I think there is room for very great doubt, whether our Saviour intended the prayer, of which our text forms a part, to be used in the manner in which it is commonly employed among professing Christians. It is the custom of many persons to repeat it as their morning prayer, and they think that when they have repeated these sacred words they have done enough. I believe that this prayer was never intended for universal use. Jesus Christ taught it not to all men, but to his disciples, and it is a prayer adapted only to those who are the possessors of grace, and are truly converted. In the lips of an ungodly man it is entirely out of place. Doth not one say, “Ye are of your father the devil, for his works ye do?” Why, then, should ye mock God by saying, “Our Father which art in heaven.” For how can he be your Father? Have ye two Fathers? And if he be a Father, where is his honor? Where is his love? You neither honor nor love him, and yet you presumptuously and blasphemously approach him, and say, “Our Father,” when your heart is attached still to sin, and your life is opposed to his law, and you therefore prove yourself to be an heir of wrath, and not a child of grace! Oh! I beseech you, leave off sacrilegiously employing these sacred words; and until you can in sincerity and truth say, “Our Father which art in heaven,” and in your lives seek to honor his holy name, do not offer to him the language of the hypocrite, which is an abomination to him.

I very much question also, whether this prayer was intended to be used by Christ’s own disciples as a constant form of prayer. It seems to me that Christ gave it as a model, whereby we are to fashion all our prayers, and I think we may use it to edification, and with great sincerity and earnestness, at certain times and seasons. I have seen an architect form the model of a building he intends to erect of plaster or wood; but I never had an idea that it was intended for me to live in. I have seen an artist trace on a piece of brown paper, perhaps, a design which he intended afterwards to work out on more costly stuff; but I never imagined the design to be the thing itself. This prayer of Christ is a great chart, as it were: but I cannot cross the sea on a chart. It is a map; but a man is not a traveler because he puts his fingers across the map. And so a man may use this form of prayer, and yet be a total stranger to the great design of Christ in teaching it to his disciples. I feel that I cannot use this prayer to the omission of others. Great as it is, It does not express all I desire to say to my Father which is in heaven. There are many sins which I must confess separately and distinctly; and the various other petitions which this prayer contains require, I feel, to be expanded, when I come before God in private; and I must pour out my heart in the language which his Spirit gives me; and more than that, I must trust in the Spirit to speak the unutterable groanings of my spirit, when my lips cannot actually express all the emotions of my heart. Let none despise this prayer; it is matchless, and if we must have forms of prayer, let us have this first, foremost, and chief; but let none think that Christ would tie his disciples to the constant and only use of this. Let us rather draw near to the throne of the heavenly grace with boldness, as children coming to a father, and let us tell forth our wants and our sorrows in the language which the Holy Spirit teacheth us.

And now, coming to the text, there are several things we shall have to notice here. And first, I shall dwell for a few minutes upon the double relationship mentioned: “Our Father which art in heaven.” There is sonship—”Father;” there is brotherhood,for it says, “Our Father;” and if he be the common father of us, then we must be brothers; for there are two relationships, sonship and brotherhood. In the next place, I shall utter a few words upon the spirit which is necessary to help us before we are able to utter this—“The spirit of adoption,”whereby we can cry, “Our Father which art in heaven.” And then, thirdly, I shall conclude with the double argument of the text,for it is really an argument upon which the rest of the prayer is based. “Our Father which art in heaven,” is, as it were, a strong argument used before supplication itself is presented.

I. First, THE DOUBLE RELATIONSHIP IMPLIED IN THE TEXT.

We take the first one. Here is sonship—”Our Father which art in heaven.” How are we to understand this, and in what sense are we the sons and daughters of God? Some say that the Fatherhood of God is universal, and that every man, from the fact of his being created by God, is necessarily God’s son, and that therefore every man has a right to approach the throne of God, and say, “Our Father which art in heaven.” To that I must demur. I believe that in this prayer we are to come before God, looking upon him not as our Father through creation, but as our Father through adoption and the new birth. I will very briefly state my reasons for this.

I have never been able to see that creation necessarily implies fatherhood. I believe God has made many things that are not his children. Hath he not made the heavens and the earth, the sea and the fullness thereof? and are they his children? You say these are not rational and intelligent beings; but he made the angels, who stand in an eminently high and holy position, are they his children? “Unto which of the angels said he at any time, thou art my son?” I do not find, as a rule, that angels are called the children of God; and I must demur to the idea that mere creation brings God necessarily into the relationship of a Father. Doth not the potter make vessels of clay? But is the potter the father of the vase, or of the bottle? No, beloved, it needs something beyond creation to constitute the relationship, and those who can say, “Our Father which art in heaven,” are something more than God’s creatures: they have been adopted into his family. He has taken them out of the old black family in which they were born; he has washed them. and cleansed them, and given them a new name and a new spirit, and made them “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;” and all this of his own free, sovereign, unmerited, distinguishing grace.

And having adopted them to be his children, he has in the next place, regenerated them by the Spirit of the living God.He has “begotten them again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” and no man hath a right to claim God as his Father, unless he feeleth in his soul, and believeth, solemnly, through the faith of God’s election, that he has been adopted into the one family of which is in heaven and earth, and that he has been regenerated or born again.

This relationship also involves love,If God be my Father, he loves me. And oh, how he loves me! When God is a Husband he is the best of husbands. Widows, somehow or other, are always well eared for. When God is a Friend, he is the best of friends, and sticketh closer than a brother; and when he is a Father he is the best of fathers. O fathers! perhaps ye do not know how much ye love your children. When they are sick ye find it out, for ye stand by their couches and ye pity them, as their little frames are writhing in pain. Well, “like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” Ye know how ye love your children too, when they grieve you by their sin; anger arises, and you are ready to chasten them, but no sooner is the tear in their eye, than your hand is heavy, and you feel that you had rather smite yourself than smite them; and every time you smite them you seem to cry, “Oh that I should have thus to afflict my child for his sin! Oh that I could suffer in his stead!” And God, even our Father, “doth not afflict willingly.” Is not that a sweet thing? He is, as it were, compelled to it; even the Eternal arm is not willing to do it; it is only his great love and deep wisdom that brings down the blow. But if you want to know your love to your children, you will know it most if they die. David knew that he loved his son Absalom, but he never knew how much he loved him till he heard that he had been slain, and that he had been buried by Joshua “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” He knows then how deep and pure is the love that death can never sever, and the terrors of eternity never can unbind. But, parents, although ye love your children much, and ye know it, ye do not know, and ye cannot tell how deep is the unfathomable abyss of the love of God to you. Go out at midnight and consider the heavens, the work of God’s fingers, the moon and the stars which he hath ordained; and I am sure you will say, “What is man, that thou shouldst be mindful of him?” But, more than all, you will wonder, not at your loving him, but that while he has all these treasures, he should set his heart upon so insignificant a creature as man. And the sonship that God has given us is not a mere name; there is all our Father’s great heart given to us in the moment when be claims us as his sons.

But if this sonship involves the love of God to us, it involves also, the duty of love to God.Oh! heir of heaven, if thou art God’s child, wilt thou not love thy Father? What son is there that loveth not his father? Is he not less than human if he loveth not his sire? Let his name be blotted from the book of remembrance that loveth not the woman that brought him forth, and the father that begat him. And we, the chosen favourites of heaven, adopted and regenerated, shall not we loose him? Shall we not say, “Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison with thee? My father, I will give thee my heart; thou shalt be the guide of my youth; thou dost love me, and the little heart that I have shall be all thine own for ever.”

Furthermore, if we say “Our Father which art in heaven,” we must recollect that our being sons involves the duty of obedience to God.When I say “My Father,” it is not for me to rise up and go in rebellion against his wishes; if he be a father, let me note his commands, and let me reverentially obey; if he hath said “Do this,” let me do it, not because I dread him, but because I love him; and if he forbids me to do anything, let me avoid it. There are some persons in the world who have not the spirit of adoption, and they can never be brought to do a thing unless they see some advantage to themselves in it; but with the child of God, there is no motive at all; he can boldly say, “I have never done a right thing since I have followed Christ because I hoped to get to heaven by it, nor have I ever avoided a wrong thing because I was afraid of being damned.” For the child of God knows his good works do not make him acceptable to God, for he was acceptable to God by Jesus Christ long before he had any good works; and the fear of hell does not affect him, for he knows that he is delivered from that, and shall never come into condemnation, having passed from death unto life. He acts from pure love and gratitude, and until we come to that state of mind, I do not think there is such a thing as virtue; for if a man has done what is called a virtuous action because he hoped to get to heaven or to avoid hell by it, whom has he served? Has he not served himself? and what is that but selfishness? But the man who has no hell to fear and no heaven to gain, because heaven is his own and hell he never can enter, that man is capable of virtue; for he says -

“Now for the love I bear his name,
What was my gain I count my loss;
I pour contempt on all my shame,
And nail my glory to his cross” -

to his cross who loved, and lived, and died for me who loved him not, but who desires now to love him with all my heart, and soul, and strength.

And now permit me to draw your attention to one encouraging thought that may help to cheer the downcast and Satan-tempted child of God. Sonship is a thing which all the infirmities of our flesh, and all the sins into which we are hurried by temptation, can never violate or weaken.A man hath a child; that child on a sudden is bereaved of its senses; it becomes an idiot. What a grief that is to a father, for a child to become a lunatic or an idiot, and to exist only as an animal, apparently without a soul! But the idiot child is a child, and the lunatic child is a child still; and if we are the fathers of such children they are ours, and all the idiocy and all the lunacy that can possibly befall them can never shake the fact that they are our sons. Oh! what a mercy, when we transfer this to God’s case and ours! How foolish we are sometimes—how worse than foolish! We may say as David did, “I was as a beast before thee.” God brings before us the truths of his kingdom; we cannot see their beauty, we cannot appreciate them; we seem to be as if we were totally demented ignorant, unstable, weary, and apt to slide. But, thanks be unto God, we are his children still! And if there be anything worse that can happen to a father than his child becoming a lunatic or an idiot, it is when he grows up to be wicked. It is well said, “Children are doubtful blessings.” I remember to have heard one say, and, as I thought, not very kindly, to a mother with an infant at her breast—”Woman! you may be suckling a viper there.” It stung the mother to the quick, and it was not needful to have said it. But how often is it the fact, that the child that has hung upon its mother’s breast, when it grows up, brings that mother’s grey hairs with sorrow to the grave!

“Oh! sharper than a serpent’s tooth
To have a thankless child!”

ungodly, vile, debauched—a blasphemer! But mark, brethren: if he be a child he cannot lose his childship, nor we our fatherhood, be he who or what he may. Let him be transported beyond the seas, he is still our son; let us deny him the house because his conversation might lead others of our children into sin, yet our son he is, and must be, and when the sod shall cover his head and ours, “father and son” shall still be on the tombstone. The relationship never can be severed as lone as time shall last. The prodigal was his father’s son, when he was amongst the harlots, and when he was feeding swine; and God’s children are God’s children anywhere and everywhere, and shall be even unto the end. Nothing can sever that sacred tie, or divide us from his heart.

There is yet another thought that may cheer the Little-faiths and Feeble minds. The fatherhood of God is common to all his children.Ah! Little-faith, you have often looked up to Mr. Great-heart, and you have said, “Oh that I had the courage of Great-heart, that I could wield his sword and cut old giant Grim in pieces! Oh that I could fight the dragons, and that I could overcome the lions! But I am stumbling at every straw, and a shadow makes me afraid.” List thee, Little-faith. Great-heart is God’s child, and you are God’s child too; and Great-heart is not a whit more God’s child than you are. David was the son of God, but not more the son of God than thou. Peter and Paul, the highly-favored apostles, were of the family of the Most High; and so are you. You have children yourselves; one is a son grown up, and out in business, perhaps, and you have another, a little thing still in arms. Which is most your child the little one or the big one? “Both alike,” you say. “This little one is my child near my heart and the big one is my child too.” And so the little Christian is as much a child of God as the great one.

“This cov’nant stands secure,
Though earth’s old pillars bow;
The strong, the feeble, and the weak,
Are one in Jesus now;”

and they are one in the family of God, and no one is ahead of the other. One may have more grace than another, but God does not love one more than another. One may be an older child than another, but he is not more a child; one may do more mighty works, and may bring more glory to his Father, but he whose name is the least in the kingdom of heaven is as much the child of God as he who stands among the king’s mighty men. Let this cheer and comfort us, when we draw near to God and say, “Our Father which art in heaven.”

I will make but one more remark before I leave this point, namely, this,—that our being the children of God brings with it innumerable privileges.Time would fail me, if I were to attempt to read the long roll of the Christian’s joyous privileges. I am God’s child: if so, he will clothe me; my shoes shall be iron and brass; he will array me with the robe of my Saviour’s righteousness, for he has said, “Bring forth the best robe and put it on him,” and he has also said that he will put a crown of pure gold upon my head and inasmuch as I am a king’s son, I shall have a royal crown. Am I his child? Then he will feed me; my bread shall be given me, and my water shall be sure; he that feeds the ravens will never let his children starve. If a good husbandman feeds the barn-door fowl, and the sheep and the bullocks, certainly his children shall not starve. Does my Father deck the lily, and shall I go naked? Does he feed the fowls of the heaven that sow not, neither do they reap, and shall I feel necessity? God forbid! My Father knoweth what things I have need of before I ask him, and he will give me all I want. If I be his child, then I have a portion in his heart here, and I shall have a portion in his house above. for “if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,” “If we suffer with him we shall be also glorified together.” And oh! brethren, what a prospect this opens up! The fact of our being heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, proves that all things are ours—the gift of God, the purchase of a Saviour’s blood.

“This world is ours, and worlds to come;
Earth is our lodge, and heaven our home.”

Are there crowns? They are mine if I be an heir. Are there thrones? Are there dominions? Are there harps, palm branches, white robes? Are there glories that eye hath not seen? and is there music that ear hath not heard? All these are mine, if I be a child of God. “And it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” Talk of princes, and kings, and potentates: Their inheritance is but a pitiful foot of land, across which the bird’s wing can soon direct its flight; but the broad acres of the Christian cannot be measured by eternity. He is rich, without a limit to his wealth. he is blessed, without a boundary to his bliss. All this, and more than I can enumerate, is involved in our being able to say, “Our Father which art in heaven.”

The second tie of the text is brotherhood.It does not say my Father, but our Father. Then it seems there are a great many in the family. I will be very brief on this point.

“Our Father.” When you pray that prayer, remember you have a good many brothers and sisters that do not know their Father yet, and you must include them all; for all God’s elect ones, though they be uncalled as yet, are still his children, though they know it not. In one of Krummacher’s beautiful little parables there is a story like this: “Abraham sat one day in the grove at Mamre, leaning his head on his hand, and sorrowing. Then his son Isaac came to him, and said, ‘My father, why mournest thou? what aileth thee?’ Abraham answered and said, ‘My soul mourneth for the people of Canaan, that they know not the Lord, but walk in their own ways, in darkness and foolishness.’ ‘Oh, my father,’ answered the son, is it only this? Let not thy heart be sorrowful; for are not these their own ways?’ Then the patriarch rose up from his seat, and said, ‘Come now, follow me.’ And he led the youth to a hut. and said to him, ‘Behold.’ There was a child which was an imbecile, and the mother sat weeping by it. Abraham asked her, ‘Why weepest thou? Then the mother said, ‘Alas, this my son eateth and drinketh, and we minister unto him; but he knows not the face of his father, nor of his mother. Thus his life is lost, and this source of joy is sealed to him.’ ” Is not that a sweet little parable, to teach us how we ought to pray for the many sheep that are not yet of the fold, but which must be brought in? We ought to pray for them, because they do not know their Father. Christ has bought them, and they do not know Christ; the Father has loved them from before the foundation of the world, and yet, they know not the face of their Father. When thou sayest “Our Father,” think of the many of thy brothers and sisters that are in the back streets of London, that are in the dens and caves of Satan. Think of thy poor brother that is intoxicated with the spirit of the devil; think of him, led astray to infamy, and lust, and perhaps to murder, and in thy prayer pray thou for them who know not the Lord.

“Our Father.” That, then, includes those of God’s children who differ from us in their doctrine. Ah! there are some that differ from us as wide as the poles; but yet they are God’s children. Come, Mr. Bigot, do not kneel down, and say, “My Father,” but “Our Father.” “If you please, I cannot put in Sir. So-and-So, for I think he is a heretic.” Put him in, sir. God has put him in, and you must put him in too, and say, “Our Father.” Is it not remarkable how very much alike all God’s people are upon their knees? Some time ago at a prayer-meeting I called upon two brothers in Christ to pray one after another, the one a Wesleyan and the other a strong Calvinist, and the Wesleyan prayed the most Calvinistic prayer of the two, I do believe—at least, I could not tell which was which. I listened to see if I could not discern some peculiarity even in their phraseology, but there was none. “Saints in prayer appear as one.” for when they get on their knees, they are all compelled to say “Our Father,” and all their language afterwards is of the same sort.

When thou prayest to God put in the poor; for is he not the Father of many of the poor, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom, though they be poor in this world. Come my sister, if thou bowest thy knee amid the rustling of silk and satin, yet remember the cotton and the print. My brother, is there wealth in thy hand, yet I pray thee, remember thy brethren of the horny hand and the dusty brow; remember those who could not wear what thou wearest, nor eat what thou eatest, but are as Lazarus compared with thee, while thou art as Dives. Pray for them; put them all in the same prayer and say, “Our Father.”

And pray for those that are divided from us by the sea—those that are in heathen lands, scattered like precious salt in the midst of this world’s putrefaction. Pray for all that name the name of Jesus, and let thy prayer be a great and comprehensive one. “Our Father, which art in heaven.” And after thou hast prayed that rise up and act it. Say not “Our Father,” and then look upon thy brethren with a sneer or a frown. I beseech thee, live like a brother, and act like a brother Help the needy; cheer the sick; comfort the faint-hearted; go about doing good, minister unto the suffering people of God, wherever thou findest them, and let the world take knowledge of thee, that thou art when on thy feet what thou art upon thy knees—that thou art a brother unto all the brotherhood of Christ, a brother born for adversity, like thy Master himself.

II. Having thus expounded the double relationship, I have left myself but little time for a very important part of the subject, namely, THE SPIRIT OF ADOPTION.

I am extremely puzzled and bewildered how to explain to the ungodly what is the spirit with which we must be filled, before we can pray this prayer. If I had a foundling here, one who had never seen either father or mother, I think I should have a very great difficulty in trying to make him understand what are the feelings of a child towards its father. Poor little thing, he has been under tutors and governors; he has learned to respect them for their kindness, or to fear them for their austerity, but there never can be in that child’s heart that love towards tutor or governor, however kind he may be, that there is in the heart of another child towards his own mother or father. There is a nameless charm there: we cannot describe or understand it: it is a sacred touch of nature, a throb in the breast that God has put there, and that cannot be taken away. The fatherhood is recognized by the childship of the child. And what is that spirit of a child—that sweet spirit that makes him recognize and love his father? I cannot tell you unless you are a child yourself, and then you will know. And what is “the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father?” I cannot tell you; but if you have felt it you will know it. It is a sweet compound of faith that knows God to be my Father, love that loves him as my Father, joy that rejoices in him as my Father, fear that trembles to disobey him because he is my Father and a confident affection and trustfulness that relies upon him, and casts itself wholly upon him, because it knows by the infallible witness of the Holy Spirit, that Jehovah, the God of earth and heaven, is the Father of my heart. Oh! have you ever felt the spirit of adoption? There is nought like it beneath the sky. Save heaven itself there is nought more blissful than to enjoy that spirit of adoption. Oh! when the wind of trouble is blowing and waves of adversity are rising, and the ship is reeling to the rock how sweet then to say “My Father,” and to believe that his strong hand is on the helm!—when the bones are aching, and when the loins are filled with pain, and when the cup is brimming with wormwood and gall, to say “My Father,” and seeing that Father’s hand holding the cup to the lip, to drink it steadily to the very dregs because we can say, “My Father, not my will, but thine be done.” Well says Martin Luther, in his Exposition of the Galatians, “there is more eloquence in that word, ‘Abba. Father,’ than in all the orations of Demosthenes or Cicero put together.” “My Father!” Oh! there is music there; there is eloquence there; there is the very essence of heaven’s own bliss in that word, ” My Father,” when applied to God, and when said by us with an unfaltering tongue, through the inspiration of the Spirit of the living God.

My hearers, have you the spirit of adoption? If not, ye are miserable men. May God himself bring you to know him! May he teach you your need of him! May he lead you to the cross of Christ, and help you to look to your dying Brother! May he bathe you in the blood that flowed from his open wounds, and then, accepted in the beloved, may you rejoice that you have the honor to be one of that sacred family.

