   Grace, but it is far more likely that we are swelling with self-esteem!
   The more holy a man is, the more humble he is. The more really
   sanctified he is, the more does

   he cry about his sin, whatever it may be--"Oh, wretched man that I am!
   Who shall deliver me from the body of this

   death?"

   When you get the clearest possible view of God, what will be the
   result? Why, the deepest downcasting in your own spirit! Look at Job.
   He can answer his wretched accusers, but when he sees God--ah, then he
   abhors himself in dust and ashes! Was Job wrong in heart? I question
   whether any of us are half as good as Job! I am sure few of us could
   have played the man as he did under his sorrows. With all the failure
   of his patience, the Holy Spirit does not call it a failure, for He
   says, "You have heard of the patience of Job." He says not, "of his
   impatience," but, "of his patience." And yet this blessed, patient
   man--patient even by God's own testimony--when he saw God, abhorred
   himself! Look at Isaiah, again. Was there ever a tongue more eloquent,
   more consecrated, more pure? Were there ever lips more circumcised to
   God than those of that mighty evangelical Prophet? And yet, when he
   beheld the Glory of the Lord, the train of the Lord filling the Temple,
   he said, "Woe is me! for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the
   midst of a people of unclean

   lips."

   Those of you that can do so, may come to my Master's table, tonight, as
   saints--I shall come as a sinner. You that feel that you can come there
   glorying in your growth in Grace may so come if you like--I shall come
   feeling that I am nothing, less than nothing! I shall endeavor to come
   to the Cross just as I came at first, for I find that if I get beyond
   the position of a believing sinner, I get into a dangerous condition.
   Safety lies in conformity to the Truth of God and the Truth of God will
   not allow any of us to glory before God! The more I know the Lord and
   the more I live in communion with Him, the more do I feel happy in
   lying at His feet and looking up to Him to be my All in All. I would be
   nothing, and let Christ be everything. Take this from one who has been
   a preacher of the Gospel for more than 35 years--and a soul-winner who
   needs not to be ashamed--I am as entirely dependent upon the free mercy
   of the Lord this day as ever I was--and I look to be saved in the same
   manner as the thief upon the Cross.

   II. Secondly, let me make another observation. It shall be this--AN
   EXTRAORDINARY SENSE OF GUILT IS QUITE CONSISTENT WITH THE STRONGEST
   FAITH. It is a blessed thing when the two go together. David was under
   an extraordinary sense of sin and right well he might be, for he had
   committed an extravagant transgression. He had done a very grievous
   wrong to man and committed great lewdness before the Lord--and when the
   Spirit of God, at last, awakened his conscience through the rebuke of
   Nathan, it is not at all amazing that he should have bowed down under a
   deeply humiliating sense of his own guilt. He was guilty, deeply
   guilty--more guilty than even he, himself, knew.

   You and I, perhaps, may also be, by God's Grace, favored with a deep
   sense of sin. But I hear some people say, "Did I understand you
   rightly, Sir, or did my ears deceive me? Favored with a deep sense of
   sin?" "Yes, I said that, for while sin is horrible, a thorough sense of
   it, bitter as it is, is one of the greatest favors with which God
   blesses His chosen! I am sure that there are some of God's children
   whose experience is shallow and superficial, for they do not know the
   heights and depths of redeeming love--neither are they established in
   the Doctrines of Grace--and all because they were never deeply plowed
   with a sharp sense of sin! These know nothing of subsoil plowing, so as
   to turn their very hearts up under the keen plow of the Law. But that
   man who knows what sin means and has had it burned with a hot iron into
   the core of his spirit--he is the man who knows what Grace means--and
   is likely to understand its freeness and fullness! He who knows the
   evil of sin is likely to know the value of the precious blood! I could
   scarcely ask for any of you a better thing than that you should fully
   know, in your own spirit, the horribleness of sin as far as your mind
   is capable of bearing the strain.

   David was so conscious of his guilt that he compares himself to a
   leper. The language of the text refers, I believe, to the cleansing of
   lepers. Hyssop was dipped in blood and then the sacrificial blood was
   sprinkled upon the polluted individuals to make them clean. David felt
   that he had become a leprous man. He felt like one who had contracted
   the horrible, the polluting, the incurable disease of leprosy! He felt
   that he was not fit to come near to God, nor even to associate with his
   fellow man. He confessed that his guilt was such that he ought to be
   put away, shut out from the assembly of the people. His guilt had
   polluted a whole nation, of whom he was the representative and to whom
   he was the example. Did you ever feel like that? I tell you that you do
   not know all the pollution of sin unless you have been made to feel
   yourself to be a polluted thing! If you had 50 leprosies, they would
   not pollute you like sin, for a poor leper is not really pol-luted--he
   may bear a grand and noble soul within that rotting body!