III. And now, in the last place, I said that there was in the title, A DOUBLE ARGUMENT.

“Our Father.” That is, “Lord, hear what I have got to say. Thou art my Father.” If I come before a judge I have no right to expect that he shall hear me at any particular season in aught that I have to say. If I came merely to crave for some boon or benefit to myself, if the law were on my side, then I could demand an audience at his hands; but when I come as a law-breaker, and only come to crave for mercy, or for favors I deserve not, I have no right to expect to be heard. But a child, even though he is erring, always expects his father will hear what he has to say. “Lord, if I call thee King thou wilt say, ‘Thou art a rebellious subject; get thee gone.’ If I call thee Judge thou wilt say, ‘Be still, or out of thine own mouth will I condemn thee.’ If I call thee Creator thou wilt say unto me ‘It repenteth me that I made man upon the earth.’ If I call thee my Preserver thou wilt say unto me, ‘I have preserved thee, but thou hast rebelled against me.’ But if I call thee Father, all my sinfulness doth not invalidate my claim. If thou be my Father, then thou lovest me; if I be thy child, then thou wilt regard me, and poor though my language be, thou wilt not despise it.” If a child were called upon to speak in the presence of a number of persons, how very much alarmed he would be lest he should not use right language. I may sometimes feel when I have to address a mighty auditory, lest I should not select choice words, full well knowing that if I were to preach as I never shall, like the mightiest of orators I should always have enough of carping critics to rail at me. But if I had my Father here and if you could all stand in the relationship of father to me, I should not be very particular what language I used. When I talk to my Father I am not afraid he will misunderstand me; if I put my words a little out of place he understands my meaning somehow. When we are little children we only prattle; still our father understands us. Our children talk a great deal more like Dutchmen than Englishmen when they begin to talk, and strangers come in and my, “Dear me, what is the child talking about?” But we know what it is and though in what they say there may not be an intelligible sound that any one could print, and a reader make it out, we know they have got certain little wants, and having a way of expressing their desires, and we can understand them. So when we come to God, our prayers are little broken things; we cannot put them together but our Father, he will hear us. Oh! what a beginning is “Our Father,” to a prayer full of faults, and a foolish prayer perhaps, a prayer in which are going to ask what we ought not to ask for! “Father, forgive the language! forgive the matter!” As one dear brother said the other day at the prayer meeting. He could not get on in prayer, and he finished up on a sudden by saying, “Lord, I cannot pray to-night as I should wish; I cannot put the words together; Lord, take the meaning take the meaning,” and sat down. That is just what David said once, “Lo, all my desire is before thee”—not my words, but my desire, and God could read it. We should say, “Our Father,” because that is a reason why God should hear what we have to say.

But there is another argument. “Our Father.” “Lord, give me what I want.” If I come to a stranger, I have no right to expect he will give it me. He may out of his charity; but if I come to a father, I have a claim, a sacred claim. My Father, I shall have no need to use arguments to move thy bosom; I shall not have to speak to thee as the beggar who crieth in the street: for because thou art my Father thou knowest my wants, and thou art willing to relieve me. It is thy business to relieve me; I can come confidently to thee, knowing thou wilt give me all I want. If we ask our Father for anything when we are little children, we are under an obligation certainly; but it is an obligation we never feel. If you were hungry and your father fed you, would you feel an obligation like you would if you went into the house of a stranger? You go into a stranger’s house trembling, and you tell him you are hungry. Will he feed you? He says yes, he will give you somewhat; but if you go to your father’s table, almost without asking, you sit down as a matter of course, and feast to your full, and you rise and go, and feel you are indebted to him; but there is not a grievous sense of obligation. Now, we are all deeply under obligation to God, but it is a child’s obligation—an obligation which impels us to gratitude, but which does not constrain us to feel that we have been demeaned by it. Oh! if he were not my Father, how could I expect that he would relieve my wants? But since he is my Father, he will, he must hear my prayers, and answer the voice of my crying, and supply all my needs out of the riches of his fullness in Christ Jesus the Lord.

Has your father treated you badly lately? I have this word to you, then; your father loves you quite as much when he treats you roughly as when he treats you kindly. There is often more love in an angry father’s heart than there is in the heart of a father who is too kind. I will suppose a case. Suppose there were two fathers, and their two sons went away to some remote part of the earth where idolatry is still practiced. Suppose these two sons were decoyed and deluded into idolatry. The news comes to England, and the first father is very angry. His son, his own son, has forsaken the religion of Christ and become an idolater. The second father says, “Well, if it will help him in trade I don’t care, if he gets on the better by it, all well and good.” Now, which loves most, the angry father, or the father who treats the matter with complacency? Why, the angry father is the best. He loves his son; therefore he cannot give away his son’s soul for gold. Give me a father that is angry with my sins, and that seeks to bring me back, even though it be by chastisement. Thank God you have got a father that can be angry, but that loves you as much when he is angry as when he smiles upon you.

Go away with that upon your mind, and rejoice. But if you love not God and fear him not, go home, I beseech you, to confess your sins, and to seek mercy through the blood of Christ; and may this sermon be made useful in bringing you into the family of Christ though you have strayed from him long; and though his love has followed you long in vain, may it now find you, and bring you to his house rejoicing!

“And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job.”

How very uncertain are all terrestrial things! How foolish would that believer be who should lay up his treasure anywhere, except in heaven! Job’s prosperity promised as much stability as anything can do beneath the moon. The man had round about him a large household of, doubtless, devoted and attached servants. He had accumulated wealth of a kind which does not suddenly depreciate in value. He had oxen, and asses, and cattle. He had not to go to markets, and fairs, and trade with his goods to procure food and clothing, for he carried on the processes of agriculture on a very large scale round about his own homestead, and probably grew within his own territory everything that his establishment required. His children were numerous enough to promise a long line of descendants. His prosperity wanted nothing for its consolidation. It had come to its flood-tide: where was the cause which could make it ebb?

Up there, beyond the clouds, where no human eye could see, there was a scene enacted which augured no good to Job’s prosperity. The spirit of evil stood face to face with the infinite Spirit of all good. An extraordinary conversation took place between these two beings. When called to account for his doings, the evil one boasted that he had gone to and fro throughout the earth, insinuating that he had met with no hindrance to his will, and found no one to oppose his freely moving and acting at his own pleasure. He had marched everywhere like a king in his own dominions, unhindered and unchallenged. When the great God reminded him that there was at least one place among men where he had no foothold, and where his power was unrecognized, namely, in the heart of Job; that there was one man who stood like an impregnable castle, garrisoned by integrity, and held with perfect loyalty as the possession of the King of Heaven; the evil one defied Jehovah to try the faithfulness of Job, told him that the patriarch’s integrity was due to his prosperity, that he served God and eschewed evil from sinister motives, because he found his conduct profitable to himself. The God of heaven took up the challenge of the evil one, and gave him permission to take away all the mercies which he affirmed to be the props of Job’s integrity, and to pull down all the outworks and buttresses and see whether the tower would not stand in its own inherent strength without them. In consequence of this, all Job’s wealth went in one black day, and not even a child was left to whisper comfort. A second interview between the Lord and his fallen angel took place. Job was again the subject of conversation; and the Great One defied by Satan, permitted him even to touch him in his bone and in his flesh, till the prince became worse than a pauper, and he who was rich and happy was poor and wretched, filled with disease from head to foot, and fain to scrape himself with a miserable potsherd, to gain a poor relief from his pain.

Let us see in this the mutability of all terrestrial things. He hath founded it upon the floods,” is David’s description of this world; and, if it be founded on the floods, can you wonder that it changes oft? Put not your trust in anything beneath the stars: remember that “Change” is written on the fore-front of nature. Say not therefore, “My mountain standeth firm: it shall never be moved;” the glance of Jehovah’s eye can shake thy mountain into dust, the touch of his foot can make it like Sinai, to melt like wax, and to be altogether on a smoke. “Set your affection on things above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God,” and let your heart and your treasure be where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal.” The words of Bernard may here instruct us: “That is the true and chief joy which is not conceived from the creature, but received from the Creator, which (being once possessed thereof) none can take from thee: compared with which all other pleasure is torment, all joy is grief, sweet things are bitter, all glory is baseness, and all delectable things are despicable.”

This is not, however, our subject this morning. Accept thus much as merely an introduction to our main discourse. The Lord said to Satan, “Hast thou considered my servant Job?” Let us deliberate, first, in what sense the evil spirit may be said to consider the people of God; secondly, let us notice what it is that he considers about them; and then, thirdly, let us comfort ourselves by the reflection that one who is far above Satan considers us in a higher sense.

I. First, then, IN WHAT SENSE MAY SATAN BE SAID TO CONSIDER THE PEOPLE OF GOD?

Certainly not in the usual Biblical meaning of the term “consider.” “O Lord consider my trouble.” “Consider my meditation.” “Blessed is he that considereth the poor.” Such consideration implies good-will and a careful inspection of the object of benevolence with regard to a wise distribution of favour. In that sense Satan never considers any. If he has any benevolence, it must be towards himself; but all his considerations of other creatures are of the most malevolent kind. No meteoric flash of good flits across the black midnight of his soul. Nor does he consider us as we are told to consider the works of God, that is, in order to derive instruction as to God’s wisdom and love and kindness. He does not honour God by what he sees in his works, or in his people. It is not with him, “Go to the ant; consider her ways and be wise;” but he goes to the Christian and considers his ways and becomes more foolishly God’s enemy than he was before. The consideration which Satan pays to God’s saints is upon this wise. He regards them with wonder, when he considers the difference between them and himself. A traitor, when he knows the thorough villainy and the blackness of his own heart, cannot help being astounded, when he is forced to believe another man to be faithful. The first resort of a treacherous heart is to believe that all men would be just as treacherous, and are really so at bottom. The traitor thinks that all men are traitors like himself, or would be, if it paid them better than fidelity. When Satan looks at the Christian, and finds him faithful to God and to his truth, he considers him as we should consider a phenomenon—Perhaps despising him for his folly, but yet marveling at him, and wondering how he can act thus. “I,” he seems to say, “a prince, a peer of God’s parliament, would not submit my will to Jehovah. I thought it better to reign in hell than serve in heaven: I kept not my first estate, but fell from my throne. How is it that these stand? What grace is it which keeps these? I was a vessel of gold, and yet I was broken; these are earthen vessels, but I cannot break them! I could not stand in my glory—what can be the matchless grace which upholds them in their poverty, in their obscurity, in their persecution, still faithful to the God who doth not bless and exalt them as he did me!” It may be that he also wonders at their happiness. He feels within himself a seething sea of misery. There is an unfathomable gulf of anguish within his soul, and when he looks at believers, he sees them quiet in their souls, full of peace and happiness, and often without any outward means by which they should be comforted, yet rejoicing and full of glory. He goes up and down through the world and possesses great power, and there be many myrmidons to serve him, yet he hath not the happiness of spirit possessed by yonder humble cottager, obscure, unknown, having no servants to wait upon her, but stretched upon the bed of weakness. He admires and hates the peace which reigns in the believer’s soul.

His consideration may go farther than this. Do you not think that he considers them to detect, if possible, any flaw and fault in them, by way of solace to himself? “They are not pure,” saith he—”these blood-bought ones—these elect from before the foundations of the world,—they still sin! These adopted children of God, for whom the glorious Son bowed his head and gave up the ghost!—even they offend!” How must he chuckle, with such delight as he is capable of, over the secret sins of God’s people, and if he can see anything in them inconsistent with their profession, anything which appears to be deceitful, and therein like himself, he rejoices. Each sin born in the believer’s heart, cries to him, “My father! my Father!” and he feels something like the joy of fatherhood as he sees his foul offspring. He looks at the “old man” in the Christian, and admires the tenacity with which it maintains its hold, the force and vehemence with which it struggles for the mastery, the craft and cunning with which every now and then, at set intervals, at convenient opportunities, it putteth forth all its force. He considers our sinful flesh, and makes it one of the books in which he diligently reads. One of the fairest prospects, I doubt not, which the devil’s eye ever rests upon, is the inconsistency and the impurity which he can discover in the true child of God. In this respect he had very little to consider in God’s true servant, Job.

Nor is this all, but rather just the starting point of his consideration. We doubt not that he views the Lord’s people, and especially the more eminent and excellent among them, as the great barriers to the progress of his kingdom; and just as the engineer, endeavouring to make a railway, keeps his eye very much fixed upon the hills and rivers, and especially upon the great mountain through which it will take years laboriously to bore a tunnel, so Satan, in looking upon his various plans to carry on his dominion in the world, considers most such men as Job. Satan must have thought much of Martin Luther. “I could ride the world over,” says he, “if it were not for that monk. He stands in my way. That strong-headed man hates and mauls my firstborn son, the pope. If I could get rid of him I would not mind though fifty thousand smaller saints stood in my way.” He is sure to consider God’s servant, if there be “none like him,” if he stand out distinct and separate from his fellows. Those of us who are called to the work of the ministry must expect from our position to be the special objects of his consideration. When the glass is at the eye of that dreadful warrior, he is sure to look out for those who by their regimentals are discovered to be the officers, and he bids his sharpshooters be very careful to aim at these, “For,” saith he, “if the standard-bearer fall, then shall the victory be more readily gained to our side, and our opponents shall be readily put to rout.” If you are more generous than other saints, if you live nearer to God than others, as the birds peck most at the ripest fruit, so may you expect Satan to be most busy against you. Who cares to contend for a province covered with stones and barren rocks, and ice-bound by frozen seas? But in all times there is sure to be contention after the fat valleys where the wheat-sheaves are plenteous, and where the husbandman’s toil is well requited, and thus, for you who honour God most, Satan will struggle very sternly. He wants to pluck God’s jewels from his crown, if he can, and take the Redeemer’s precious stones even from the breastplate itself. He considers, then, God’s people; viewing them as hindrances to his reign, he contrives methods by which he may remove them out of his way, or turn them to his own account. Darkness would cover the earth if he could blow out the lights; there would be no fruit to shake like Lebanon, if he could destroy that handful of corn upon the top of the mountains; hence his perpetual consideration is to make the faithful fail from among men.

It needs not much wisdom to discern that the great object of Satan in considering God’s people is to do them injury. I scarcely think he hopes to destroy the really chosen and blood-bought heirs of life. My notion is that he is too good a divine for that. He has been foiled too often when he has attacked God’s people, that he can hardly think he shall be able to destroy the elect, for you remember the soothsayers who are very nearly related to him, spoke to Haman on this wise; “If Mordecai be of the seed of the Jews, before whom thou hast begun to fall, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shalt surely fall before him.” He knows right well that there is a seed royal in the land against whom he fights in vain; and it strikes me if he could be absolutely certain that any one soul was chosen of God, he would scarcely waste his time in attempting to destroy it, although he might seek to worry and to dishonour it. It is however most likely that Satan no more knows who God’s elect are than we do, for he can only judge as we do by outward actions, though he can form a more accurate judgment than we can through longer experience, and being able to see persons in private where we cannot intrude; yet into God’s book of secret decrees his black eye can never peer. By their fruits he knows them, and we know them in the same manner. Since, however, we are often mistaken in our judgment, he too may be so; and it seems to me that he therefore makes it his policy to endeavour to destroy them all—not knowing in which case he may succeed. He goeth about seeking whom he may devour, and, as he knows not whom he may be permitted to swallow up, he attacks all the people of God with vehemence. Some one may say, “How can one devil do this?” He does not do it by himself alone. I do not know that many of us have ever been tempted directly by Satan: we may not be notable enough among men to be worth his trouble; but he has a whole host of inferior spirits under his supremacy and control, and as the centurion said of himself, so he might have said of Satan—”he saith to this spirit, ‘Do this,’ and he doeth it, and to his servant, ‘Go,’ and he goeth.” Thus all the servants of God will more or less come under the direct or indirect assaults of the great enemy of souls, and that with a view of destroying them; for he would, if it were possible, deceive the very elect. Where he cannot destroy, there is no doubt that Satan’s object is to worry. He does not like to see God’s people happy. I believe the devil greatly delights in some ministers, whose tendency in their preaching is to multiply and foster doubts and fears, and grief, and despondency, as the evidences of God’s people. “Ah,” saith the devil, “preach on; you are doing my work well, for I like to see God’s people mournful. If I can make them hang their harps on the willows, and go about with miserable faces, I reckon I have done my work very completely.” My dear friends, let us watch against those specious temptations which pretend to make us humble, but which really aim at making us unbelieving. Our God takes no delight in our suspicions and mistrusts. See how he proves his love in the gift of his dear Son Jesus. Banish then all your ill surmisings, and rejoice in unmoved confidence. God delights to be worshipped with Joy. Oh come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.” “Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous, and shout for joy all ye that are upright in heart.” “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say, rejoice.” Satan does not like this. Martin Luther used to say, “Let us sing psalms and spite the devil,” and I have no doubt Martin Luther was pretty nearly right; for that lover of discord hates harmonious, joyous praise. Beloved brother, the arch-enemy wants to make you wretched here, if he cannot have you hereafter; and in this, no doubt, he is aiming a blow at the honour of God. He is well aware that mournful Christians often dishonour the faithfulness of God by mistrusting it, and he thinks if he can worry us until we no more believe in the constancy and goodness of the Lord, he shall have robbed God of his praise. “He that offereth praise, glorifieth me,” says God; and so Satan lays the axe at the root of our praise, that God may cease to be glorified.

Moreover, if Satan cannot destroy a Christian, how often has he spoilt his usefulness? Many a believer has fallen, not to break his neck—that is impossible,—but he has broken some important bone, and he has gone limping to his grave! We can recall with grief some men once eminent in the ranks of the Church, who did run well, but on a sudden, through stress of temptation, they fell into sin, and their names were never mentioned in the Church again, except with bated breath. Everybody thought and hoped they were saved so as by fire, but certainly their former usefulness never could return. It is very easy to go back in the heavenly pilgrimage, but it is very hard to retrieve your steps. You may soon turn aside and put out your candle, but you cannot light it quite so speedily. Friend, beloved in the Lord, watch against the attacks of Satan and stand fast, because you, as a pillar in the house or God are very dear to us, and we cannot spare you. As a father, or as a matron in our midst, we do you honour, and oh—we would not be made to mourn and lament—we do not wish to be grieved by hearing the shouts of our adversaries while they cry “Aha! Aha! so would we have it,” for alas! there have been many things done in our Zion which we would not have told in Gath, nor published in the streets of Askelon, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised should rejoice, and the sons of the Philistines should triumph. Oh may God grant us grace, as a Church, to stand against the wiles of Satan and his attacks, that having done his worst he may gain no advantage over us, and after having considered, and considered again, and counted well our towers and bulwarks, he may be compelled to retire because his battering rams cannot jar so much as a stone from our ramparts, and his slings cannot slay one single soldier on the walls.

Before I leave this point, I should like to say, that perhaps it may be suggested, “How is it that God permits this constant and malevolent consideration of his people by the evil one?” One answer, doubtless, is, that God knows what is for his own glory, and that he giveth no account of his matters; that having permitted free agency, and having allowed, for some mysterious reason, the existence of evil, it does not seem agreeable with his having done so to destroy Satan; but he gives him power that it may be a fair hand-to-hand fight between sin and holiness, between grace and craftiness. Besides, be it remembered, that incidentally the temptations of Satan are of service to the people of God; Fenelon says they are the file which rubs off much of the rust of self-confidence, and I may add, they are the horrible sound in the sentinel’s ear, which is sure to keep him awake. An experimental divine remarks, that there is no temptation in the world which is so bad as not being tempted at all; for to be tempted will tend to keep us awake: whereas, being without temptation, flesh and blood are weak—and though the spirit may be willing, yet we may be found falling into slumber. Children do not run away from their father’s side when big dogs bark at them. The howlings of the devil may tend to drive us nearer to Christ, may teach us our own weakness, may keep us upon our own watch-tower, and be made the means of preservation from other ills. Let us “be sober, be vigilant, because our adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour;” and let us who are in a prominent position be permitted affectionately to press upon you one earnest request, namely, “Brethren, pray for us.” that, exposed as we are peculiarly to the consideration of Satan, we may be guarded by divine power. Let us be made rich by your faithful prayers that we may be kept even to the end.

II. Secondly, WHAT IS IT THAT SATAN CONSIDERS WITH A VIEW TO THE INJURY OF GOD’S PEOPLE?

It cannot be said of him as of God, that he knoweth us altogether; but since he has been now nearly six thousand years dealing with poor fallen humanity, he must have acquired a very vast experience in that time, and having been all over the earth, and having tempted the highest and the lowest, he must know exceeding well what the springs of human action are, and how to play upon them. Satan watches and considers first of all our peculiar infirmities. He looks us up and down, just as I have seen a horse-dealer do with a horse; and soon finds out wherein we are faulty. I, a common observer, might think the horse an exceedingly good one, as I see it running up and down the road, but the dealer sees what I cannot see, and he knows how to handle the creature just in such quarters and at such points that he soon discovers any hidden mischief. Satan knows how to look at us and reckon us up from heel to head, so that he will say of this man, “His infirmity is lust,” or of that other, “He hath a quick tempter,” or of this other, “He is proud,” or of that other, “He is slothful.” The eye of malice is very quick to perceive a weakness, and the hand of enmity soon takes advantage of it. When the arch-spy finds a weak place in the wall of our castle, he takes care to plant his battering-ram, and begin his siege. You may conceal, even from your dearest friend, your infirmity, but you will not conceal it from your worst enemy. He has lynx eyes, and detects in a moment the joint in your harness. He goes about with a match, and though you may think you have covered all the gunpowder of your heart, yet he knows how to find a crack to put his match through, and much mischief will he do, unless eternal mercy shall prevent.

He takes care also to consider our frames and states of mind. If the devil would attack us when our mind is in certain moods, we should be more than a match for him: he knows this, and shuns the encounter. Some men are more ready for temptation when they are distressed and desponding; the fiend will then assail them. Others will be more liable to take fire when they are jubilant and full of joy; then will he strike his spark into the tinder. Certain persons, when they are much vexed and tossed to and fro, can be made to say almost anything; and others, when their souls are like perfectly placid waters, are just then in a condition to be navigated by the devil’s vessel. As the worker in metals knows that one metal is to be worked at such a heat, and another at a different temperature; as those who have to deal with chemicals know that at a certain heat one fluid will boil, while another reaches the boiling-point much earlier, so Satan knows exactly the temperature at which to work us to his purpose. Small pots boil directly they are put on the fire, and so little men of quick temper are soon in a passion; larger vessels require more time and coal before they will boil, but when they do boil, it is a boil indeed, not soon forgotten or abated. The enemy, like a fisherman, watches his fish, adapts his bait to his prey; and knows in what seasons and times the fish are most likely to bite. This hunter of so souls comes upon us unawares, and often we are overtaken in a fault and or caught in a trap through an unwatchful frame of mind. That rate collector of choice sayings, Thomas Spencer, has the following which is to the much to the point—”The chameleon, when he lies on the grass to catch flies and grasshoppers, taketh upon him the colour of the grass, as the polypus doth the colour of the rock under which he lurketh, that the fish may boldly come near him without any suspicion of danger. In like manner, Satan turneth himself into that shape hich we least fear, and sets before us such objects of temptation as are most agreeable to our natures, that sohe may the sooner draw us into his net; he sails with every wind, and blows us that way which we incline ourselves through the weakness of nature. Is our knowledge in matter of faith deficient? He tempts us to error. Is our conscience tender? He tempts us to scrupulosity, and too much preciseness. Hath our conscience, like the ecliptic line, some latitude? He tempts us to carnal liberty. Are we bold spirited? He tempts us to presumption. Are we timorous and distrustful? He tempteth us to desperation. Are we of a flexible disposition? He tempteth us to inconstancy. Are we stiff? He labours to make obstinate heretics, schismatics, or rebels of us. Are we of an austere tempter? He tempteth us to cruelty. Are we soft and mild? He tempteth us to indulgence and foolish pity. Are we hot in matters of religion? He tempteth us to blind zeal and superstition. Are we cold? He tempteth us to Laodicean lukewarmness. Thus doth he lay his traps, that one way or other, he may ensnare us.”

He also takes care to consider our position among men. There are a few persons who are most easily tempted when they are alone; they are the subjects then of great heaviness of mind, and they may be driven to most awful crimes: perhaps the most of us are more liableiable to sin when we are in company. In some company I never should be led into sin; into another society I could scarcely venture. Many are so full of levity, that those of us who are inclined the same way can scarcely look them in the face without feeling our besetting sin set a-going; and others are so somber, that if they meet a brother of like mould, they are pretty sure between them to invent an evil report of the goodly land. Satan knows where to overtake you in a place where you lie open to his attacks; he will pounce upon you, swoop like a bird of prey from the sky, where he has been watching for the time to make his descent with a prospect of success.

How too, will he consider our condition in the world! He looks at one man, and says, “That man has property: it is of no use my trying such-and-such arts with him; but here is another man who is very poor, I will catch him in that net.” Then, again, he looks at the poor man, and says, “Now, I cannot tempt him to this folly, but I will lead the rich man into it.” As the sportsman has a gun for wild fowl, and another for deer and game, so has Satan a different temptation for various orders of men. I do not suppose that the Queen’s temptation ever will annoy Mary the kitchen-maid. I do not suppose, on the other hand, that Mary’s temptation will ever be very serious to me. Probably you could escape from mine—I do not think you could; and I sometimes fancy I could bear yours—though I question if I could. Satan knows, however, just where to smite us, and our position, our capabilities, our education, our standing in society, our calling, may all be doors through which he may attack us. You who have no calling at all, are in peculiar peril—I wonder the devil does not swallow you outright. The most likely man to go to hell is the man who has nothing to do on earth. I say that seriously. I believe that there cannot happen a much worse evil to a person than to be placed where he has no work; and if I should ever be in such a state, I would get employment at once, for fear I should be carried off, body and soul, by the evil one. Idle people tempt the devil to tempt them. Let us have something to do, let us keep our minds occupied, for, if not, we make room for the devil. Industry will not make us gracious, but the want of industry may make us vicious. Have always something on the anvil or in the fire.

“In books, or work, or healthful play,
I would be busy too,
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.”

So Watts taught us in our childhood; and so let us believe in our manhood. Books, or works, or such recreations as are necessary for health, should occupy our time; for if I throw myself down in indolence, like an old piece of iron, I must not wonder that I grow rusty with sin.

Nor have I done yet. Satan, when he makes his investigations, notices all the objects of our affection. I doubt not when he went round Job’s house, he observed it as carefully as thieves do a jeweller’s premises when they mean to break into them. They very cunningly take account of every door, window, and fastening: they fail not to look at the next-door house; for they may have to reach the treasure through the building which adjoins it. So, when the devil went round, jotting down in his mind all Job’s position, he thought to himself, “There are the camels and the oxen, the asses, and the servants—yes, I can use all these very admirably.” “Then,” he thought, “there are the three daughters! There are the ten sons, and they go feasting—I shall know where to catch them, and if I can just blow the house down when they are feasting, that will afflict the father’s mind the more severely, for he will say ‘O that they had died when they had been praying, rather than when they had been feasting and drinking wine.’ I will put down too in the inventory,” says the devil I shall want her,” and accordingly it came to that. Nobody could have done what Job’s wife did—none of the servants could have said that sad sentence so stingingly—or, if she meant it very kindly, none could have said it with such a fascinating air as Job’s own wife, “Bless God and die,” as it may be read, or “Curse God and die.” Ah, Satan, thou hast ploughed with Job’s heifer, but thou hast not succeeded; lob’s strength lies in his God, not in his hair, or else thou mightest have shorn him as Samson was shorn! Perhaps the evil one had even inspected Job’s personal sensibilities, and so selected that form of bodily affliction which he knew to be most dreaded by his victim. He brought upon him a disease which Job may have seen and shuddered at in poor men outside the city gates. Brethren, Satan knows quite as much in regard to you. You have a child, and Satan knows that you idolize it. “Ah,” says he, “there is a place for my wounding him.” Even the partner of your bosom may be made a quiver in which hell’s arrows shall be stored till the time may come, and then she may prove the bow from which Satan will shoot them. Watch even your neighbour and her that lieth in your bosom, for you know not how Satan may get an advantage over you. Our habits, our joys, our sorrows, our retirements, our public positions, all may be made weapons of attack by this desperate foe of the Lord’s people. We have snares everywhere; in our bed and at our table, in our house and in the street. There are gins and trap-falls in company; there are pits when we are alone. We may find temptations in the house of God as well as in the world; traps in our high estate, and deadly poisons in our abasement. We must not expect to be rid of temptations till we have crossed the Jordan, and then, thank God, we are beyond gunshot of the enemy. The last howling of the dog of hell will be heard as we descend into the chill waters of the black stream, but when we hear the hallelujah of the glorified, we shall have done with the black prince for ever and ever.

III. Satan considered, but THERE WAS A HIGHER CONSIDERATION WHICH OVERRODE HIS CONSIDERATION.

In times of war, the sappers and miners of one party will make a mine, and it is a very common counteractive for the sappers and miners of the other party to countermine by undermining the first mine. This is just what God does with Satan. Satan is mining, and he thinks to light the fuse and to blow up God’s building, but all the while God is undermining him, and he blows up Satan’s mine before he can do any mischief. The devil is the greatest of all fools. He has more knowledge but less wisdom than any other creature, he is more subtle than all the beasts of the field, but it is well called subtlety, not wisdom. It is not true wisdom; it is only another shape of folly. All the while that Satan was tempting Job, he little knew that he was answering God’s purpose, for God was looking on and considering the whole of it, and holding the enemy as a man holds a horse by its bridle. The Lord had considered exactly how far he would let Satan go. He did not the first time permit him to touch his flesh—perhaps that was more than Job at that time could have borne. Have you never noticed that if you are in good strong bodily health you can bear losses and crosses, and even bereavements with something like equanimity? Now that was the case with Job. Perhaps if the disease had come first and the rest had followed, it might have been a temptation too heavy for him, but God who knows just how far to let the enemy go, will say to him, “Thus far, and no farther.” By degrees he became accustomed to his poverty; in fact, the trial had lost all its sting the moment Job said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.” That enemy was slain—nay it was buried and this was the funeral oration, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” When the second trial came, the first trial had qualified Job to bear the second. It may be a more severe trial for a man in the possession of great worldly wealth suddenly to be deprived of the bodily power of enjoying it, than to lose all first, and then lose the health necessary to its enjoyment. Having already lost all, he might almost say, “I thank God that now I have nothing to enjoy, and therefore the loss of the power to enjoy it is not so wearisome. I have not to say, “How I wish I could go out in my fields, and see to my servants, for they are all dead. I do not wish to see my children—they are all dead and gone—I am thankful that they are; better so, than that they should see their poor father sit on a dunghill like this.” He might have been almost glad if his wife had gone too, for certainly she was not a very particular mercy when she was spared; and possibly, if he had all his children about him, it might have been a harder trial than it was. The Lord who weighs mountains in scales, had meted out his servant’s woe.

Did not the Lord also consider how he should sustain his servant under his trial? Beloved, you do not know how blessedly our God poured the secret oil upon Job’s fire of grace while the devil was throwing buckets of water on it. He saith to himself, “If Satan shall do much, I will do more; if he takes away much, I will give more; if he tempts the man to curse, I will fill him so full of love to me that he shall bless me. I will help him; I will strengthen him; yea, I will uphold him with the right hand of my righteousness.” Christian, take those two thoughts and put them under your tongue as a wafer made with honey—you will never be tempted without express license from the throne where Jesus pleads, and, on the other hand, when he permits it, he will with the temptation make a way of escape, or give you grace to stand under it.

In the next place, the Lord considered how to sanctify Job by this trial. Job was a much better man at the end of the story than he was at the beginning. He was “an incredible disgrace upon Satan. If you want perfect and an upright man” at first, but there was a little pride about him. We are poor creatures to criticize such a man as Job—but still there was in him just a sprinkling of self-righteousness. I think, and his friends brought it out, Eliphaz and Zophar said such irritating things that poor Job could not help replying in strong terms about himself that were rather too strong, one thinks; there was a little too much self-justification. He was not proud as some of us are, of a very little—he had much to be proud of, as the world would allow—but yet there was the tendency to be exalted with it; and though the devil did not know it, perhaps if he had left Job alone, that pride might have run to seed, and Job might have sinned; but he was in such a hurry, that he would not let the ill seed ripen, but hastened to cut it up, and so was the Lord’s tool to bring Job into a more humble, and consequently a more safe and blessed state of mind. Moreover, observe how Satan was a lacquey to the Almighty! Job all this while was being enabled to earn a greater reward. All his prosperity is not enough; God loves Job so much, that he intends to give him twice the property; he intends to give him his children again; he means to make him a more famous man than ever; a man whose name shall ring down the ages; a man who shall be talked of through all generations. He is not to be the man of Uz, but of the whole world. He is not to be heard of by a handful in one neighbourhood, but all men are to hear of Job’s patience in the hour of trial. Who is to do this? Who is to fashion the trump of fame through which Job’s name is to be blown? The devil goes to the forge, and works away with all his might, to make Job illustrious! Foolish devil! he is piling up a pedestal on which God will set his servant Job, that he may be looked upon with wonder by all ages.

To conclude, Job’s afflictions and Job’s patience have been a lasting blessing to the Church of God, and they have inflicted incredible disgrace upon Satan. If you want to make the devil angry, throw the story of Job in his teeth. If you desire to have your own confidence sustained, may God the Holy Ghost lead you into the patience of lob. Oh! how many saints have been comforted in their distress by this history of patience! How many have been saved out of the jaw of the lion, and from the paw of the bear by the dark experiences of the patriarch of Uz. Oh arch fiend, how art thou taken in thine own net! Thou hast thrown a stone which has fallen on thine own head. Thou madest a pit for Job, and hast fallen into it thyself; thou art taken in thine own craftiness. Jehovah has made fools of the wise and driven the diviners mad. Brethren, let us commit ourselves in faith to the care and keeping of God—come poverty, come sickness, come death, we will in all things through Jesus Christ’s blood be conquerors, and by the power of his Spirit we shall overcome at the last. I would God we were all trusting in Jesus. May those who have not trusted him be led to begin this very morning, and God shall have all the praise in us all, evermore. Amen.

It is not necessary by quotations from the biographies of eminent ministers to prove that seasons of fearful prostration have fallen to the lot of most, if not all of them. The life of Luther might suffice to give a thousand instances, and he was by no means of the weaker sort. His great spirit was often in the seventh heaven of exultation, and as frequently on the borders of despair. His very death-bed was not free from tempests, and he sobbed himself into his last sleep like a great wearied child. Instead of multiplying Gases, let us dwell upon the reasons why these things are permitted why it is that the children of light sometimes walk in the thick darkness; why the heralds of the daybreak find themselves at times in tenfold night.

Is it not first that they are men? Being men, they are compassed with infirmity, and heirs of sorrow. Well said the wise man in the Apocrypha, (Ecclus xl. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5-8) “Great travail is created for all men, and a heavy yoke on the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother’s womb unto that day that they return to the mother of all things—namely, their thoughts and fear of their hearts, and their imagination of things that they wail for, and the day of death. From him that sitteth in the glorious throne, to him that sitteth beneath in the earth and ashes; from him that is clothed in blue silk, and weareth a crown, to him that is clothed in simple linen—wrath, envy, trouble, and unquietness, and fear of death and rigour, and such things come to both man and beast, but sevenfold to the ungodly.” Grace guards us from much of this, but because we have not more of grace we still suffer even from ills preventible. Even under the economy of redemption it is most clear that we are to endure infirmities, otherwise there were no need of the promised Spirit to help us in them. It is of need be that we are sometimes in heaviness. Good men are promised tribulation in this world, and ministers may expect a larger share than others, that they may learn sympathy with the Lord’s suffering people, and so may be fitting shepherds of an ailing flock. Disembodied spirits might have been sent to proclaim the word, but they could not have entered into the feelings of those who, being in this body, do groan, being burdened; angels might have been ordained evangelists, but their celestial attributes would have disqualified them from having compassion on the ignorant; men of marble might have been fashioned, but their impassive natures would have been a sarcasm upon our feebleness, and a mockery of our wants. Men, and men subject to human passions, the all-wise God has chosen to be his vessels of grace; hence these tears, hence these perplexities and castings down.

Moreover, most of us are in some way or other unsound physically. Here and there we meet with an old man who could not remember that ever he was laid aside for a day; but the great mass of us labour under some form or other of infirmity, either in body or mind. Certain bodily maladies, especially those connected with the digestive organs, the liver, and the spleen, are time fruitful fountains of despondency; and, let a man strive as he may against their influence, there will be hours and circumstances in which they will for awhile overcome him. As to mental maladies, is any man altogether sane? Are we not all a little off the balance? Some minds appear to have a gloomy tinge essential to their very individuality; of them it may be said, “Melancholy marked them for her own;” fine minds withal, and ruled by noblest principles, but yet most prone to forget the silver lining, and to remember only the cloud. Such men may sing with the old poet (Thomas Washbourne.)

“Our hearts are broke, our harps unstringed be,
Our only music’s sighs and groans,
Our songs are to the tune of lachrymœ,
We’re fretted all to skin and bones.”

These infirmities may be no detriment to a man’s career of special usefulness; they may even have been imposed upon him by divine wisdom as necessary qualifications for his peculiar course of service. Some plants owe their medicinal qualities to the marsh in which they grow; others to the shades in which alone they flourish. There are precious fruits put forth by the moon as well as by the sun. Boats need ballast as well as sail; a drag on the carriage-wheel is no hindrance when the road runs downhill. Pain has, probably, in some cases developed genius; hunting out the soul which otherwise might have slept like a lion in its den. Had it not been for the broken wing, some might have lost themselves in the clouds, some even of those choice doves who now bear the olive-branch in their mouths and show the way to the ark. But where in body and mind there are predisposing causes to lowness of spirit, it is no marvel if in dark moments the heart succumbs to them; the wonder in many cases is—and if inner lives could be written, men would see it so—how some ministers keep at their work at all, and still wear a smile upon their countenances. Grace has its triumphs still, and patience has its martyrs; martyrs none the less to be honoured because the flames kindle about their spirits rather than their bodies, and their burning is unseen of human eyes. The ministries of Jeremiahs are as acceptable as those of Isaiahs, and even the sullen Jonah is a true prophet of the Lord, as Nineveh felt full well. Despise not the lame, for it is written that they take the prey; but honour those who, being faint, are yet pursuing. The tender-eyed Leah was more fruitful than the beautiful Rachel, and the griefs of Hannah were more divine than the boastings of Peninnah. “Blessed are they that mourn,” said the Man of Sorrows, and let none account them otherwise when their tears are salted with grace. We have the treasure of the gospel in earthen vessels, and if there be a flaw in the vessel here and there, let none wonder.

Our work, when earnestly undertaken, lays us open to attacks in the direction of depression. Who can bear the weight of souls without sometimes sinking to the dust? Passionate longings after men’s conversion, if not fully satisfied (and when are they?), consume the soul with anxiety and disappointment. To see the hopeful turn aside, the godly grow cold, professors abusing their privileges, and sinners waxing more bold in sin—are not these sights enough to crush us to the earth? The kingdom comes not as we would, the reverend name is not hallowed as we desire, and for this we must weep. How can we be otherwise than sorrowful, while men believe not our report, and the divine arm is not revealed? All mental work tends to weary and to depress, for much study is a weariness of the flesh; but ours is more than mental work—it is heart work, the labour of our inmost soul. How often, on Lord’s-day evenings, do we feel as if life were completely washed out of us! After pouring out our souls over our congregations, we feel like empty earthen pitchers which a child might break. Probably, if we were more like Paul, and watched for souls at a nobler rate, we should know more of what it is to be eaten up by the zeal of the Lord’s house. It is our duty and our privilege to exhaust our lives for Jesus. We are not to be living specimens of men in fine preservation, but living sacrifices, whose lot is to be consumed; we are to spend and to be spent, not to lay ourselves up in lavender, and nurse our flesh. Such soul-travail as that of a faithful minister will bring on occasional seasons of exhaustion, when heart and flesh will fail. Moses’ hands grew heavy in intercession, and Paul cried out, “Who is sufficient for these things?” Even John the Baptist is thought to have had his fainting fits, and the apostles were once amazed, and were sore afraid.

Our position in the church will also conduce to this. A minister fully equipped for his work, will usually be a spirit by himself, above, beyond, and apart from others. The most loving of his people cannot enter into his peculiar thoughts, cares, and temptations. In the ranks, men walk shoulder to shoulder, with many comrades, but as the officer rises in rank, men of his standing are fewer in number. There are many soldiers, few captains, fewer colonels, but only one commander-in-chief. So, in our churches, the man whom the Lord raises as a leader becomes, in the same degree in which he is a superior man, a solitary man. The mountain-tops stand solemnly apart, and talk only with God as he visits their terrible solitudes. Men of God who rise above their fellows into nearer communion with heavenly things, in their weaker moments feel the lack of human sympathy. Like their Lord in Gethsemane, they look in vain for comfort to the disciples sleeping around them; they are shocked at the apathy of their little band of brethren, and return to their secret agony with all the heavier burden pressing upon them, because they have found their dearest companions slumbering. No one knows, but he who has endured it, the solitude of a soul which has outstripped its fellows in zeal for the Lord of hosts: it dares not reveal itself, lest men count it mad; it cannot conceal itself, for a fire burns within its bones: only before the Lord does it find rest. Our Lord’s sending out his disciples by two and two manifested that he knew what was in men; but for such a man as Paul, it seems to me that no helpmeet was found; Barnabas, or Silas, or Luke, were hills too low to hold high converse with such a Himalayan summit as the apostle of the Gentiles. This loneliness, which if I mistake not is felt by many of my brethren, is a fertile source of depression; and our ministers, fraternal meetings, and the cultivation of holy intercourse with kindred minds will, with God’s blessing, help us greatly to escape the snare.

There can be little doubt that sedentary habits have a tendency to create despondency in some constitutions. Burton, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” has a chapter upon this cause of sadness; and, quoting from one of the myriad authors whom he lays under contribution, he says—”Students are negligent of their bodies. Other men look to their tools; a painter will wash his pencils; a smith will look to his hammer, anvil, forge; a husbandman will mend his plough-irons, and grind his hatchet if it be dull; a falconer or huntsman will have an especial care of his hawks, hounds, horses, dogs, &c.; a musician will string and unstring his lute; only scholars neglect that instrument (their brain and spirits I mean) which they daily use. Well saith Lucan, “See thou twist not the rope so hard that it break.” To sit long in one posture, poring over a book, or driving a quill, is in itself a taxing of nature; but add to this a badly-ventilated chamber, a body which has long been without muscular exercise, and a heart burdened with many cares, and we have all the elements for preparing a seething cauldron of despair, especially in the dim months of fog—

“When a blanket wraps the day,
When the rotten woodland drips,
And the leaf is stamped in clay.”

Let a man be naturally as blithe as a bird, he will hardly be able to bear up year after year against such a suicidal process; he will make his study a prison and his books the warders of a gaol, while nature lies outside his window calling him to health and beckoning him to joy. He who forgets the humming of the bees among the heather, the cooing of the wood-pigeons in the forest, the song of birds in the woods, the rippling of rills among the rushes, and the sighing of the wind among the pines, needs not wonder if his heart forgets to sing and his soul grows heavy. A day’s breathing of fresh air upon the hills, or a few hours, ramble in the beech woods? umbrageous calm, would sweep the cobwebs out of the brain of scores of our toiling ministers who are now but half alive. A mouthful of sea air, or a stiff walk in the wind’s face, would not give grace to the soul, but it would yield oxygen to the body, which is next best.