   Sin, alone, is real pollution, hellish pollution, abominable pollution!
   There is nothing in Hell that is worse than sin--even the devil is only
   a devil because sin made him a devil--so that sin is the most horrible
   and intolerable evil that can fall upon the spirit of man. David felt
   that dreadful Truth of God. But yet, mark you, though he felt the
   horror of the disease of sin, his faith was strong enough to make him
   use the confident language of the text, "Purge me with hyssop, and I
   shall be clean." "Black as my sin is, filthy as it is, if You do but
   purge me, O my God, I shall be clean!"

   Yes, David is sure that God can cleanse him. He pleads as one who has
   no question upon the matter towards God. His prayer is--"You purge me,
   and I shall be clean! Apply the precious blood of the great Sacrifice
   to me, O God, and I shall be whiter than snow!" There is about the
   Hebrew a sense which I could hardly give you, unless I were to put it
   thus-- "You will un-sin me." As though God would take his sin right
   away and leave him without a speck of sin, without a single grain of it
   upon him! God could make him as if he had never sinned at all! Such is
   the power of the cleansing work of God upon the heart that He can
   restore innocence to us and make us as if we had never been stained
   with transgression at all! Do you believe this? Do you believe this?
   Oh, you are a happy man, if, under the deepest conceivable sense of
   sin, you can still say, "Yes, I believe that He can wash me and make me
   whiter than snow!"

   But will you follow me while I go a step farther? The words of our text
   are, in the Hebrew, in the future tense and they might be read, "You
   shall purge me and I shall be clean," so that David was not only
   certain about the power of God to cleanse him, but about the fact that
   God would do it--"You shall purge me." He cast himself, confessing his
   sin, at the feet of his God and he said, "My God, I believe that,
   through the great Atonement, You will make me clean!" Have you faith
   like that of David? Do you believe this? Beloved, some of us can boldly
   say, "Yes, that we do! We believe not only that God can pardon us, but
   that He will. Yes, that He has pardoned us and we come to Him, now, and
   plead that He would renew in us the cleansing work of the precious
   blood and of the water which flowed from the side of Christ-- and so
   make us perfectly clean! Yes, we believe that He will do it! We are
   sure that He will and we believe that He will continue to cleanse us
   till we shall need no more cleansing!"

   Hart's hymn sings concerning the precious blood--

   "If guilt removed, returns and remains, Its power may be proved again
   and again." This witness is true and we set our seal to it.

   The Psalmist David believed that although his sin was what it was, yet
   God could make a rapid cleansing of it. He speaks of the matter as
   worked promptly and speedily. It took seven days to cleanse a leper,
   but David does not follow the type when the reality excels it! He says,
   "Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean." It is done directly, done
   at once-- washed and whiter than snow! It will not take seven days to
   wipe out the crimes of seven years! No, if a man had lived 70 years in
   sin--if he did but come to his God with humble confession and if the
   precious blood of Jesus were applied to him--his sins would vanish in
   the twinkling of an eye! The two facts come together. "Purge me--I
   shall be clean. Wash me--I shall be whiter than snow." It is done at
   once! Note the rapidity of the cleansing.

   Mark the effectual character of the purgation. "Purge me, and I shall
   be clean." Not, "I shall think that I am," but "I shall be. I shall be
   like a man perfectly healed of leprosy." Such a man was not purged in
   theory, but in reality, so that he could go up to the court of the
   Lord's house and offer his sacrifice among the rest of Israel. So, if
   you wash me, Lord, I shall be really clean! I shall have access to You
   and I shall have fellowship with all Your saints.

   Once more--David believed that God could give him internal cleansing.
   "In the hidden parts," he says, "You shall make me to know wisdom." I
   like that about the text. It is, "Purge me with hyssop and I shall be
   clean." Where?-- Hands? Yes. Feet? Yes. Head? Yes. All this is good,
   but what about the heart? There is the part that you and I cannot
   cleanse, but God can! Imagination, conscience, memory--every inward
   faculty--the Lord can purge us in all these! "Purge me with hyssop, and
   I shall be clean." This includes the whole man. And this declaration
   falls from the lips of a man who knew himself to be as defiled as he
   could be, a very leper, only fit to be put away into his own house and
   shut up there for fear of contaminating the rest of mankind! He boldly
   says, "If the Lord washes me, I shall be clean, I am certain of it! I
   shall be perfectly clean and fit to have communion with Him."