“Heaviest the heart is in a heavy air,
Ev’ry wind that rises blows away despair.”

The ferns and the rabbits, the streams and the trouts, the fir trees and the squirrels, the primroses and the violets, the farm-yard, the new-mown hay, and the fragrant hops—these are the best medicine for hypochondriacs, the surest tonics for the declining, the best refreshments for the weary. For lack of opportunity, or inclination, these great remedies are neglected, and the student becomes a self-immolated victim.

The times most favourable to fits of depression, so far as I have experienced, may be summed up in a brief catalogue. First among them I must mention the hour of great success. When at last a long-cherished desire is fulfilled, when God has been glorified greatly by our means, and a great triumph achieved, then we are apt to faint. It might be imagined that amid special favours our soul would soar to heights of ecstacy, and rejoice with joy unspeakable, but it is generally the reverse. The Lord seldom exposes his warriors to the perils of exultation over victory; he knows that few of them can endure such a test, and therefore dashes their cup with bitterness. See Elias after the fire has fallen from heaven, after Baal’s priests have been slaughtered and the rain has deluged the barren land For him no notes of self-complacent music, no strutting like a conqueror in robes of triumph; he flees from Jezebel, and feeling the revulsion of his intense excitement, he prays that he may die, lie who must never see death, yearns after the rest of the grave, even as Caesar, the world’s monarch, in his moments of pain cried like a sick girl. Poor human nature cannot bear such strains as heavenly triumphs bring to it; there must come a reaction. Excess of joy or excitement must be paid for by subsequent depressions. While the trial lasts, the strength is equal to the emergency; but when it is over, natural weakness claims the right to show itself. Secretly sustained, Jacob can wrestle all night, but he must limp in the morning when the contest is over, lest he boast himself beyond measure. Paul may be caught up to the third heaven, and hear unspeakable things, but a thorn in time flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him, must be the inevitable sequel. Men cannot bear unalloyed happiness; even good men are not yet fit to have “their brows with laurel and with myrtle bound,” without enduring secret humiliation to keep them in their proper place. Whirled from off our feet by a revival, carried aloft by popularity, exalted by success in soul-winning, we should be as the chaff which the wind driveth away, were it not that the gracious discipline of mercy breaks the ships of our vainglory with a strong east wind, and casts us shipwrecked, naked and forlorn, upon the Rock of Ages.

Before any great achievement, some measure of the same depression is very usual. Surveying the difficulties before us, our hearts sink within us. The sons of Anak stalk before us, and we are as grasshoppers in our own sight in their presence. The cities of Canaan are walled up to heaven, and who are we that we should hope to capture them? We are ready to cast down our weapons and take to our heels. Nineveh is a great city, and we would flee unto Tarshish sooner than encounter its noisy crowds. Already we look for a ship which may bear us quietly away from the terrible scene, and only a dread of tempest restrains our recreant footsteps. Such was my experience when I first became a pastor in London. My success appalled me; and the thought of the career which it seemed to open up, so far from elating me, cast me into the lowest depth, out of which I uttered my miserere and found no room for a gloria in excelsis. Who was I that I should continue to lead so great a multitude? I would betake me to my village obscurity, or emigrate to America, and find a solitary nest in the backwoods, where I might be sufficient for the things which would be demanded of me. It was just then that the curtain was rising upon my life-work, and I dreaded what it might reveal. I hope I was not faithless, but I was timorous and filled with a sense of my own unfitness. I dreaded the work which a gracious providence had prepared for me. I felt myself a mere child, and trembled as I heard the voice which said, “Arise, and thresh the mountains, and make them as chaff.” This depression comes over me whenever the Lord is preparing a larger blessing for my ministry; the cloud is black before it breaks, and overshadows before it yields its deluge of mercy. Depression has now become to me as a prophet in rough clothing, a John the Baptist, heralding the nearer coming of my Lord’s richer benison. So have far better men found it. The scouring of the vessel has fitted it for the Master’s use. Immersion in suffering has preceded the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Fasting gives an appetite for the banquet. The Lord is revealed in the backside of the desert, while his servant keepeth the sheep and waits in solitary awe. The wilderness is the way to Canaan. The low valley leads to the towering mountain. Defeat prepares for victory. The raven is sent forth before the dove. The darkest hour of the night precedes the day-dawn. The mariners go down to the depths, but the next wave makes them mount to the heaven: their soul is melted because of trouble before he bringeth them to their desired haven.

In the midst of a long stretch of unbroken labour, the same affliction may be looked for. The bow cannot be always bent without fear of breaking. Repose is as needful to the mind as sleep to the body. Our Sabbaths are our days of toil, and if we do not rest upon some other day we shall break down. Even the earth must lie fallow and have her Sabbaths, and so must we. Hence the wisdom and compassion of our Lord, when he said to his disciples, “Let us go into the desert and rest awhile.” What! when the people are fainting? When the multitudes are like sheep upon the mountains without a shepherd? Does Jesus talk of rest? When Scribes and Pharisees, like grievous wolves, are rending the flock, does he take his followers on an excursion into a quiet resting place? Does some red-hot zealot denounce such atrocious forgetfulness of present and pressing demands? Let him rave in his folly. The Master knows better than to exhaust his servants and quench the light of Israel. Rest time is not waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength. Look at the mower in the summer a day, with so much to cut down ere the sun sets. He pauses in his labour, is he a sluggard? He looks for his stone, and begins to draw it up and down his scythe, with “rink-a-tink—rink-a-tink—rink-a-tink.” Is that idle music? is he wasting precious moments? How much he might have mown while he has been ringing out those notes on his scythe! But he is sharpening his tool, and he will do far more when once again he gives his strength to those long sweeps which lay the grass prostrate in rows before him. Even thus a little pause prepares the mind for greater service in the good cause. Fishermen must mend their nets, and we must every now and then repair our mental waste and set our machinery in order for future service. To tug the oar from day to day, hike a galley-slave who knows no holidays, suits not mortal men. Mill-streams go on and on for ever, but we must have our pauses and our intervals. Who can help being out of breath when the race is continued without intermission? Even beasts of burden must be turned out to grass occasionally; the very sea pauses at ebb and flood; earth keeps the Sabbath of the wintry months; and man, even when exalted to be God’s ambassador, must rest or faint; must trim his lamp or let it burn low; must recruit his vigour or grow prematurely old. It is wisdom to take occasional furlough. In the long run, we shall do more by sometimes doing less. On, on, on for ever, without recreation, may suit spirits emancipated from this “heavy clay,” but while we are in this tabernacle, we must every now and then cry halt, and serve the Lord by holy inaction and consecrated leisure. Let no tender conscience doubt the lawfulness of going out of harness for awhile, but learn from the experience of others the necessity and duty of taking timely rest.

One crushing stroke has sometimes laid the minister very low. The brother most relied upon becomes a traitor. Judas lifts up his heel against the man who trusted him, and the preacher?s heart for the moment fails him. We are all too apt to look to an arm of flesh, and from that propensity many of our sorrows arise. Equally overwhelming is the blow when an honoured and beloved member yields to temptation, and disgraces the holy name with which lie was named. Anything is better than this. This makes the preacher long for a lodge in some vast wilderness, where he may hide his head for ever, and hear no more the blasphemous jeers of the ungodly. Ten years of toil do not take so much life out of us as we lose in a few hours by Ahithophel the traitor, or Demas the apostate. Strife, also, and division, and slander, and foolish censures, have often laid holy men prostrate, and made them go “as with a sword in their bones.” Hard words wound some delicate minds very keenly. Many of the best of ministers, from the very spirituality of their character, are exceedingly sensitive—too sensitive for such a world as this. “A kick that scarce would move a horse would kill a sound divine.” By experience the soul is hardened to the rough blows which are inevitable in our warfare; but at first these things utterly stagger us, and send us to our homes wrapped in a horror of great darkness. The trials of a true minister are not few, and such as are caused by ungrateful professors are harder to bear than the coarsest attacks of avowed enemies. Let no man who looks for ease of mind and seeks the quietude of life enter the ministry; if he does so he will flee from it in disgust.

To the lot of few does it fall to pass through such a horror of great darkness as that which fell upon me after the deplorable accident at the Surrey Music Hall. I was pressed beyond measure and out of bounds with an enormous weight of misery. The tumult, the panic, the deaths, were day and night before me, anti made life a burden. Then I sang in my sorrow—

“The tumult of my thoughts
Doth but increase my woe,
My spirit languisheth, my heart
Is desolate and low.”

From that dream of horror I was awakened in a moment by the gracious application to my soul of the text, “Him hath God the Father exalted.” The fact that Jesus is still great, let his servants suffer as they may, piloted me back to calm reason and peace. Should so terrible a calamity overtake any of my brethren, let them both patiently hope and quietly wait for the salvation of God.

When troubles multiply, and discouragements follow each other in long succession, like Job’s messengers, then, too, amid the perturbation of soul occasioned by evil tidings, despondency despoils the heart of all its peace. Constant dropping wears away stones, and the bravest minds feel the fret of repeated afflictions. If a scanty cupboard is rendered a severer trial by the sickness of a wife or the loss of a child, and if ungenerous remarks of hearers are followed by the opposition of deacons and the coolness of members, then, like Jacob, we are apt to cry, “All these things are against me.” When David returned to Ziklag and found the city burned, goods stolen, wives carried off, and his troops ready to stone him, we read, “he encouraged himself in his God;” and well was it for him that he could do so, for he would then have fainted if he had not believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Accumulated distresses increase each other’s weight; they play into each other’s hands, and, like bands of robbers, ruthlessly destroy our comfort. Wave upon wave is severe work for the strongest swimmer. The place where two seas meet strains the most seaworthy keel. If there were a regulated pause between the buffetings of adversity, the spirit would stand prepared; but when they come suddenly and heavily, like the battering of great hailstones, the pilgrim may well be amazed. The last ounce breaks the camel’s back, and when that last ounce is laid upon us, what wonder if we for awhile are ready to give up the ghost!

This evil will also come upon us, we know not why, and then it is all the more difficult to drive it away. Causeless depression is not to he reasoned with, nor can David’s harp charm it away by sweet discoursings. As well fight with the mist as with this shapeless, undefinable, yet all-beclouding hopelessness. One affords himself no pity when in this case, because it seems so unreasonable, and even sinful to be troubled without manifest cause; and yet troubled the man is, even in the very depths of his spirit. If those who laugh at such melancholy did but feel the grief of it for one hour, their laughter would he sobered into compassion. Resolution might, perhaps, shake it off, but where are we to find the resolution when the whole man is unstrung? The physician and the divine may unite their skill in such cases, and both find their hands full, and more than full. The iron bolt which so mysteriously fastens the door of hope and holds our spirits in gloomy prison, needs a heavenly hand to push it back; and when that hand is seen we cry with the apostle, “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” 2 Cor. i. 3, 4. It is the God of all consolation who can—

“With sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse our poor bosoms of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart.”

Simon sinks till Jesus takes him by the hand. The devil within rends and tears the poor child till time word of authority commands him to come out of him. When we are ridden with horrible fears, and weighed down with an intolerable incubus, we need but the Sun of Righteousness to rise, and the evils generated of our darkness are driven away; but nothing short of this will chase away time nightmare of the soul. Timothy Rogers, the author of a treatise on Melancholy, and Simon Browne, the writer of some remarkably sweet hymns, proved in their own cases how unavailing is the help of man if the Lord withdraw the light from the soul.

If it be enquired why the Valley of the Shadow of Death must so often be traversed by the servants of King Jesus, the answer is not far to find. All this is promotive of the Lord’s mode of working, which is summed up in these words—”Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.” Instruments shall be used, but their intrinsic weakness shall be clearly manifested; there shall be no division of the glory, no diminishing the honour due to the Great Worker. The man shall be emptied of self, and then filled with the Holy Ghost. In his own apprehension he shall be like a sere leaf driven of the tempest, and then shall be strengthened into a brazen wall against the enemies of truth. To hide pride from the worker is the great difficulty. Uninterrupted success and unfading joy in it would be more than our weak heads could bear. Our wine must needs be mixed with water, lest it turn our brains. My witness is, that those who are honoured of their Lord in public, have usually to endure a secret chastening, or to carry a peculiar cross, lest by any means they exalt themselves, and fall into the snare of the devil. How constantly the Lord calls Ezekiel “Son of man”! Amid his soarings into the superlative splendours, just when with eye undimmed he is strengthened to gaze into the excellent glory, the word “Son of man” falls on his ears, sobering the heart which else might have been intoxicated with the honour conferred upon it. Such humbling but salutary messages our depressions whisper in our ears; they tell us in a manner not to be mistaken that we are but men, frail, feeble, apt to faint.

By all the castings down of his servants God is glorified, for they are led to magnify him when again he sets them on their feet, and even while prostrate in the dust their faith yields him praise. They speak all time more sweetly of his faithfulness, and are the more firmly established in his love. Such mature men as sonic elderly preachers are, could scarcely have been produced if they had not been emptied from vessel to vessel, and made to see their own emptiness and the vanity of all things round about them. Glory be to God for the furnace, the hammer, and the file. Heaven shall be all the fuller of bliss because we have been filled with anguish here below, and earth shall be better tilled because of our training in the school of adversity.

The lesson of wisdom is, be not dismayed by soul-trouble. Count it no strange thing, but a part of ordinary ministerial experience. Should the power of depression be more than ordinary, think not that all is over with your usefulness. Cast not away your confidence, for it hath great recompense of reward. Even if the enemy’s foot be on your neck, expect to rise amid overthrow him. Cast the burden of the present, along with the sin of the past and the fear of the future, upon the Lord, who forsaketh not his saints. Live by the day—ay, by the hour. Put no trust in frames and feelings. Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement. Trust in God alone, and lean not on the reeds of human help. Be not surprised when friends fail you: it is a failing world. Never count upon immutability in man: inconstancy you may reckon upon without fear of disappointment. The disciples of Jesus forsook him; be not amazed if your adherents wander away to other teachers: as they were not your all when with you, all is not gone from you with their departure. Serve God with all your might while the candle is burning, and then when it goes out for a season, you will have the less to regret. Be content to be nothing, for that is what you are. When your own emptiness is painfully forced upon your consciousness, chide yourself that you ever dreamed of being full, except in the Lord. Set small store by present rewards; be grateful for earnests by the way, but look for the recompensing joy hereafter. Continue, with double earnestness to serve your Lord when no visible result is before you. Any simpleton can follow the narrow path in the light: faith?s rare wisdom enables us to march on in the dark with infallible accuracy, since she places her hand in that of her Great Guide. Between this and heaven there may be rougher weather yet, but it is all provided for by our covenant Head. In nothing let us be turned aside from the path which the divine call has urged us to pursue. Come fair or come foul, the pulpit is our watch-tower, and the ministry our warfare; be it ours, when we cannot see the face of our God, to trust under THE SHADOW OF HIS WINGS.

“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.”

In the style of these apostolic words there is a positiveness most refreshing in this age of doubt. In certain circles of society it is rare nowadays to meet with anybody who believes anything. It is the philosophical, the right, the fashionable thing, nowadays, to doubt everything which is generally received. Indeed, those who have any creed whatever are by the liberal school set down as old-fashioned dogmatists, persons of shallow minds, deficient in intellect, and far behind their age. The great men, the men of thought, the men of high culture and refined taste consider it wisdom to cast suspicion upon Revelation, and sneer at all definiteness of belief.

“Ifs” and “buts,” and “perhaps” are the supreme delight of this period. What wonder if men find everything uncertain – when they refuse to bow their intellects to the declarations of the God of Truth? Note then, with admiration, the refreshing and even startling positiveness of the Apostle—“I know,” says he. And that is not enough—“I am persuaded.” He speaks like one who cannot tolerate a doubt. There is no question about whether he has believed or not. “I know Whom I have believed.” There is no question as to whether he was right in so believing. “I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him.” There is no suspicion as to the future. He is as positive for years to come as he is for this present moment. “He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that day.”

Now there is a positiveness which is very disgusting—when it is nothing but the fruit of ignorance and is unattended with anything like thoughtfulness. But in the Apostle’s case, his confidence is founded not on ignorance, but on knowledge. “I know,” says he. There are certain things which he has clearly ascertained, which he knows to be fact. And his confidence is grounded on these ascertained Truths of God. His confidence, moreover, was not the fruit of thoughtlessness, for he adds, “I am persuaded.” As though he had reasoned the matter out and had been persuaded into it—had meditated long upon it, and turned it over—and the force of Truth had quite convinced him, so that he stood persuaded.

Where positiveness is the result of knowledge and of meditation, it becomes sublime, as it was in the Apostle’s case. And being sublime it becomes influential. In this case it certainly must have been influential over the heart of Timothy, and over the minds of the tens of thousands who have, during these nineteen centuries, perused this Epistle. It encourages the timid when they see others preserved. It confirms the wavering when they see others steadfast. The great Apostle’s words, ringing out with trumpet tone this morning, “I know, and I am persuaded,” cannot but help to cheer many of us in our difficulties and anxieties. May the Holy Spirit cause us not only to admire the faith of Paul, but to imitate it, and to attain to the same confidence!

Some speak confidently because they are not confident. How often have we observed that brag and bluster are only the outward manifestations of inward trembling? They are but concealments adopted to cover cowardice! As the schoolboy, passing through the Churchyard, whistles to keep his courage up, so some people talk very positively because they are not positive. They make a pompous parade of faith because they desire to sustain the presumption which, as being their only comfort, is exceedingly dear to them.

Now in the Apostle’s case, every syllable he speaks has beneath it a most real weight of confidence which the strongest expressions could not exaggerate. Sitting there in the dungeon, a prisoner for Christ, abhorred by his countrymen, despised by the learned, and ridiculed by the rude, Paul confronted the whole world with a holy boldness which knew no quailing. A boldness resulting from the deep conviction of his spirit. You may take these words and put what emphasis you can upon each one of them, for they are the truthful utterance of a thoroughly earnest and brave spirit. May we enjoy such a confidence ourselves, and then we need not hesitate to declare it—for our testimony will glorify God and bring consolation to others.

This morning for our instruction, as the Holy Spirit may help us, we shall first consider the matter in question, that which Paul had committed to Christ. Secondly, the fact beyond all question, namely, that Christ was able to keep him. Thirdly, the assurance of that fact, or how the Apostle was able to say, “I know and am persuaded.” And fourthly, the influence of that assurance when it rules in the heart.

I. First, then, dear Friends, let us speak for a few minutes upon THE MATTER IN QUESTION.

1. That matter was, first of all, the Apostle’s deposit of all his interests and concerns into the hands of God in Christ. Some have said that what Paul here speaks of was his ministry. But there are many reasons for concluding that this is a mistake. A great array of expositors, at the head of whom we would mention Calvin, think that the sole treasure which Paul deposited in the hands of God was his eternal salvation. We do not doubt that this was the grandest portion of the priceless deposit—but we also think that as the connection does not limit the sense, it cannot be restricted or confined to any one thing. It seems to us that all the Apostle’s temporal and eternal interests were, by an act of faith, committed into the hands of God in Christ Jesus.

To the Lord’s gracious keeping the Apostle committed his body. He had suffered much in that frail tabernacle – shipwrecks, perils, hunger, cold, nakedness, imprisonments, beatings with rods and stoning had all spent their fury upon him. He expected before long that his mortal frame would become the prey of Nero’s cruelty. None could tell what would then happen to him—whether he should be burned alive to light up Nero’s gardens, be torn to pieces by wild beasts to make a Roman holiday—or become the victim of the headsman’s sword. But in whatever way he might be called to offer up himself a sacrifice to God, he committed his body to the keeping of Him who is the Resurrection and the Life.

He was persuaded that in the day of the Lord’s appearing he would rise again, his body having suffered no loss through torture or dismemberment. He looked for a joyful resurrection and asked no better embalming for his corpse than the power of Christ would ensure it.

He gave over to Christ at that hour his character and reputation. A Christian minister must expect to lose his reputation among men. He must be willing to suffer every reproach for Christ’s sake. But he may rest assured that he will never lose his real honor if it is risked for the Truth’s sake and placed in the Redeemer’s hands. The day shall declare the excellence of the upright, for it will reveal all that was hidden and bring to light that which was concealed. There will be a resurrection of characters as well as persons. Every reputation that has been obscured by clouds of reproach for Christ’s sake shall be rendered glorious when the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let the wicked say what they will of me, said the Apostle, I commit my character to the Judge of the quick and the dead.

So also his whole lifework he delivered into the hands of God. Men said, no doubt, that Paul had made a great mistake. In the eyes of the worldly wise he must have seemed altogether mad. What eminence awaited him had he become a rabbi! He might have lived respected and honored among his countrymen as a Pharisee. Or if he had preferred to follow the Grecian philosophies, a man with such strength of mind might have rivaled Socrates or Plato! But instead, he chose to unite himself with a band of men commonly reputed to be ignorant fanatics who turned the world upside down. Ah, well, says Paul, I leave the reward and fruit of my life entirely with my Lord, for He will at last justify my choice of service beneath the banner of His Son. And then the assembled universe shall know that I was no mistaken zealot for a senseless cause.

So did the Apostle resign to the hands of God in Christ his soul, whatever its jeopardy from surrounding temptations. However great the corruptions that were within it, and the dangers that were without, he felt safe in the great Surety’s hands. He made over to the Divine Trustee all his mental powers, faculties, passions, instincts, desires and ambitions.

He gave his whole nature up to the Christ of God to preserve it in holiness through the whole of life. And right well did his life-course justify his faith.

He gave that soul up to be kept in the hour of death, then to be strengthened, sustained, consoled, upheld, and guided through the tracks unknown—up through the mysterious and unseen—to the Throne of God, even the Father. He resigned his spirit to Christ, that it might be presented without spot or wrinkle or any such thing in the Last Great Day. He did, in fact, make a full deposit of all that he was, and all that he had, and all that concerned him, into the keeping of God in Christ, to find in his God a faithful Guardian, a sure Defender and a safe Keeper. This was the matter, then, about which the Apostle was concerned.

2. But next to this, the matter in question concerned the Lord’s ability to make good this guardianship. The Apostle did not doubt that Christ had accepted the office of Keeper of that which he had committed to Him. The question was never about Christ’s faithfulness to that trust. The Apostle does not even say that he was confident that Jesus would be faithful. He felt that assertion to be superfluous. There was no question about Christ’s willingness to keep the soul committed to Him—such a statement Paul felt it unnecessary to make. But the question with many was concerning the power of the once crucified Redeemer to keep that which was committed to Him.

Oh, said the Apostle, I know and am persuaded that He is able to do that. Mark, my dear Friends that the question is not about the Apostle’s power to keep himself. That question he does not raise. Many of you have been troubled as to whether you are able to endure temptation. You need not debate the subject. It is clear that apart from Christ you are quite unable to persevere to the end. Answer that question with a decided negative at once, and never raise it again. The enquiry was not whether the Apostle would be found meritorious in his own righteousness in the Day of Judgment, for he had long ago cast that righteousness aside.

He does not raise that point. The grand question is this, “Is Jesus able to keep me?” Stand to that, my Brethren, and your doubts and fears will soon come to an end. Concerning your own power or merit, write, “despair,” straightway upon its forehead. Let the creature be regarded as utterly dead and corrupt, and then lean on that arm, the sinews of which shall never shrink. And cast your full weight upon that Omnipotence which bears up the pillars of the universe. There is the point—keep to it, and you will not lose your joy. You have committed yourself to Christ. The great question now is not about what you can do, but about what Jesus is able to do. And rest assured that He is able to keep that which you have committed to Him.

3. The Apostle further carries our thoughts on to a certain set period—the keeping of the soul unto what he calls “that day.” I suppose he calls it, “that day,” because it was the day most ardently expected and commonly spoken of by Christians. It was so usual a topic of conversation to speak of Christ’s coming and of the results of it, that the Apostle does not say, “the advent,” he simply says, “that day.” That day with which Believers are more familiar than with any other day beside. That day, the day of death if you will, when the soul appears before its God. The Day of Judgment, if you please—that day when the books shall be opened and the record shall be read.

That day, the winding up of all, the sealing of destiny, the manifestation of the eternal fate of each one of us. That day for which all other days were made. Christ Jesus is able to keep us against that day. That is to say, He is able to place us, then, at the right hand of God, to set our feet upon the Rock when others sink into the pit that is bottomless. To crown us when others shall be accursed. To bring us to eternal joy when sinners shall be cast into Hell.

Here was the matter of consideration—can the Great Shepherd of souls preserve His flock? Ah, Brethren, if you have never searched into that question, I should not wonder but what you will! When you are very low and weak, and heart and flesh are failing. When sickness brings you to the borders of the grave and you gaze into eternity, the enquiry will come to any thoughtful man—Is this confidence of mine in the Christ of God warranted? Will He be able in this last article, when my spirit shivers in its unclothing, will He be able to help me now?

And in the more dreadful hour, when the trumpet peal shall awake the dead, shall I, indeed, find the Great Sin Bearer able to stand for me? Having no merit of my own, will His merit suffice? From ten thousand sins will His blood, alone, cleanse me? Nothing can ever equal this matter in importance. It is one of most pressing urgency of consideration.

II. It is a happy circumstance that we can turn from it to our second point, to dwell for a while upon THE FACT BEYOND ALL QUESTION, namely, that God in Christ is able to keep that which we have committed to Him.

The Apostle’s confidence was that Christ was an able Guardian. So he meant, first, that Jesus is able to keep the soul from falling into damning sin. I suppose this is one of the greatest fears that has ever troubled the true Believer. Have you ever prayed that you might rather die than turn aside from Christ? I know I have, and I have sung bitterly in my soul that verse—

“Ah, Lord! With such a heart as mine,

Unless You hold me fast,

I feel I must, I shall decline,

And turn from You at last.”

Now, troubled Christian, remember that your Lord is able to keep you under every possible form of temptation. “Ah,” you say, “the Apostle Paul had not the trials I have. I think he had. But if he had not, Jesus had. And Christ has ability to keep you under them. Do I hear one say, “I am the only one of my household that has been called by Grace, and they all oppose me. I am a lonely one in my father’s house”? Now, Paul was precisely in your condition. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and he was regarded by his people with the most extreme hate because he had come out from among them to follow the Crucified One.

Yet Paul felt that God was able to keep him, and you may depend upon it—though father and mother forsake, and brothers and sisters scoff—He whom you trust will keep you also firm in the faith. “Ah,” says another, “but you do not know what it is to strive with the prejudices of an education hostile to the faith of Jesus. When I seek to grow in Grace, the things I learned in my childhood force themselves upon me and hinder me.” And was not the Apostle in this case? As touching the Law he had been a Pharisee, educated in the strictest sect, brought up in traditions that were opposed to the faith of Christ. And yet the Lord kept him faithful even to the end.

None of his old prejudices were able so much as to make him obscure the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ. God is able to keep you, also, despite your previous prejudices. “Ah,” says one, “but I am the subject of many skeptical thoughts. I often suffer from doubts of the most subtle order.” Do you think that the Apostle never knew this trial? He was no stranger to the Greek philosophy, which consisted of a bundle of questions and skepticisms. He must have experienced those temptations which are common to thoughtful minds. And yet he said, “I know that He is able to keep me.” Believe me, then, the Lord Jesus is equally able to keep you.

“Yes,” says another, “but I have so many temptations in the world. If I were not a Christian, I should prosper much better. I have openings now before me by which I might soon obtain a competence, and perhaps wealth, if I were not checked by conscience.” Do you forget that the Apostle was in like case? What might he not have had? A man of his condition in life—his birth and parentage being altogether advantageous—a man of his powers of mind and of his great energy! He might have seized upon any attractive position. But those things which were gain for him, he counted loss for Christ’s sake. And he was willing to be less than nothing, because the power of Divine Grace kept him true to his profession.

But you tell me you are very poor, and that poverty is a severe trial. Brothers and Sisters, you are not so poor as Paul. I suppose a few needles for his tent-making, an old cloak, and a few parchments made up all his wealth. A man without a home, a man without a single foot of land to call his own, was this Apostle. But poverty and want could not subdue him—Christ was able to keep him even then. “Ah,” you say, “but he had not my strong passions and corruptions.” Most surely he had them all, for we hear him cry, “I find, then, a Law, that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the Law of God after the inward man: but I see another Law in my members, warring against the Law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the Law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

He was tempted as you are, yet he knew that Christ was able to keep him. O trembling Christian, never doubt this soul-cheering fact—that your loving Savior is able to keep you. But the Apostle did not merely trust Christ thus to keep him from sin—he relied upon the same arm to preserve him from despair. He was always battling with the world. There were times when he had no helper. The Brethren often proved false, and those that were true were frequently timid. He was left in the world like a solitary sheep surrounded with wolves. But Paul was not faint-hearted. He had his fears, for he was mortal—he rose superior to them, for he was Divinely sustained. What a front he always maintains! Nero may rise before him—a horrible monster for a man even to dream of—but Paul’s courage does not give way.

A Jewish mob may surround him, they may drag him out of the city—but Paul’s mind is calm and composed. He may be laid in the stocks after having been scourged, but his heart finds congenial utterance in a song rather than a groan. He is always brave, always unconquerable, confident of victory. He believed that God would keep him, and he was kept. And you, my Brothers and Sisters, though your life may be a very severe conflict and you sometimes think you will give it up in despair—you never shall relinquish the sacred conflict. He that has borne you onward to this day will bear you through, and will make you more than conqueror, for He is able to keep you from fainting and despair.

Doubtless, the Apostle meant, too, that Christ was able to keep him from the power of death. Beloved, this is great comfort to us who so soon shall die. To the Apostle, death was a very present thing. “I die daily,” said he. Yet was he well assured that death would be gain rather than loss to him, for he was certain that Christ would so order all things that death should be but like an angel to admit him into everlasting life. Be certain of this, too, for He who is the Resurrection and the Life will not desert you. Do not, my Brothers and Sisters, fall under bondage through fear of death, for the living Savior is able to keep you, and He will.

Do not, I pray, look too much at the pains, groans, and dying strife. Look rather to that kind Friend, who, having endured the agonies of death before you, can sympathize with your sufferings, and who, as He ever lives, can render you available assistance. Cast this care on Him, and fear no more to die than you fear to go to your bed when night comes.

The Apostle is also certain that Christ is able to preserve his soul in another world. Little is revealed in Scripture by way of detailed description of that other world. Imagination may be indulged, but little can be proved. The spirit returns to God who gave it, this we know. And in the instant after death the righteous soul is in Paradise with Christ. This, too, is clear. Yet whether we know the details or not, we are assured that the soul is safe with Christ. Whatever danger from evil spirits may await us on our journey from this planet up to the dwelling place of God. Whatever there may be of conflict in the last moment, Jesus is able to keep that which we have committed to Him.

If I had to keep myself, I might, indeed, tremble with alarm at the prospect of the unknown region. But He that is the Lord of death and of Hell, and has the keys of Heaven, can surely keep my soul on that dread voyage across a trackless sea. It is all well. It must be well with the righteous—even in the land of death—for our Lord’s dominion reaches even there—and being in His dominions we are safe. Paul believed, lastly, that Christ was able to preserve his body. Remember my statement that Paul committed all that he had, and was, to God in Christ?

We must not despise this body. It is the germ of the body in which we are to dwell forever. It shall be raised from corruption into incorruption, but it is the same body. Developed from weakness into power, from dishonor into glory, it never loses its identity. The marvel of the resurrection will not fail of accomplishment. It may seem an impossibility that the body which has rotted in the tomb, and, perhaps been scattered in dust over the face of the soil—which has been absorbed by vegetables, which has been digested by animals, which has passed through countless circles of change—should be raised again. Yet impossible as it seems, the Lord Jesus Christ will perform it.

It must be as easy to construct a second time as to create out of nothing at the first. Look at creation and see that nothing is impossible with God. Think of the Word, without whom was not anything made that was made, and straightway you will talk no longer of difficulties. With man it may be impossible, but with God all things are possible. In your entirety, my Brethren, in the integrity of your manhood, spirit, soul, and body—all that is essential to your nature, to its happiness, to its perfection. Every part of you and every power of you—you having placed all in the hands of Christ—shall be kept until that day, when in His image you shall stand, and prove in your own persons the power which in your faith you do, this day, devoutly trust.

III. We shall, in the third place, pass on to notice THE ASSURANCE OF THAT FACT, or how the Apostle Paul attained to it.

“I cannot talk like that,” says one. “I cannot say, ‘I know, and I am persuaded,’ I am very thankful that I can say, I hope, I trust, I think.” Dear Friends, in order to help you to advance, we will notice how the Apostle Paul attained to such assurance. One main help to him was the habit, as seen in this text, of always making faith the most prominent point of consideration. Faith is twice mentioned in the few lines before us. “I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him.” Paul knew what faith was, namely, a committal of his precious things into the custody of Christ.

He does not say, “I have served Christ.” No. He does not say, “I am growing like Christ, therefore I am persuaded I shall be kept.” No. He makes most prominent in his thought the fact that he believed, and so had committed himself to Christ. I would to God, dear Friends, that you who are subject to doubts and fears, instead of raking about in your hearts to find evidences and marks of growth in Grace and likeness to Christ, and so on, would first make an investigation concerning a point which is far more vital—namely this—have you believed?

Dear anxious Heart, begin your search on this point. Do you commit yourself to Christ? If you do, what though marks should be few and evidences for awhile should be obscure, he that believes on Him has everlasting life. He that believes and is baptized shall be saved. The evidences will come, the marks will be cleared in due time. But all the marks and evidences between here and Heaven are not worth a single farthing to a soul when it comes to actual conflict with death and Hell.

Then it must be simple faith that wins the day. Those other things are good enough in brighter times. But if it is a question whether you are safe or not, you must come to this, “I have rested with all my heart on Him that came into the world to save sinners, and though I am the very chief of sinners, I believe He is able to save me.” You will get to assurance if you keep clear about your faith.

The next help to assurance, as I gather from the text, is this. The Apostle maintained most clearly his view of a personal Christ. Observe how three times he mentioned his Lord. “I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him.” He does not say, “I know the doctrines I believe.” Surely he did, but this was not the main point. He does not say, “I am certain about the form of sound Words which I hold.” He was certain enough about that, but it was not his foundation. No mere doctrines can ever be the stay of the soul. What can a dogma do? What can a creed do?

Brethren, these are like medicines—you need a hand to give them to you. You want the physician to administer them to you—otherwise you may die with all these precious medicines close at hand. We want a person to trust. There is no Christianity to my mind so vital, so influential, so true, so real, as the Christianity which deals with the Person of the living Redeemer. I know Him, I know He is God, I know that He is mine. I trust not merely in His teaching, but in Him. Not on His laws, rules, or teachings am I depending so much as on Himself, as a Person. Dear Brothers and Sisters, is that what you are doing now?

Have you put your soul into the keeping of that blessed Man who is also God? He who sits at the right hand of the Father? Can you come in faith to His feet and kiss the prints of the nails? Can you look up into His dear face and say, “Ah, Son of God, I rely upon the power of Your arms, on the preciousness of Your blood, on the love of Your heart, on the prevalence of Your plea, on the certainty of Your promises, on the immutability of Your Character. I rest on You, and on You alone”? You will get assurance readily enough, now. But if you begin to fritter away your realization of the Person of Christ and live merely on dogmas and doctrines, you will be far removed from real assurance.

Brothers and Sisters, the Apostle attained this full assurance through growing knowledge. He did not say, “I am persuaded that Christ will save me, apart from anything I know about Him.” But he begins by saying, “I know.” Let no Christian among us neglect the means provided for obtaining a fuller knowledge of the Gospel of Christ. I would that this age produced more thoughtful and studious Christians. I am afraid that apart from what many of you gather from the sermon, or from the reading of the Scriptures in public, you do not learn much from the Word of God, or from those innumerable instructive books which godly men have bequeathed to us.

Men are studious in various schools and colleges in order to obtain knowledge of the classics and mathematics. But should we not be even more diligent that we may know Christ? That we may study Him, and all about Him—and no longer be children, but in knowledge may be men? Many of the fears of Christians would be driven away if they knew more. Ignorance is not bliss in Christianity, but misery. Knowledge sanctified and attended by the Presence of the Holy Spirit is as wings by which we may rise out of the mists and darkness into the light of fall assurance. The knowledge of Christ is the most excellent of sciences. Seek to be masters of it, and you are on the road to full assurance.

Once, again, the Apostle, it appears from the text, gained his assurance from close consideration as well as from knowledge. “I know and am persuaded.” As I have already said, persuasion is the result of argument. The Apostle had turned this matter over in his mind. He had meditated on the pros and cons. He had carefully weighed each difficulty, and he felt the preponderating force of Truth swept every difficulty out of the way. O Christian, if you made your mind more familiar with Divine Truth, you would, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, have much more assurance! I believe it is the doctrine which we have least studied in the Word which gives us the most trouble in our minds. Search it out and look.

The divisions among Christians, nowadays, are not so much the result of real differences of opinion as of want of accurate thought. I believe we are getting closer and closer in our theology, and that on the whole, at least among the Nonconforming Churches of England, very much the same theology is preached by all evangelical ministers. But some are not careful of their terms and words, and use them incorrectly. And so they seem to preach wrong doctrines when in their hearts they mean rightly enough. May we come to be more thoughtful, each of us, for a thousand benefits would flow from there.

Thinking of the Deity of Christ, considering of the veracity of the Divine promises, meditating upon the foundations of the Everlasting Covenant, revolving in our minds what Christ has done for us—we should come at last, by the Spirit’s teaching—to be fully persuaded of the power of Christ to keep the sacred charge which we have given to Him. Doubts and fears would vanish like clouds before the wind. How many Christians are like the miser who never feels sure about the safety of his money, even though he has locked up the iron safe and secured the room in which he keeps it—and locked up the house—and bolted and barred every door?

In the dead of night he thinks he hears a footstep, and tremblingly he goes down to inspect his strong-room. Having searched the room and tested all the iron bars in the windows, and discovered no thief, he fears that the robber may have come and gone, and stolen his precious charge. So he opens the door of his iron safe. He looks and pries, he finds his bag of gold all safe, and those deeds, those bonds—they are safe, too. He puts them away, shuts the door, locks it, bolts and bars the room in which is the safe and all its contents. But even as he goes to bed he fancies that a thief has just now broken in! So he scarcely ever enjoys sound, refreshing sleep.

The safety of the Christian’s treasure is of quite another sort. His soul is not under bolt and bar, or under lock and key of his own securing. He has transferred his all to the King eternal, immortal, invisible—the only wise God, our Savior— and such is his security that he enjoys the sleep of the Beloved, calmly resting, for all Is well. If Jesus could fail us, we might wear sackcloth forever! But while He is Immutable in His love and Omnipotent in his power, we may put on the garments of praise. Believing as we do that eternal love neither can, nor will desert a soul that reposes in its might, we triumph in heart and find glory begun below.

IV. Now to close. What is THE INFLUENCE OF THIS ASSURANCE when it penetrates the mind?

As time fails me, I shall but say that, as in the Apostle’s case, it enables us to bear all the disgrace which we may incur in serving the Lord. They said Paul was a fool. “Well,” replied the Apostle, “I am not ashamed, for I know Whom I have believed. I am willing to be thought a fool.” The ungodly may laugh at us now, but their laughs will soon be over, and he will laugh that wins forever.

Feel perfectly confident that all is safe and you can let the world grin at you till its face aches. What does it matter what mortals think? What difference does it make what the whole universe thinks if our souls are beloved of God? You will, my dear Friends, as you live in full assurance of God’s love, grow quite indifferent to the opinions of the carnal.  You will go about your heavenly service with an eye only to your Master’s will—and the judgment of such as cavil and carp will seem to you to be too inconsiderable to be worth a thought.

If you doubt and fear, you will be hard put to it. But if you are serenely confident that He is able to keep you, you will dare the thickest of the fray—fearless because your armor is of God. Assurance will give you a serenity within which will qualify you for doing much service. A man who is always worrying about his own soul’s salvation can have little energy with which to serve his Lord. But when the soul knows the meaning of Christ’s words, “It is finished,” it turns all its strength into the channels of service out of love to such a blessed Savior.

O you that doubt, and therefore fret and care, and ask the question, “Do I love the Lord or not? Am I His or am I not?”—how I wish this suspense were over with you! O you who fear daily, lest, after all, you will be castaways—you lose your strength for serving your God! When you are sure that He is able to keep what you have committed to Him, then your whole manhood, excited by gratitude, spends itself and is spent in your Master’s cause. God make you men to the fullness of vigor by giving you a fullness of assurance.

Those who are unsaved in this place may well envy those who are. That which attracted me to Christ—I have not heard of others brought in this way, but this brought me to Christ mainly—was the doctrine of the safety of the saints. I fell in love with the Gospel through that Truth. What, I thought, are those who trust in Jesus safe? Shall they never perish and shall none pluck them out of Christ’s hands? Everybody esteems safety. One would not insure his life where he thought there was a doubt as to the safety of the insurance. Feeling that there was perfect safety if I gave myself up to the Redeemer, I did so. And I entertain no regrets to this day that I committed my soul to Him.

Young people, you cannot do better than early in life entrust your future with the Lord Jesus. Many children at home appear to be very excellent. Many lads, before they leave their father’s house, are amiable and commendable in character. But this is a rough world—and it soon spoils the Graces that have been nurtured in the conservatory of the home. Good boys very often turn out very bad men. And girls who were so lovely and pure at home have been known to become very wicked women.

O children, your characters will be safe if you trust them with Jesus! I do not say you will be rich if you trust Christ, nor that you will prosper after the manner of men. But I do say that you shall be happy in the best sense of that word, and that your holiness shall be preserved through trusting yourself with Jesus. I pray that you may be led to desire this, especially any of you who are leaving your father’s house, or are setting up in business on your own account. Commit yourselves to God!

This first Sunday of a new year. What time more suitable for beginning aright? O may the Holy Spirit softly whisper in your ears reasons that shall persuade you to give yourselves to Christ! I say again, my testimony is that you cannot do a wiser or a better thing. Oh, the happiness my soul has known in resting on my Lord! I wish you knew it. I would not cease to be a Christian if I might be made a king or an angel. No character can be to me so suitable or so happy as that of a humble dependant upon the faithful love of my redeeming Lord.

O come and trust Him, dear young Friends! You older ones—do you need that I should speak to you, when you are getting so near your grave? You are now out of Christ—how soon may you be in Hell? You younger ones, I say, embrace this flying hour and let this be the day of which you shall sing in after years —

“It is done! The great transaction’s done!

I am my Lord’s, and He is mine—

He drew me, and by His Grace 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.”