   Notice one more remark on this point, namely, that David, while thus
   conscious of his sins, is so full of faith towards God that he
   appropriates all the cleansing power of God to Him--"Wash me, and I
   shall be whiter than snow. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean."
   There are four personal words in one verse. It is easy to believe that
   God can forgive

   sin in general, but that He can forgive mine in particular--that is the
   point! Yes, it is easy to believe that He can forgive man, but to
   believe that He will forgive such a poor specimen of the race as I am
   is quite another matter! To take personal hold upon Divine blessings is
   a most blessed faculty. Let us exercise it. Can you do it? Brothers and
   Sisters, can you do it? You that cannot call yourselves Brothers and
   Sisters, you far-away ones, can you come to Christ, all black and
   defiled as you are and just believe in Him that you shall be made
   whole? You will not be believing too much of the Great Sinners' Friend!
   According to your faith be it unto you.

   III. This brings us to our third and last point, upon which I will
   speak with great brevity. Notice that A DEEP SENSE OF SIN AND A
   CONFIDENT FAITH IN GOD MAKE THE LORD'S NAME AND GLORY PREEMINENTLY
   CONSPICUOUS. God is the great Actor in the text before us. He purges
   and He washes--and none but He. The sins and the cleansing are, both of
   them, too great to allow of any inferior handling.

   "Purge me" He makes it all God's work. He does not say anything about
   the Aaronic priest. What a poor miserable creature the priest is when a
   soul is under a sense of sin! Have you ever met with a person who has
   been really broken in heart who has gone to a priest? If so, he has
   been made ashamed of his looking to man, for he has found him to be a
   broken cistern that can hold no water! Why, my Brothers and Sisters, if
   we had this platform full of popes and one poor soul under a sense of
   sin to be comforted--the whole lot of them could not touch the sinner's
   wound, nor do anything to stanch the bleeding of his heart! No, no, the
   words of the best of men fall short of our need! As the dying monk
   said, "Tua vulnera, Jesu!"--"Your wounds, Jesus!" These can heal, but
   nothing else can! God must, Himself, wash us! Nothing short of His
   personal interposition will suffice.

   Now, notice the next word, "Purge me with hyssop." We must have faith,
   which is represented by hyssop. How little David makes of faith! He
   thinks of it only as the poor "hyssop." Many questions have been raised
   as to what hyssop was. I do not think that anybody knows. Whatever it
   may have been, it was a plant that had many little shoots and leaves,
   because its particular fitness was that the blood would cling to its
   many branches. Its use was that it stored the blood and held it there
   in ruby drops upon each one of its sprays--and that is the particular
   suitability of faith for its peculiar office. It is an excellent thing
   in itself, but the particular virtue of faith lies in this--that it
   holds the blood so as to apply it. Scarlet wool was used in the
   ceremony of cleansing and the scarlet wool was useful because it soaked
   in the blood and held it within itself. But the hyssop was still more
   useful because while it held the blood, it held it ready to drop. That
   is how faith holds the great Sacrifice--it holds the atoning blood upon
   every spray, ready to drop upon the tortured conscience! Faith is the
   sprinkling hyssop--it is nothing in itself, but it applies to the soul
   that which is our cleansing and our life!

   David, moreover, seems to me to say, "Lord, if You will purge me with
   the blood of the great Sacrifice, it does not matter how it is done! Do
   it with the little hyssop from off the wall. However tiny and
   insignificant the plant may be, yet it will hold the precious drops and
   bring them to my heart and I shall be whiter than snow." It is God, you
   see--it is God all the way through.

   "And I"--there is just that mention of himself. But what of himself?
   Why, "I shall be the receiver. I shall be clean." "I." What about that
   intensive, "I"? "I shall be whiter than snow"--I shall be the material
   on which You work--the guilty pardoned--the polluted made clean--the
   leper made whole and permitted to come up to Your House.

   That is all I ask of my Lord tonight--that He will let me come to His
   table and be the receiver, the eater, the drinker, the cleansed one,
   the debtor, the bankrupt debtor, plunged head over heels in debt to the
   heavenly Creditor! Oh, to be nothing! To lie at His feet! Oh, to be
   nothing but washed--washed in the blood! How sweet it is no longer to
   ride on horses, but to have God for your All in All--no longer to go
   forth, sword in hand, boasting our strength and glorying in what we can
   do--but to sit down at Jesus' feet and sing the victory which He,
   alone, has won!