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. – Luke 14:26

 Jesus Christ knew that the persons to whom He spoke would not be able to bear the tests that awaited His disciples. They did not know that He would be crucified, for just then He was popular; and they hoped that He was to be the King of Israel. But the Savior knew that there would come dark days in which the King of the Jews would be hanged upon a [cross], and His disciples, even His true ones, would forsake Him for the moment and would flee. Therefore, He in effect said to them, “You must be prepared for cross-bearing: you must be prepared to follow Me amid derision and shame and reproach; and if you are not ready for this, your discipleship is a mistake.” In their case, it did not stand the test; these people were nowhere when the time of trial came. And remember, dear friends, and I dwell with great emphasis upon this point, we want a religion that will abide the inspection of the great Judge at the Last Day…If our religion is to be weighed in the balances, and may perchance be found wanting, it is well for us to see to it and to know that it must be sincere, genuine, and costly if it is to pass that ordeal.

What, then, is the expense? The answer is given by our Savior, not by me. I should not have dared to invent such tests as He has ordained. It is for me to be the echo of His voice and no more. What does He say? Why, first, that if you would be His and have His salvation, you must love Him beyond every other person in this world. Is not that the meaning of this expression, “If any man comes to me and hate not his father and mother”? Dear names! Dear names! “Father and mother!” Lives there a man with soul so dead that he can pronounce either of these words without emotion, and especially the last – “mother”? Men and brethren, this is a dear and tender name to us, it touches a chord that thrills our being. Yet far more powerful is the name of Savior, the name of Jesus. Less loved must father and mother be than Jesus Christ. The Lord demands precedence also of the best beloved “wife”. Here He touches another set of heartstrings. Dear is that word wife – partner of our being, comfort of our sorrow, delight of our eyes – “wife!” Yet, Wife, thou must not take the chief place, thou must sit at Jesus’ feet, or else thou art an idol; and Jesus will not brook thy rivalry. And “children,” the dear babes that nestle in the bosom, clamber to the knee, and pronounce the parent’s name in accents of music – they must not be our chief love. They must not come in between the Savior and us. Nor for their sakes – to give them pleasure or to promote their worldly advantage – must we grieve our Lord…If they tempt us to evil, they must be treated as if we hated them! Yea, the evil in them must be hated for Christ’s sake. If ye be Christ’s disciples, your Lord must be first, then father, mother, wife, children, brethren, and sisters will follow in due rank and order.

I am afraid that many professors are not prepared for this. They would be Christians if their family would approve, but they must consult their brother, father, or wife. They would make a stand against worldly pleasures if others would, but they cannot bear to appear [peculiar] or to oppose the views of relatives. They say, “My father wishes it, and I dare not tell him that it is wrong.” “My mother says that we must not be too strait-laced, and therefore, though my conscience tells me it is wrong, yet will I do it.” Or else they say, “My girls are growing up and must have amusement, and my boys must be allowed their pleasures. Therefore, I must wink at sin.” Ah, my brethren, this must not be if you are indeed Christ’s disciples. You must put them all aside; the dearest must go sooner than Jesus be forsaken. For does He not say in the Psalms, “Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house; So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he ­is thy Lord; and worship thou him” (Ps. 45:10)? Mark you, you will best prove your love to your relatives by being decided for the right, since you will be the more likely to win their souls. Love them too much to indulge the wrong in them; love them so truly that you hate in them that [which] would injure you and ruin them. You must be prepared to suffer from those who are bound to you by the dearest ties. We cannot yield in the point of sin, our determination is invincible: come hate or come love, we must follow Christ.

———-

From a sermon delivered on Lord’s Day morning, February 22, 1874, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

When this comes about, we shall still be found sticking to the unchanged and unchangeable Word of God. There will be no new God, nor a new devil, and we shall never have a new Savior, nor a new atonement: why should we then be either attracted or alarmed by the error and nonsense which everywhere plead for a hearing because they are new? What is their newness to us; we are not children, nor frequenters of playhouses? Truly, to such a new toy or a new play has immense attractions; but men care less about the age of a thing than about its intrinsic value.

To suppose that theology can be new is to imagine that the Lord himself is of yesterday. A doctrine which is said to have lately become true must of necessity be a lie. Falsehood has no beard, but truth is hoary with an age immeasurable. The old gospel is the only gospel. Pity is our only feeling towards those young preachers who cry, “See my new theology,” in just the same spirit as little Mary says, “See my pretty new frock.”

———–

From the January 1884 Sword and Trowel

 “For the love of Christ constrains us; because we thus judge, that if One died for all, then were all dead.”

The Apostle and his brethren were unselfish in all that they did. He could say of himself and of his brethren that when they varied their modes of action they always had the same objective in view—they lived only to promote the cause of Christ and to bless the souls of men. He says, “Whether we are beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we are sober, it is for your cause.” Some may have said that Paul was too excitable and expressed himself too strongly. “Well,” he said, “if it is so, it is to God.” Others may have noticed the reasoning faculty to be exceedingly strong in Paul and may, perhaps, have thought him to be too coolly argumentative. “But,” said Paul, “if we are sober, it is for your cause.” Viewed from some points the Apostle and his co-laborers must have appeared to be raving fanatics, engaged upon a Quixotic enterprise and almost, if not quite, out of their minds.

One who had heard the Apostle tell the story of his conversion exclaimed, “Paul, you are beside yourself; much learning does make you mad,” and no doubt many who saw the singular change in his conduct and knew what he had given up and what he endured for his new faith had come to the same conclusion. Paul would not be at all offended by this judgment, for he would remember that his Lord and Master had been charged with madness and that even our Lord’s relatives had said, “He is beside Himself.” To Festus he had replied, “I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness.”

And to Corinthian objectors he gave a still fuller reply. Blessed are they who are charged with being out of their mind through zeal for the cause of Jesus! They have a more than sufficient answer when they can say, “If we are beside ourselves, it is to God.” It is no unusual thing for madmen to think others mad and no strange thing for a mad world to accuse the only morally sane among men of being fools and lunatics! But Wisdom is justified of her children. If others assailed the Apostle with another charge and insinuated that there was a method in his madness—that his being all things to all men showed an excess of prudence—and was no doubt a means to an end, which end it is possible they hinted at was a desire for power, he could reply most conclusively, “If we are sober, it is for your cause.”

Paul had acted so unselfishly that he could appeal to the Corinthian Church and ask them to bear him witness that he sought not theirs but them. And that if he had judged their disorders with great sobriety it was for their cause. Whatever he did, or felt, or suffered, or spoke, he had but one design in it—the Glory of God in the perfecting of Believers and the salvation of sinners. Every Christian minister ought to be able to use the Apostle’s words without the slightest reserve. Yes, and every Christian should be able to say the same—“If I am excited, it is in defense of the Truth of God. If I am sober, it is for the maintenance of holiness. If I seem extravagant, it is because the name of Jesus stirs my inmost soul— and if I am moderate in spirit and thoughtful in mood—it is that I may in the wisest manner subserve the interests of my Redeemer’s kingdom.”

God grant that weeping or singing, anxious or hopeful, victorious or defeated, increasing or decreasing, elevated or depressed we may still follow our one design and devote ourselves to the holy cause! May we live to see Churches made up of people who are all set on one thing and may those Churches have ministers who are fit to lead such a people because they, also, are mastered by the same sacred purpose. May the fire which fell of old on Carmel fall on our altar, whereon lies the sacrifice, wetted a second and a third time from the salt sea of the world, until it shall consume the burnt sacrifice and the wood, the stones and the dust—and lick up the water that is in the trench. Then will all the people see it and fall upon their faces, and cry, “The Lord! He is God! The Lord, He is God!”

The Apostle now goes on to tell us why it was that the whole conduct of himself and his co-laborers tended to one end and objective. He says, “The love of Christ constrains us, because we thus judge, that if One died for all, then the all died.” I give you here as exact a translation as I can. Two things I shall note in the text—first, under constraint. Secondly, under constraint which his understanding justified.

1. Our main point will come under the head, “UNDER CONSTRAINT. Here is the Apostle, a man who was born free, a man who beyond all others enjoyed the greatest spiritual liberty—glorying that he is under constraint! He was under constraint because a great force held him under its power. “The love of Christ constrains us.” I suppose, “constrains us,” is about the best rendering of the passage that could be given, but it might be translated, “restrains.” The love of Christ restrains true Believers from self-seeking and forbids them to pursue any objective but the highest. Whether they were beside themselves or sober, the early saints yielded to Divine restraint, even as a good ship answers to her helm or as a horse obeys the rein.

They were not without a restraining force to prevent the slightest subjection to impure motives. The love of Christ controlled them and held them under its power. But the word, “restrained,” only expresses a part of the sense, for it means that he was, “coerced or pressed,” and so impelled forward as one carried along by pressure. All around him the love of Christ pressed upon him as the water in a river presses upon a swimmer and bears him onward with its stream. Bengel, who is a great authority, reads it, “Keeps us employed,” for we are led to diligence, urged to zeal, maintained in perseverance and carried forward and onward by the love of Jesus Christ. The Apostles labored much, but all their labor sprang from the impulse of the love of Jesus Christ.

Just as Jacob toiled for Rachel solely out of love to her, so do true saints serve the Lord Jesus under the Omnipotent constraint of love. One eminent expositor reads the word, “constrains us,” as though it signified that the Lord’s servants were kept together and held as a band under a banner or standard. And he very appropriately refers to the words of the Church in the Song of Songs, “His banner over me was love.” As soldiers are held together by rallying to the standard, so are the saints kept to the work and service of their Lord by the love of Christ which constrains them to endure all things for the elect’s sake and for the Glory of God—and like an ensign—is lifted high as the center and loadstone of all their energies. In our Lord’s love we have the best motive for loyalty, the best reason for energy and the best argument for perseverance!

The word may also signify, “compressed,” and then it would mean that all their energies were pressed into one channel and made to move by the love of Christ. Can I put restraint and constraint, and all the rest, into one by grouping them in a figure? I think I can. When a flood is spread over an expanse of meadow land and stands in shallow pools, men restrain it by damming it up—and they constrain it to keep to one channel by banking it in! Thus compressed it becomes a stream and moves with force in one direction. See how it quickens its pace! See what strength it gathers! It turns yonder wheel of the mill, makes a sheep wash, leaps as a waterfall, runs laughing through a village as a brook where the cattle stand in the summer’s sun. Growing all the while, it develops into a river, bearing boats and little ships! And this done, it still increases and stays not till it flows with mighty flood into the great sea.

The love of Christ had pressed Paul’s energies into one force, turned them into one channel and then driven them forward with a wonderful force till he and his fellows had become a mighty power for good—always active and energetic. “The love of Christ,” he says, “constrains us.” All great lives have been under the constraint of some mastering principle. A man who is everything by turns and nothing long, is a nobody! A man who wastes life on whims and fancies, leisure and pleasures, never achieves anything! He flits over the surface of life and leaves no more trace upon his age than a bird upon the sky. But a man, even for mischief, becomes great when he becomes concentrated.

What made the young prince of Macedon, Alexander the Great, but the absorption of his whole mind in the desire for conquest? The man was never happy when he was at ease and in peace. His best days were spent on the battlefield or on the march. Let him rush to the front of the battle and make the common soldier grow into a hero by observing the desperate valor of his king—and then you see the greatness of the man! He could never have been the conqueror of the world if the insatiable greed of conquest had not constrained him. From this come your Caesars and your Napoleons— they are whole men in their ambition, subject to the lust of dominion.

When you carry this thought into a better and holier sphere, the same fact is clear. Howard could never have been the great philanthropist if he had not been strangely under the witchery of love to prisoners. He was more happy in a hospital or in a prison than he would have been at Court or on the sofa of the drawing room. The man could not help visiting jails—he was a captive to his sympathy for men in bondage—and so he spent his life in seeking their good. Look at such a man as Whitfield or his associate, Wesley. Those men had but one thought and that was to win souls for Christ—their whole being ran into the one riverbed of zeal for God and made them full and strong as the rushing Rhone. It was their rest to labor for Christ! It was their honor to be pelted while preaching and to be maligned for the name of Jesus! A bishopric and a seat in the House of Lords would have been the death of them! Even a throne would have been a rack if they must have ceased hunting for souls.

The men were under the dominion of a passion which they could not withstand and did not wish to weaken. They could sing—

“The love of Christ does me constrain

To seek the wandering souls of men!

With cries, entreaties, tears, to save,

To snatch them from the fiery wave.”

 Their whole life, being, thought, faculty, spirit, soul and body became one and indivisible in purpose. And their sanctified manhood was driven forward irresistibly so that they might be likened to thunderbolts flung from the eternal hand which must go forward till their end is reached. They could no more cease to preach than the sun could cease shining or reverse his course in the heavens!

This kind of constraint implies no compulsion and involves no bondage. It is the highest order of freedom, for when a man does exactly what he likes to do, if he wants to express the enthusiastic joy and delight with which he follows his pursuit, he generally uses language similar to that of my text. “Why,” he says, “I am engrossed by my favorite study. It quite enthralls me. I cannot resist its charms, it holds me beneath its spell.” Is the man any the less free? If a man gives himself up to a science, or to some other pursuit, though he is perfectly free to leave it whenever he likes, he will commonly declare that he cannot leave it—it has such a hold upon him that he addicts himself to it!

You must not think, therefore, that when we speak of being under constraint from the love of Christ we mean, by it, that we have ceased to exercise our wills, or to be voluntary agents in our service. Far from it! In fact, we acknowledge that we are never so free as when we are under bonds to Christ! No, our God does not constrain us by physical force. His cords are those of love and His bands are those of a man. The constraint is that which we are glad to feel—we give a full assent to its pressure—and therein lies its power. We rejoice to admit that, “The love of Christ constrains us!” We only wish the constraint would increase every day.

We have seen that Paul had a great force holding him—we advance a step further and note that the constraining force was the love of Christ. He does not speak of his love to Christ—that was a great power, too, though secondary to the first. But he is content to mention the greater, for it includes the less—“The love of Christ constrains us,” that is, Christ’s love to us is the master force! And O, Brothers and Sisters, this is a power to which it is joy to submit! This is a force worthy to command the greatest minds! “The love of Christ.” Who shall measure this Omnipotent force? That love, according to our text, is strongest when seen in His dying for men. Mark the context, “because we thus judge, that if One died for all.” The peculiar display of the love of Christ which had supreme sway over Paul was the love revealed in His substitutionary death!

Think of it a moment. Christ the Ever-Blessed, to whom no pain, nor suffering, nor shame could come, loved men! O singularity of love! He loves guilty men, yes, loves His enemies! Loving poor fallen men, He took their nature and became a Man. Marvelous condescension! The Son of God is also Son of Mary and, being found in fashion as a Man, He humbles Himself and is made of no reputation. See Him taken before human judges and unjustly condemned! Seized by Roman lictors and lashed with the scourge! Gazing a little longer, you see Him nailed to a cross, hung up for a felon, left amid jeer and jibe and cruel glance and malicious speech to bleed away His life till He is actually dead and laid in the grave!

At the back of all this there is the mystery that He was not only dying, but dying in the place of others, bearing almighty wrath, enduring that dread sentence of death which is attached to human sin. Herein is love, indeed, that the infinitely Pure should suffer for the sinful, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God! Love did never climb to so sublime a height as when it brought Jesus to the bloody tree to bear the dread sentence of inexorable Law! Think of this love, Beloved, till you feel its constraining influence!

It was love eternal, for long before the earth was fashioned, the eternal Word had set His eyes upon His people and their names were engraved on His heart. It was love unselfish, for He had nothing to gain from His redeemed—there were harps enough in Heaven and songs enough in the celestial city without their music! It was love most free and spontaneous, for no man sought it or so much as dreamed of it! It was love most persevering, for when man was born into the world and sinned and rejected Christ—and He came to His own and His own received Him not—He loved them still, loved them even to the end. It was love—what shall I say of it? If I were to multiply words I might rather sink your thoughts than raise them!

It was love infinite, immeasurable, inconceivable! It surpasses the love of women, though the love of mothers is strong as death and jealousy is cruel as the grave. It passes the love of martyrs, though that love has triumphed over the fury of the flame. All other lights of love pale in their ineffectual brightness before this blazing sun of love, whose warmth a man may feel but upon whose utmost light no eye can gaze! He loved us like a God! It was nothing less than God’s own love which burned within that breast which was bared to the spear that it might redeem us from going down into the Pit! It is this force, then, which has taken possession of the Christian’s mind and, as Paul says, “constrains us.”

Now we may advance another step and say that the love of Christ operates upon us by begetting in us love to Him. Brothers and Sisters, I know you love our Lord Jesus Christ, for all His people love Him. “We love Him because He first loved us.” But what shall I say? There are scarcely any themes upon which I feel less able to speak than these two—the love of Christ to us and our love to Him—because somehow love needs a tongue elsewhere than this which dwells in the mouth. This tongue is in the head and it can therefore tell out our thoughts—but we need a tongue in the heart to tell out our emotions which have now to borrow utterance from the brain’s defective orator.

There is a long space between the cool brain and the blazing heart—and matters cool on the road to the tongue, so that the burning heart grows weary of chill words. But oh, we love Jesus! Brothers and Sisters, we truly love Him! His name is sweet as the honeycomb and His Word is precious as the gold of Ophir. His Person is very dear to us—from His head to His feet He is altogether lovely. When we get near Him and see Him at the last, I think we shall swoon away with excess of joy at the sight of Him and I, for one, ask no Heaven beyond a sight of Him and a sense of His love! I do not doubt that we shall enjoy all the harmonies, all the honors and all the fellowships of Heaven, but if they were all blotted out, I do not know that they would make any considerable difference to us if we may but see our Lord upon His throne, and have His own prayer fulfilled, “Father, I will that they, also, whom You have given Me be with Me where I am, that they may behold My Glory.” He is happiness to us, yes, He is All in All!

Do you not feel that the sweetest sermons you ever hear are those which are fullest of Him? When I can sometimes hear a sermon, it sickens me to listen to fine attempts to philosophize away the Gospel, or to pretty essays which are best described as a jingle of elegant words. But I can hear with rapture the most illiterate and blundering Brother if his heart burns within him and he heartily speaks of my Lord, the Well-Beloved of my soul! We are glad to be in the place of assembly when Jesus is within, for whether on Tabor with two or three, or in the congregation of the faithful—when Jesus is present it is good to be there.

This joyful feeling, when you hear about Jesus, shows that you love Him and your endeavors to spread the Gospel show that you love His cause. The love of Christ to you has moved you to desire the coming of His kingdom and you feel that you could give your life to extend the borders of His dominions! He is a glorious King and all the world should know it! Oh that we could see all the nations bowing before His scepter of peace! We love Him so much that till the whole earth smiles in the light of His throne, we can never rest. As to His Truth, a very great part of our love to Christ will show itself by attachment to the pure Gospel. I have not much patience with a certain class of Christians, nowadays, who will hear anybody preach so long as they can say, “He is very clever, a fine preacher, a man of genius, a born orator.”

Is cleverness to make false doctrine palatable? Why, Sirs, to me the ability of a man who preaches error is my sorrow rather than my admiration! I cannot endure false doctrine, however neatly it may be put before me. Would you have me eat poisoned meat because the dish is of the choicest ware? It makes me indignant when I hear another gospel put before the people with enticing words by men who would gladly make merchandise of souls! And I marvel at those who have soft words for such deceivers.

“That is your bigotry,” says one. Call it so if you like, but it is the bigotry of the loving John who wrote—“If there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: for he that bids him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.” I would to God we had all more of such decision, for the lack of it is depriving our religious life of its backbone and substituting for honest manliness a mass of the tremulous jelly of mutual flattery. He who does not hate the false does not love the true! And he to whom it is all the same whether it is God’s Word or man’s, is himself unrenewed at heart! Oh, if some of you were like your fathers, you would not have tolerated in this age the wagon loads of trash under which the Gospel has been of late buried by ministers of your own choosing! You would have hurled out of your pulpits the men who are enemies to the fundamental doctrines of your Churches and yet are crafty enough to become your pastors and undermine the faith of a fickle and superficial generation! These men steal the pulpits of once orthodox Churches because otherwise they would have none at all!

Their powerless theology cannot, of itself, arouse sufficient enthusiasm to enable them to build a mousetrap at the expense of their admirers and, therefore, they profane the houses which your fathers have built for the preaching of the Gospel and turn aside the  organizations of once orthodox communities to help their infidelity! I call it by that name in plain English, for “modern thought” is not one whit better—and of the two evils I give infidelity the palm, for it is less deceptive. I beg the Lord to give back to the Churches such a love to His Truth that they may discern the spirits and cast out those which are not of God.

I feel sometimes like John, of whom it is said that though the most loving of all spirits, yet he was the most decided of all men for the Truth of God. Once when he went to the bath and found that the heretic, Cerinthus, was there, he hurried out of the building and would not tarry in the same place with him! There are some with whom we should have no fellowship! No, not so much as to eat bread! And though this conduct looks stern and hard, it is after the mind of Christ, for the Apostle spoke by Inspiration when he said, “If we, or an angel from Heaven preach to you any other Gospel than that which you have received, let him be accursed.” According to modern efficiency he ought to have said, “Let him be kindly spoken with in private, but pray make no stir! No doubt the thought was original and we must not question his liberty. Doubtless, he believes the same as we do, only there is some little difference as to terms.”

This is treason to Christ, treachery to the Truth of God and cruelty to souls! If we love our Lord we shall keep His Words and stand fast in the faith, coming out from among the false teachers! Nor is this inconsistent with charity, for the truest love to those who err is not to fraternize with them in their error, but to be faithful to Jesus in all things! The love of Jesus Christ creates in men a deep attachment to the Gospel, especially to the doctrines which cluster around the Person of our Lord. And I think more especially to that doctrine which is the cornerstone of all, namely, that Christ died in the place of men. He who touches the doctrine of Substitution, touches the apple of our eye! He who denies it, robs our soul of her only hope, for there we gather all our consolation for the present and our expectation for days to come. A great force, then, held the Apostle—that force was the love of Christ—and it worked in Him love to Christ in return!

Now, this force acts proportionately in Believers. It acts in every Christian more or less, but it differs in degree. We are all of us, alive, but the vigor of life differs greatly in the consumptive and the athletic—and so the love of Jesus acts upon all regenerate men, but not to the same extent. When a man is perfectly swayed by the love of Christ, he will be a perfect Christian. When a man is growingly under its influence, he is a growing Christian. When a man is sincerely affected by the love of Christ, he is a sincere Christian. But he in whom the love of Christ has no power whatever is not a Christian at all. “I thought,” says one, “that believing was the main point.” True, but faith works by love and if your faith does not work by love it is not the faith which will save the soul.

Love never fails to bloom where faith has taken root. Beloved, you will feel the power of the love of Christ in your soul in proportion to the following points. In proportion as you know it. Study, then, the love of Christ—search deep and learn its secrets. Angels desire to look into it. Observe its eternity—without beginning. Its immutability—without change. Its infinity—without measure. Its eternity—without end. Think much of the love of Christ, till you comprehend with all saints what are its breadths and lengths. And as you know it, you will begin to feel its power. Its power will also be in proportion to your sense of it. Do you feel the love of God shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit? Knowing is well, but enjoyment as the result of believing is better! Does it not  sometimes force the tears from your eyes to think that Jesus loved you and gave Himself for you?

On the other hand, does it not at times make you feel as if, like David, you could dance before the ark of the Lord, to think that the love of God should ever have been set on you—that Christ should die for you? Ah, think and think again—for you the bloody sweat, for you the crown of thorns, for you the nails, the spear, the wounds, the broken heart—all, all for love of you who were His enemy! In proportion as your heart is tender and is sensitive to this love, it will become a constraining influence in your whole life. The force of this influence will also depend very much upon the Divine Grace which dwells within you. You may measure your Grace by the power which the love of Christ has over you. Those who dwell near their Lord are so conscious of His power over them that the very glances of His eyes fill them with holy ardor. If you have much Grace you will be greatly moved by the love which gave you that Grace and made you wondrously sensitive to it. But he who has little Grace, as is the case with not a few, can read the story of the Cross without emotion, and can contemplate Jesus’ death without feeling. God deliver us from a cold and hard marble heart!

Character also has much to do with the measure in which we feel the constraint of Jesus’ love. The more Christ-like the more Christ-constrained. You must become, dear Brothers and Sisters, by prayer through the Holy Spirit, to be like Jesus Christ. And when you do, His love will take fuller possession of you than it does at this moment and you will be more manifestly under its constraining power. Our last point upon this head is that wherever its energy is felt it will operate after its kind. Forces work according to their nature—the force of love creates love—and the love of Christ begets a kindred love. He who feels Christ’s love acts as Christ acted. If you really feel the love of Christ in making a sacrifice of Himself you will make a sacrifice of yourself. “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”

We shall, for our Lord’s sake, count all things but dross for the excellency of His knowledge. O Soul, you will have no choice left after you have once known and chosen your Lord! If that road leads to wealth, but if it does not glorify Christ, you will at once say, “Farewell wealth.” That road leads to honor—you will be famous if you will take that path. But if it will bring no glory to Christ, if you feel the power of His love in your soul, you will say, “Farewell honor! I will embrace shame for Christ, for my one thought is to sacrifice myself for Him who sacrificed Himself for me.” If the love of Christ constrains you, it will make you love others, for His was love to others, love to those who could do Him no service, who deserved nothing at His hands. If the love of Christ constrains you, you will specially love those who have no apparent claim upon you and cannot justly expect anything from you, but on the contrary deserve your censure. You will say, “I love them because the love of Christ constrains me.”

Dirty little creatures in the gutter. Filthy women polluting the streets. Base men who come out of jail merely to repeat their crimes—these are the fallen humanities whom we learn to love when the love of Christ constrains us! I do not know how else we could care for some poor creatures, if it were not that Jesus teaches us to despise none and despair of none. Those ungrateful creatures, those malicious creatures, those abominably blasphemous and profane creatures whom you sometimes meet with and shrink from—you are to love them because Christ loved the very chief of sinners! His love to you must be reflected in your love to the lowest and vilest. He is your Sun—be you as the moon to the world’s night.

The love of Jesus Christ was a practical love. He did not love in thought, only, and in word, but in deed and in truth—and if the love of Christ constrains us—we shall throw our souls into the work and service of love. We shall be really at work for men, giving alms of our substance, enduring our measure of suffering and making it clear that our Christianity is not mere talk, but downright work! We shall be like the bullock of the burnt offering, laid upon the altar to be wholly consumed. We shall consider nothing but how we can most completely be eaten up with the zeal of God’s House, how without the reserve of one single faculty we may be entirely consumed in the service of our Lord and Master. May the Lord bring us to this!

II. THE CONSTRAINT OF WHICH WE HAVE SPOKEN WAS JUSTIFIED BY THE APOSTLE’S UNDERSTANDING. “The love of Christ constrains us; because we thus judge.” Love is blind. A man may say that in the affairs of love he exercises a calm discretion, but I take leave to doubt it. In love to Christ, however, you may be carried right away and be as blind as you like and yet you shall act according to the most sound judgment. The Apostle says warmly, “The love of Christ constrains us,” and yet he adds with all coolness, “because we thus judge.” When understanding is the basis of affection, then a man’s heart is fixed and his conduct becomes in a high degree exemplary. So it is here.

There is a firm basis of judgment—the man has weighed and judged the matter as much as if the heart were out of the question—but the logical conclusion is one of all-absorbing emotion and mastering affection as much as if the understanding had been left out of the question. His judgment was as the bronze altar, cold and hard, but on it he laid the coals of burning affection, vehement enough in their flame to consume everything. So it ought to be with us. Religion should be with a man a matter of intellect as well as of affection—and his understanding should always be able to justify the strongest possible passion of his soul, as the Apostle says it did in the case of himself and his brethren.

They had reasons for all that they did. For, first, he recognized Substitution—“We thus judge, that if One died for all.” O Brothers and Sisters, this is the very sinew of Christian effort—Christ died in the sinner’s place! Christ is the Surety, the Sacrifice, the Substitute for men! If you take the doctrine of vicarious Sacrifice out of the Christian religion I protest that nothing is left worth calling a revelation! It is the heart, the head, the soul, the essence of our holy faith— that the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all and with His stripes we are healed! The Apostle firmly believed this to be a matter of fact and then, out of his belief, there grew an intense love to Jesus, as well there might. Did Jesus stand in my place? Oh, how I love Him! Did He die for me? Then His love has mastered me and will always hold me as its willing captive! O sacred Substitute, I am Yours and all that I have!

In the next place, he recognized union to Christ, for, he said, “If One died for all, then the all died,” for so it runs, that is to say, the all for whom Christ died, died in His death. His dying in their place was their dying! He dies for them, they die in Him. He rises, they rise in Him. He lives, they live in Him. Now if it is really so, that you and I who have believed in Christ are one with Christ and members of His body, that Truth of God may be stated coolly, but like the flint, it conceals a fire within it! For if we died in Jesus, we are dead to the world, to self—to everything but our Lord! O Holy Spirit, work in us this death even to the fullest! The Apostle recognizes the natural consequence of union with the dying Lord and resolves to carry it out.

Brothers and Sisters, when Adam sinned, we sinned. And we have felt the result of that fact—we were constituted sinners by the act of our first representative and every day we see it to be so. Every little child that is carried to the grave bears witness that death passes upon all men, for that all have sinned in Adam, even though they have not personally sinned after the similitude of his transgression. Now, just as our sin in Adam effectively operates upon us for evil, so must our death with Christ effectively operate upon our lives for good. It ought to do so. How can I live for myself? I died more than 18 centuries ago! I died and was buried! How can I live to the world? Eighteen hundred years ago and more the world hung me up as a malefactor—yes, and in my heart of hearts I have also crucified the world—and regard it as a dead malefactor. How shall I fall in love with a crucified world, or follow after its delights? We thus died with Christ.

“Now,” says the Apostle, “the love of Christ constrains us; because we thus judge, that if One died for all, then the all died.” All who were in Christ, for whom He died, died when He died. And what follows from it but that they should not live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for them and rose again? We are one with Christ and what He did for us we did in Him and, therefore, we are dead because He died! Therefore we ought no longer to live in the old selfish way, but should live only to the Lord. This is the basis upon which the intellect rests and then the affections yield themselves to the sacred force of Jesus’ dying love.

I close with the following reflections, putting them very briefly. The first reflection is—how different is the inference of the Apostle from that of many professors. They say, “If Christ died once for all and so finished the work of my salvation, then I am saved and may sit down in comfort and enjoy myself, for there is no need for effort or thought.” Ah, what a mercy to feel that you are saved and then to go to sleep in the corner of your pew! A converted man and, therefore, curled up upon the bed of sloth! A pretty sight, surely, but a very common one! Such people have but little or no feeling for others who remain unconverted. “The Lord will save His own,” they say and they little care whether He does so or not. They appear to be dreadfully afraid of doing God’s work, though there is not the slightest need for such a fear, since they will not even do their own work!

These are presumptuous persons, strangers to the Grace of God, who know not that the main part of salvation lies in our being saved from selfishness and hardness of heart! It is the devil’s inference that because Christ did so much for me I am now to do nothing for Him! I must even beg the devil’s pardon, for I scarcely think that even he is base enough to draw such an inference from the Grace of God. Assuredly he has never been in a position to attempt so detestable a crime. It is to the last degree unutterably contemptible that a man who is indebted to the Lord Jesus Christ for so much should then make the only consequence of his indebtedness to be a selfish indolence! Never will a true child of God say, “Soul, take your ease. You are all right—nothing else matters!”

Oh no! “The love of Christ constrains us.” How much more ennobling, again, is such conduct as that of the Apostle than that of many professed Christians? I am not about to judge anyone, but I would beg you to judge yourselves. There are some and I would try to hope that they may be Christians—the Lord knows them that are His—who give to the cause of God, who serve God, after a fashion. But still, the main thought of their life is not Christ nor His service, but the gaining of wealth! That is their chief objective and towards it all their faculties are bent. There are other Church members—God forbid we should judge them—whose great thought is success in their profession. I am not condemning their having such a thought, but the chief ambition of the Apostle and of those like he was not this, but something higher! The chief aim of all of us should be nothing of self, but serving Christ! We are to be dead to everything but our Lord’s Glory, living with this mark before us—this prize to be strained after—that Christ shall be glorified in our mortal bodies!

In our business, in our studies, in everything, our slogan must be, Christ, Christ, Christ! Is it not a far more noble thing for a man to have lived wholly unto Christ than for mammon, or honor, or for himself in any shape or form? I speak as to wise men—judge what I say! Do you not think, also, that such a pursuit as this is much more peace-giving to the spirit? People will judge our conduct and they are sure to judge as severely as they can. If they see us zealous and self denying they will say of us, “Why, the man is beside himself.” This will not matter much to us if we can reply, “It is for God.” Or if they say, “Oh, you old sober sides, how grave you are,” we shall not be offended if we can reply, “Ah, but it is for the good of others that I am sober.”

You will be very little distressed by sharp criticisms if you know that your motive is wholly unselfish. If you live for Christ and for Christ, alone, all the carping of men or devils will never cast you down. Do you not think that a life spent for Jesus only is far more worth looking back upon at the last than any other? If you call yourselves Christians, how will you judge a life spent in making money? It cannot be very much longer before you must gather up your feet in the bed and resign your soul to God. Now, suppose yourself sitting in your chamber all alone, making out the final balance-sheet of your stewardship—how will it look if you have to confess, “I have been a Christian professor. My conduct has been outwardly decent and respectable, but my chief purpose was not my Master’s Glory. I have lived with the view of scraping together so many thousands and I have done it.”

Would you like to fall asleep and die with that as the consummation of your life? Or shall it be, “I have lived to hold up my head in society and pay my way and leave a little for my family”? Will that satisfy you as your last reflection? Brothers and Sisters, we are not saved by our works, but I am speaking, now, upon the consolation which a man can derive from looking back upon his life. Suppose he shall have felt the power of my text and shall be able to say, “I have been enabled, by the Grace of God, to which I give all the glory, to consecrate my entire being to the entire glorification of my Lord and Master. And whatever my mistakes, and they are many—and my wanderings and failures, and they are countless—yet the love of Christ has constrained me, for I judged myself to have died in Him, and I have lived to Him. I have fought a good fight. I have kept the faith”?

Why, I think it were worth while so to die! To be constrained by the love of Christ creates an heroic life, exalted, illustrious—no, I must come down from such lofty words—it is such a life as every Christian ought to live! It is such a life as every Christian must live if he is really constrained by the love of Christ, for the text does not say the love of Christ ought to constrain us—it declares that it does constrain us. Brothers and Sisters, if it does not constrain you, judge yourselves that you be not judged and found wanting at the last! God grant we may feel the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Again the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations.”—

And how think you did the prophet proceed in order to accomplish the solemn commission which had been thus entrusted to him? Did he begin by reminding the people of the law which was delivered to Moses on the top of Sinai? Did he picture to them the exceeding fearfulness and quaking of the leader of Israel’s host when he received that stony law in the midst of thunders and lightings? Or did he, do you think, proceed to point out to them the doom which must inevitably befall them, because they had broken the divine law, and violated God’s holy statutes? No, my brethren; if he had been about to show to the then unprivileged gentiles their iniquity, he might have proceeded on legal grounds; he was now however about to deal with Jerusalem, the highly-favored city, and here he does not bring to their mind the law; he does not begin dealing out law-thunders to them at all; he fetches obligations as his arguments to convince them of sin from the grace of God, rather than from the law of God. And, my brethren, as I am about this evening to address you who profess to be followers of the Son of God, and who by faith have “fled for refuge to the hope set before you in the gospel,”—as my business is to convince you of sin, I shall not begin by taking you to Sinai,—I shall not attempt to show you what the law is, and what that penalty is which devolves upon every man that breaks it; but, feeling that you are not under the law, but under grace, I shall draw arguments from the grace of God, from his gospel, from the favor which he has shown to you—arguments more powerful than any which can be fetched from the law, to show you the greatness of your sin, and the abomination of any iniquity which you have committed against the Lord your God. I shall take Ezekiel’s method as my model, and proceed to copy it thus:

First, let us consider the abomination of our sin, aggravated as it is by the remembrance of what we were when the Lord first looked upon us; secondly, let us see our sins in another light—in the light of what the Lord has made us since those happy days; and then, let us proceed to notice what our sins have themselves been; and we shall have, I think, three great lamps which may cast a terrible light on the great wickedness of our sins.

I. First, then, let us consider our iniquities—I mean those committed since conversion, those committed yesterday, and the day before, and to-day—and let us see their sinfulness in the light of what we were when the Lord first looked upon us. In the words of the prophet Ezekiel, observe what was our “birth and our nativity.” He says of us, “Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan. Thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite.” Now, Canaan, as you know, was a cursed one, and the land of Canaan here meant, refers to the cursed people whom God utterly gave up to be destroyed with the sword, that not one of them might escape. Mark it, our nativity and our birth were of the land of the curse. “Thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite.” Though when the Lord is speaking of his people as they are in covenant with him, he tells them that their father was Abraham, whom he did choose, and their mother was Sarah whom he loved; yet when he speaks of their natural estate, he compares their parentage to that mixed offspring of an Amorite father and a Hittite mother. Ay, and what was our parentage, men and brethren? Let us look back and wonder. Surely our father Adam’s wickedness was in us. Our early childhood began to discover the latent sparks of our sin. Scarcely do we remember the time when they were sparks, so early were they fanned into a flame. When any of you look back to your father’s house, to the place from which God called you, you may be constrained to wonder, for I know there are many members of this church here present who are the only ones out of a family who were ever called to know the Lord. Your father, perhaps, lived and died a drunkard. You can look back to the two or three that you remember of your ancestors, and they have been “without God and without hope, strangers to the commonwealth of Israel.” Then what was there in you or in your father’s house that God should set his love on you? Indeed, as for those of us who have been blessed with pious parents, we have nothing to boast of our ancestry, for we all were “born in sin and shapen in iniquity.”

Hath the Lord loved us, though there was nothing in our birth or parentage to invite regard or merit esteem? Then surely every sin that we commit now, is aggravated by that sovereign choice, that infinite compassion that doated upon us, though our birth was vile, and our original base. Didst thou take me from the dunghill, O my God, and do I sin against thee? Didst thou take the beggar in his rags and lift him up to make him sit among thy sons and daughters, the very blood-royal of heaven? And has that beggar afterwards become a rebel against thee? Oh sin, thou art an accursed thing indeed! When I think of that grace which has thus honored the dishonorable, exalted the mean things of this world, and saved creatures that were the offscouring of creation, how I blush for the ingratitude that can forget such tender obligations, and do despite to such extraordinary unmerited goodness!

Further, the prophet goes on to say that not only their parentage was base, but their condition was dangerous in the extreme. That which was absolutely necessary for the life of an infant had in this case been utterly neglected. The babe had been cast away as though it were useless, and its life unworthy of preservation. Offspring deserted, having none to tend it or care for its welfare, may perhaps awaken the lowest, the most contemptuous kind of pity. Was not that just our condition when the Lord looked upon us? We had not been severed from the old natural stock of Adam; there had been no water used to wash us from our natural pollution, or to make our conscience supple, our neck pliant, or our knees bend before the power of grace. We had not been swaddled or cared for. There was everything in our condition that would tend to destruction, but nothing in us that would tend upwards towards God. Yet there we were, dying, nay dead, rotten, corrupted, so abominable that it might well be said, “Bury this dead one out, of my sight,” when Jehovah passed by and he said unto us, “live.” Oh! some of you can remember how you were steeped up to the very neck in lust. Pardon me, brethren, when I allude to these things that you may be led to see your present sins in the light of the mercy which has blotted out your past iniquities. It is not long since with some of you that oaths larded your conversation daily, you could scarcely speak without blasphemy; as for others of us who were preserved from open sin, how base were we! The recollection of our youthful iniquity crushes us to the very earth. When we think how we despised the training we received, could laugh at a mother’s prayers and contemn all the earnest tender exhortations which a godly parent’s heart afforded to us, we could hide ourselves in dust and ashes and never indulge another thought of self-satisfaction. Yet though sovereign mercy has put all these sins away; though love has covered all these iniquities, and though everlasting kindness has washed away all this filth, we have gone on to sin. We have gone on to sin—thank God not to sin as we did before, not so greedily, not as the ox drinketh down water;—still we have transgressed, and that in the light of mercy, which has “blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins. Our sins, since redemption was revealed to our souls, are abominations indeed! If I had known, O my brethren, in that hour when Christ took away my sin—if I had known what an untoward disposition I had then to show, and what broken vows I should have now to reflect upon, I do not think I could have borne the revelation. If some of us who are here present, rejoicing in covenant love and mercy, could have a clear view of all the sins we have committed since conversion, of all the sins we shall commit till we land in heaven, I question whether our senses might not reel under the terrible discovery of what base things we are. I am sure if any man had told me that my heart would ever grow cold, that I should ever forget my Lord and Master, and get worldly—if an angel from heaven had told me these things, in the day when I first saw his face and looked and loved and lived, I should have said, “Is thy servant a dog that I should do this thing?” When I sat down and viewed the flowing of his precious blood and knew that my sins were put away, I thought I should never sin against him any more. I dreamed, and was it only a dream, that I should spend and be spent in his service; that no toil would be too hard, no sacrifice too great. And here we find ourselves flinching, and drawing back, and finding excuses for leaving his service; nay, worse than that, smiting the face of our best Friend and grieving his Holy Spirit, and often causing him to hide his face from us by reason of our sin. Well might Moses say, “I beseech thee, O Lord, show me not my wretchedness.”

One thing else appears designed to represent our sins as blacker still. It appears from the fifth verse, that this child, this Jewish nation, when God loved it had none other to love it. “None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion on thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field to the loathing of thy person in the day that thou wast born.” Do any of you know what it is to be cast out to the loathing of your person? We will not say that our character had become such that we were loathed by others, but well we remember the time when we loathed ourselves; when we could say with John Banyan that we wished we had been a dog or a toad sooner than have been a man, because we felt ourselves so vile in having sinned against God. Oh! I can recollect the season when my fondest wish was that I had never been born, because I so sinned against God. The sight of my iniquity was such, that horror took hold of me and amazement of soul overwhelmed me. I was indeed cast out to my own loathing if not to the loathing of others; and indeed it is no wonder if a man, when he has his eyes opened, loathes himself, for there is nothing so loathsome as an unregenerate heart—a heart that is like a den of unclean birds full of all manner of filthiness and ravenousness. The greatest abomination that ever existed physically is not to be compared with the moral abominations that dwell in the unrenewed heart. It is a miniature hell, it is pandemonium in embryo; you have but to let it grow, and the vileness which is in the human heart by nature would soon make a hell if there were no hell; and yet, my brethren, when we were loathed, when even our person was loathed, he loved us. Great God I how couldst thou love that which we ourselves hated? Oh! ’tis grace, ’tis grace, ’tis grace indeed! Where is free-will, my brethren; where is free-will? There is no such thing. “Nomen est sine re,” said Martin Luther, it is a name for nothing. When we think of what we were; the thought of merit vanishes; it at once refutes itself the moment we look it in the face. It was grace—free, rich, unconstrained, sovereign grace which looked on us. I am sure if there be any who think there was some good thing in them that invited God’s attention, or led him to look upon them, I can only say I know there was nothing of the sort in me; there was everything to hate, nothing to desire; everything to detest, nothing to delight in; much that he might spend his hatred on, but nothing which could command his affection or his love; still he loved us, still he loved us, and yet—O ye heavens be astonished—yet we have sinned against him since then, we have forgotten him, we have doubted him, we have grown cold towards him; we have loved self at times better than we have loved our Redeemer, and have sacrificed to our own idols and made gods of our own flesh and self-conceit, instead of giving him all the glory and the honor for ever and for ever.