   Come, let us pray from our very hearts, "Purge me with hyssop and I
   shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." God bless
   you, for Jesus' sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

   Genesis

   [13]4:6   [14]4:7   [15]8:20-22   [16]8:22

   Exodus

   [17]24   [18]24

   Leviticus

   [19]8:30   [20]16:30   [21]22:21

   Numbers

   [22]7:1   [23]8:17   [24]32:23

   Joshua

   [25]17:14

   2 Samuel

   [26]7:18   [27]7:19

   2 Kings

   [28]7:3-7

   1 Chronicles

   [29]22:19

   Job

   [30]9:30-31   [31]30:23   [32]42:7

   Psalms

   [33]51:7   [34]106:44   [35]106:45   [36]114:1   [37]114:2

   Isaiah

   [38]33:24   [39]35:8   [40]43:1-4   [41]44:21-23   [42]65:1

   Jeremiah

   [43]31:3   [44]33:17-26

   Ezekiel

   [45]27:26   [46]36:25   [47]36:26

   Daniel

   [48]3:14

   Joel

   [49]2:32

   Amos

   [50]8:9

   Haggai

   [51]2:4-5

   Matthew

   [52]4:19   [53]27:45

   Mark

   [54]3:5   [55]7:20-23   [56]8:4   [57]10:13-16

   Luke

   [58]1:77-79   [59]11:27   [60]11:28   [61]17:15   [62]23:40-42

   John

   [63]3:17   [64]4:31-38   [65]10:14   [66]10:15   [67]10:28
   [68]10:29   [69]10:39-42   [70]14   [71]14:15   [72]17:11   [73]17:12
   [74]17:17   [75]17:24

   Acts

   [76]2:39   [77]20:28

   Romans

   [78]5:5   [79]8:1   [80]8:7   [81]10:1   [82]10:2   [83]10:3
   [84]10:9   [85]15:30-33

   2 Corinthians

   [86]5:20-21

   Galatians

   [87]4:24

   1 Thessalonians

   [88]5:16

   2 Timothy

   [89]1:12-14   [90]3:16

   Titus

   [91]2:11-14

   Hebrews

   [92]3:7-19   [93]5:7-10   [94]7:23-25   [95]10:23   [96]12:24-25
   [97]12:24-25   [98]13:5

   1 Peter

   [99]1:13   [100]3:22

   1 John

   [101]3:1

   Revelation

   [102]2:4-5
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture Commentary

   Genesis

   [103]4:6-7   [104]8:22

   Leviticus

   [105]16:30   [106]22:21

   Numbers

   [107]32:23

   Joshua

   [108]17:14

   2 Kings

   [109]7:3-7

   1 Chronicles

   [110]22:19

   Job

   [111]9:30-31   [112]30:23

   Psalms

   [113]51:7   [114]106:44-45   [115]114:1-2

   Song of Solomon

   [116]1:6

   Isaiah

   [117]33:24   [118]35:8   [119]43:1-4   [120]65:1

   Jeremiah

   [121]31:3

   Ezekiel

   [122]27:26   [123]36:25

   Daniel

   [124]3:14

   Joel

   [125]2:32

   Haggai

   [126]2:4-5

   Matthew

   [127]4:19   [128]27:45

   Mark

   [129]3:5   [130]7:20-23   [131]8:4   [132]10:13-16

   Luke

   [133]1:77-79   [134]11:27-28   [135]17:15-19   [136]23:40-42

   John

   [137]4:31-38   [138]10:14-15   [139]10:39-42   [140]14:15
   [141]17:11-12   [142]17:17   [143]17:24

   Romans

   [144]5:5   [145]8:1   [146]8:7   [147]10:1-3   [148]10:9
   [149]15:30-33

   2 Corinthians

   [150]5:20-21

   1 Thessalonians

   [151]5:16

   2 Timothy

   [152]1:12-14

   Titus

   [153]2:11-14

   Hebrews

   [154]5:7-10   [155]7:23-25   [156]10:23   [157]12:24-25
   [158]12:24-25   [159]13:5

   1 Peter

   [160]1:13   [161]3:22

   1 John

   [162]3:1

   Revelation

   [163]2:4-5
     __________________________________________________________________

            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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