This is putting sin in a gospel light. I pray you, brethren, if my speech be feeble and I cannot make the light shine on these things, spend a little season, as you can, in retirement when you are at home, look at your sins in the light of the mercy which looked on you when you were thus dead, and lost, and hopelessly ruined. And surely the blush will mantle on your cheek, and you will bow your knee with many a tear, and cry, “Lord have mercy upon me! O, my, Father cast not away thy child! forgive a child that spurned his Father’s love! forgive a wife who has played the harlot against a divine husband! pardon a soul that has been traitorous to its own Lord,—to him who is its life, its joy, its all! ”

II.  We have to think of what the Lord has done for us since the time he first loved us. I have made a mistake, brethren; I have made a mistake. “The time when he first loved us,” did I say ! Why, before all time, when there was no day but the unrising unsetting day of eternity, a beginning that knew no beginning, years that had no date. He loved his people then. I meant to refer rather to THE TIME WHEN HE BEGAN TO MANIFEST HIS LOVE TO US PERSONALLY AND INDIVIDUALLY. Well then, observe, that one of the chief things he did to us was to spread his skirt over us, and cover our nakedness. He washed us with the water of regeneration, yea, and truly washed away the stain of our natural sanguinity. Oh, that day, that day of days, as the days of heaven upon earth, when our eyes looked to Christ and were lightened, when the burden rolled from off our back! Oh, that hour, that earliest of all our gracious remembrances, that first of all dates, when we began to live, when we stepped down into that bath of atoning blood and came out of it fairer than any queen, more glorious than the daughters of men, white as alabaster, pure as crystal, like the driven snow without spot or blemish! That day we never can forget, for it always rises to our recollection the moment we begin to speak about pardon—the day of our own pardon, of our own forgiveness. The galley-slave may forget the hour when he ceased to tug the oar. The poor chattel of his master may forget the time when he escaped from the accursed slave-holder’s grasp, and became a freeman. The sick man may forget the day when, after being long worn with pain till he was emaciated and at the gates of death, the blood began to leap in his veins, and the glow of health began to invigorate his frame. The culprit who lay shivering beneath the heads-man’s axe may forget the hour when suddenly his pardon was granted and his life was spared. But if all these should consign to oblivion their surprising joys, the pardoned soul can never, never, never forget. Unless reason should lose her seat, the quickened soul can never cease to remember the time when, Jesus said to it, “Live.” Oh! and has Jesus pardoned all our sins and have we sinned still? Has he washed me, and have I defiled myself again? Did he shed his blood to cleanse me and have I returned again to my natural depravity? Oh, these are abominations indeed! I have heard some say that the sins of believers are but trifles. Ah! my brethren, I do think if there be any difference, the sins of disciples of Christ are a thousand times worse than the sins of unbelievers, because they sin against a gospel of love, a covenant of mercy; against sweet experience and against precious promises. The sinner may kick against the pricks, that is bad enough; but to kick against the wounds of Christ, is worse still. Yet that is what you and I have done. We have sinned since the dear hour that cleansed our guilt away.

Nor did the gracious things we have mentioned exhaust the loving-kindness of the Lord. When he had washed us, according to the ninth verse, he anointed us with oil. Yes, and that has been repeated many and many a time. “Thou hast anointed my head with oil.” He gave us the oil of his grace; our faces were like priests, and we went up to his tabernacle rejoicing. Have ye received the Spirit, my brethren? Oh, think how great an honour that God should dwell in man. The centurion said he was not worthy that Christ should come under the roof of his house, and yet the Holy Spirit has not merely come under your roof but has come into your heart; there he dwells and there he reigns. Yet, my dear brethren, yet you have sinned. With God’s oil on your head you have sinned. With the Holy Ghost in your heart you have sinned. Ah! if any man carried God within him, would he go and sin? Shall the body that is the temple of the Holy Ghost be desecrated? Yet that has been the case with us. We have had God within us, and yet we have sinned. Marvel of marvels! He that would defile the house in which the king lived, would certainly be guilty of high insult; but he who defiles the temple in which the Holy Ghost resides—what shall be said of him? This is what we have done. O Lord, have mercy upon thy people! Now we see our abomination in this clear light, we beseech thee pardon it, for Jesu’s sake!

But further, we find that he not only washed us, he not only anointed us with oil; but he clothed us, and clothed us sumptuously. The rich man in the parable of Jesus was clothed in scarlet, but we are better robed than he, for we are clothed in embroidered-work. “Jesus spent his life to work my robe of righteousness.” His sufferings were so many stitches when he made the embroidered-work of my righteousness. “I clothed thee also with embroidered work, and shod thee with badgers’ skin.” Our shoes have been as iron and brass, and as our day, so has our strength been. We have had always grace hitherto sufficient for us. “And I girded thee about with fine linen,”—the righteousness of saints. He has given to us the virtues of the Holy Spirit, the robe of sanctification; and then he has covered us with silk, even with that all-glorious robe of righteousness “woven from the top throughout without seam,” in which all his people stand arrayed. There never was any one dressed so well as God’s people. Outwardly they may wear fustian and calico; they may come up to the house of God dressed in the garb of poverty, but they have robes which men cannot see, though such as angels can see and admire. A saint’s wardrobe would be a matchless thing to look at if we could but see it with the eyes of our understanding illuminated. Have you ever been taken to see the wardrobes of some great personages,—their multiplied garments—the robes which they wore in state? You have wondered at their lavish expenditure; but see your own, see those shoes, that girding of fine linen, and that covering of silk. Why, all the wealth of mankind could not buy an ell of that stuff; they could not procure a hem, much less the entire robe with which the righteous are adorned and made glorious. And yet they have turned aside and sinned. What should you think of a bishop in his lawn sleeves defiling himself with outcasts in the street? What would think you of a king with a crown on his head going to break the laws of his kingdom? What would you think if a monarch should invest us with all the insignia of nobility, and we should afterwards violate the high orders conferred upon us while adorned with the robes of state? This is just what you and I have done. We have had all these costly robes and glorious garments, and then we have gone and sinned against our God. O ingratitude of the vilest sort! Where are there words to denounce it? What language can fully express it?

We have but time to notice each one of these briefly; we have not only received clothing, but ornaments. “I have decked thee also with ornaments, and put bracelets upon thy hands and a chain on thy neck, and I put a jewel on thy forehead and earrings in thy ears, and a beautiful crown upon thy head.” Just like a loving husband, not content with giving his wife an ornament, he gives her many. And the Lord, you see, gives to his Church all the ornaments she can possibly desire. There are ornaments for her ears, a crown for her head, bracelets for her hands, and a chain for her neck. We cannot be more glorious; Christ has given the Church so much, she could not have more. He could not bestow upon her that which is more beautiful, more precious, or more costly. She has all she can receive. The Lord Jesus has bestowed all his wealth, and all heaven’s wealth upon his Church, and you and I are the inheritors and wearers of these precious ornaments. He has given to us jewels in our ears—a hearing ear; he has given us the jewel in our forehead—a holy courage for his name; he has given us a crown upon our head—a garland crown of loving-kindness and tender mercy; he has given us bracelets upon our hands, that whatsoever we touch may be graced, that our conduct may be beautiful and lovely, an ornament to the profession which we have espoused; and he has been pleased to put a chain about our necks, that we may ever be known to be right noble personages—noble of rank, exalted of station. Nevertheless, in the face of all these, we have sinned against him.

Dear friends, it may seem like repetition when I go over the list of these mercies, but I cannot help it. I should like every one of these to be as a trumpet in your ear to wake you up to look at your sins, and as a dagger in the heart of your pride to stab it and make it die. By these mercies of God, I adjure you, do hate your sins; by these loving kindnesses, these favors, immense, innumerable, unsearchable, by these covenant gifts, every one of them more precious, than a world of diamonds, I beseech you hate the sins that have grieved your gracious Lord; and made his Spirit mourn. To see my sins in the lurid light of Sinai were bad enough, but to see them in the mellow radiance of his countenance and in the light that is shed from the cross of my dying Master, this is to see sin in all its blackness and all its heinousness. Never, dear brethren, tamper with sin; never have anything to do with those who think sin is little because grace is great. Shun, I beseech you, any man who comforts his heart with the hope that the crimes of God’s children are mere trifles. No; though there be precious blood to wash it all away, yet sin is an awful thing. Though there be covenant promises to keep the believer secure, yet sin is a damning thing. Though there be eternal love which will not execute the divine anger upon us, yet sin is a thrice—cursed thing. In fact, I would strain language to find an epithet for that sin which dares to nestle in the heart of a man whom God has loved and chosen. I know that there is a tendency among some ministers—I will not say to whom I allude; you may readily guess—who preach a gospel which does seem as if it tolerated iniquity. Oh, come not into their secret, I pray you. Better for you, though it were one of the worst things that could be, if you were to endorse Arminianism, rather than Antinomianism. Of the two devils I think the white devil is the least devilish. As Rowland Hill said,—”The one is a white devil and the other a black one.” They are both devils, I doubt not, but still one is more fearful in its character than the other. Have nothing to do with that horrible spirit which has done more to destroy sound doctrine in our churches than anything else. Arguments will never break Antinomianism down. We are not afraid to meet our antagonists in fair and open battle. The ill lives of some who call themselves Calvinists, and are no more Calvinists than they are Jews, have brought that doctrine into great disrepute, and we often have flung in our faces the wickedness of some professors, and the rash, not to say wicked teaching of some of our preachers, as a reason why our brethren should be accounted worthy of all scorn. The more gracious God is, the more holy you should be; the more love he manifests to you, the more love should you reflect to him.

III. And now, I shall close by noticing in the third place, WHAT OUR SINS REALLY HAVE BEEN. We will not enter into particulars, we have each one, a different way. It were idle therefore for me to think of describing the sins of such an assembly as the present. The germs, the vileness, the essence of our own sin, has lain in this—that we have given to sin and to idols things that belong unto God. “Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them, and tookest thy broidered garments and coveredst them, and thou hast set mine oil and mine incense before them. My meat also which I gave thee, fine flour, and oil, and honey, wherewith I fed thee, thou hast even set it before them for a sweet savour.” I have done this—let me make confession for myself, and then I admonish you each one apply the case to yourselves. It has been a happy Sabbath day, my soul has enjoyed personal fellowship with Christ: I have gone up in the pulpit and had liberty of speech, and power has attended the words; there has been manifestly the Holy Spirit in the midst of his Church; I have, gone home, had access to God in prayer, and enjoyed again communion with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. I go forth once more to unfold the things of the gospel, and with delight to my own soul, have I heard afterwards of saints who have been refreshed, and sinners converted. This was like “fine flour, and honey and oil” that God had given to me. What did he give it me for? Why, that I might offer it to him, and give him all the glory. And do you know, I have caught myself saying, “Ah, you have done well to-day; you are growing in grace, and living near to God.” What! am I offering God’s blessings before the shrine of my abominable pride? Am I making an offering to Moloch, and bringing the very gifts and love-tokens of my Father, to be laid upon the altar of my own pride? This is abominable indeed! This is so vile that no language can execrate it sufficiently. To offer my own work is bad enough, but to offer God’s grace to idols, to spend his mercies in the gratification of my flesh—to look upon my own self as having done it, to sacrifice to my own conceit, to make an oblution to self of that which God has given me—this is atrocious enough to make a man fall very humbly before God, to feel the bitterness of his sin, and ask for pardon.

You have transgressed in like manner, I dare say. When you pray at a prayer meeting, the devil insinuates the thought, and you entertain it, “What a fine fellow I am!” You may detect yourself when you are talking to a friend of some good things God has done, or when you go home and tell your wife lovingly the tale of your labor, there is a little demon of pride at the bottom of your heart. You like to take credit to yourself for the good things you have done. I am speaking of you all; there is no exception here. Does not a little bit of the old man creep out, just as when Jehu said, “Come see my zeal for the Lord.” Now what is that but taking God’s fine meal, and oil, and honey, and offering them to yourselves? It there should be an innocent man, one who pleads “not guilty” upon this matter he can get up and go out if he likes; but I am sure you will all sit still, at least, all who know your own hearts. Your own experience will compel you to say—” I must confess it before God.” But have you not noticed that there are other ways besides this? Sometimes a man has another god besides pride. That god may be his sloth. He does not want to do much; he reads in the Bible that there is a finished righteousness, that the covenant of grace is complete. Have you never detected yourself, when inclined to be dilatory in spiritual things, leaning on the oar of the covenant, instead of pulling at it, and saying, “Well, these things are true, but there is no great need for me to stir myself.” Ah! you have been quietly nestling down to sleep, even under the influence of the sweet wine of the covenant of grace. It is sad that it should be so. It would be bad enough if we had picked up an excuse from our own logic; but instead of that, we have gone to God’s book to feign apologies for our idleness. Was not that taking his mercies and sacrificing them to false deities? Sometimes it is even worse. God gives to his people riches, and they offer them before the shrine of their covetousness. He gives them talent, and they prostitute it to the service of their ambition. He gives them judgment, and they pander to their own advancement, and seek not the interest of his kingdom. He gives them influence; that influence they use for their own aggrandizement, and not for his honor. What is this but parallel to taking his gold, and his jewels, and hanging them upon the neck of Ashtaroth. Ah! let us take care when we think of our sins, that we set them in this light. It is taking God’s mercies to lavish them upon his enemies. Now, if you were to make me a present of some token of your regard, I think it would be the meanest and most ungracious thing in the world I could do to take it over to your enemy, and say, “There, I come to pay my respects.” To pay my respects to your foe with that which had been the token of your favor! There are two kings at enmity with one another—two powers that have been at battle, and one of them has a rebellious subject, who is caught in the very act of treason, and condemned to die. The king very graciously pardons him, and then munificently endows him. “There,” says he, “I give you a thousand crown-pieces;” and that man takes the bounty, and devotes it to increasing the resources of the king’s enemies. Now, that were a treason and baseness too vile to be committed by worldly men. Alas then! that is what you have done. You have bestowed on God’s enemies what God gave to you as a love token. Oh, men and brethren, let us bow ourselves in dust and ashes before God; let us turn pride out to-night if we can; but it will be hard work. Let us try, in the strength of the Spirit, that we may at least put our foot on its neck, and as we come to the Lord’s table, may we have a joy for pardoned guilt, but may we mourn that we have pierced the Lord, and mourn most that we continue to pierce him still, and sometimes put him to an open shame by our disregard for his laws.

The Lord bless this to his people; and as for those who are unconverted, let them recollect that if the righteous have cause to weep, and if the sins of the saint be abominable, what must be the iniquity of that man who goeth on still in his sins and repenteth not! The Lord grant to such, grace to repent, and pardon, for Jesus’ sake.

“By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a plane which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.”—

One is struck with the practical character of this verse. Abraham was called, and he obeyed. There is no hint of hesitation, parleying, or delay; when he was called to go out, he went out. Would to God that—such conduct were usual, yea, universal; for with many of our fellow-men, and I fear with some now present, the call alone is not enough to produce obedience. “Many are called, but few are chosen.” The Lord’s complaint is “I called and ye refused.” Such calls come again and again to many, but they turn a deaf ear to them; they are hearers only, and not doers of the word: and, worse still, some are of the same generation as that which Zechariah spake of when he said, “They pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears that they should not hear.” Even among the most attentive hearers how many there are to whom the word comes with small practical result in actual obedience. Here we are in midsummer again, and yet Felix has not found his convenient season. It was about midwinter when he said he should find one, but the chosen day has not arrived. The mother of Sisera thought him long in coming, but what shall we say of this laggard season? We can see that the procrastinator halts, but it were hard to guess how long he will do so. Like the countryman who waited to cross the river when all the water had gone by, he waits till all difficulties are removed, and he is not one whit nearer that imaginary period than he was years ago. Meanwhile, the delayer’s case waxes worse and worse, and, if there were difficulties before, they are now far more numerous and severe. The man who waits until he shall find it more easy to bear the yoke of obedience, is like the woodman who found his faggot too heavy for his idle shoulder, and, placing, it upon the ground, gathered more wood and added to the bundle, then tried it, but finding it still an unpleasant load, repeated the experiment of heaping on more, in the vain hope that by-and-by it might be of a shape more suitable for his shoulder. How foolish to go on adding, sin to sin, increasing the hardness of the heart, increasing the distance between the soul and Christ, and all the while fondly dreaming of some enchanted hour in which it will be more easy to yield to the divine call, and part with sin. Is it always going to be so? There are a few weeks and then cometh harvest, will another harvest leave you where you are, and will you again have to say, “The harvest is passed, the summer is ended, and we are not saved”? Shall God’s longsuffering mercy only afford you opportunities for multiplying transgressions. Will ye always resist his Spirit? Always put him off with promises to be redeemed to-morrow? For ever and for ever shall the tenderness and mercy of God be thus despised? Our prayer is that God of his grace may give you to imitate the example of Abraham, who, when he was called, obeyed at once.

The sad point about the refusals to obey the call of the gospel is that men are losing a golden opportunity, an opportunity for being numbered amongst the choice spirits of the world, amongst those who shall be blessed among men and women. Abraham had an opportunity, and he had grace to grasp it, and at this day there is not on the beadroll of our race a nobler name than that of “the father of the faithful.” He obtained a supreme grandeur of rank among the truly great and good: far higher is he in the esteem of the right-minded than the conqueror blood-red from battle, or the emperor robed in purple. He was an imperial man, head and shoulders above his fellows. His heart was in heaven, the light of God bathed his forehead, and his soul was filled with divine influences, so that he saw the day of the Lord Jesus and was glad. He was blessed of the Lord that made heaven and earth, and was made a blessing to all nations. Some of you will never gain such honor, you will live and die ignoble, because you trifle with Supreme calls, and yet, did you believe in God, did you but live by faith, there would be before you also a course of immortal honor, which would lead you to eternal glory. Instead thereof, however, choosing the way of unbelief, and neglect, and delay, you will, I fear, one day awake to shame and to everlasting contempt, and know, to your eternal confusion, how bright a crown you have lost. I am in hopes that there are some among you who would not be losers of the crown of life; who desire, in fact, above all things, to obtain the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, and to them I shall speak, and while I spear; may the Holy Spirit cause every word to fall with power.

To help them, we shall consider, first, what was Abraham’s special experience which led to his being what he became? and, secondly, what was there peculiar in Abraham’s conduct? and then, thirdly, what was the result of that conduct?

I. WHAT WAS ABRAHAM’S SPECIAL EXPERIENCE, which led to his becoming so remarkable a saint? The secret lies in three things: he had a call, he obeyed it, and he obeyed it because he had faith.

First, then, he had a call. Now that call came we are not told; whether it reached him through a dream, or by an audible voice from heaven, or by some unmentioned prophet, we cannot tell. Most probably he heard a voice from heaven speaking audibly to him and saying, “Get thee out from thy kindred and from thy father’s house.” He, too, have had many calls, but perhaps we have said, “If I heard a voice speaking from the sky I would obey it,” but the form in which your call has come has been better than that, for Peter in his second epistle tells us that he himself heard a voice out of the excellent glory when he was with our Lord in the holy mount, but he adds, “We have also a more sure word of prophecy” as if the testimony which is written, the light that shineth in a dark place, which beams forth from the word of God, was more sure than even the voice which he heard from heaven. I will show you that it is so; for, if I should hear a voice, how am I to know that it is divine? Might it not, even if it were divine, be suggested to me for many reasons that I was mistaken, that it was most unlikely that God should speak to a man at all, and more unlikely still that he should speak to me? Might not a hundred difficulties and doubts be suggested to lead me to question whether God had spoken to me at all? But the most of you believe the Bible to be inspired by the Spirit of God, and to be the voice of God. Now, in this book you have the call—”Come ye out from among them, be ye separate, touch not the unclean thing; and I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters.” Do not say that you would accept that call if it were spoken with a voice rather than written; you know that it is not so in daily life. If a man receives a written letter from his father or a friend, does he attach less importance to it than he would have done to a spoken communication? By no means. I reckon that many of you in business are quite content to get written orders for goods, and when you get them you do not require a purchaser to ask you in person, you would just as soon that he should not; in fact, you commonly say that you like to have it in black and white. Is it not so? Well, then, you have your wish, here is the call in black and white; and I do but speak according to common sense when I say that if the Lord’s call to you be written in the Bible, and it certainly is, you do not speak truth when you say, “I would listen to it if it were spoken, but I cannot listen to it because it is written.” The call as given by the book of inspiration ought to have over your minds a masterly power, and if your hearts were right before God the word spoken in the Scriptures by the Holy Ghost would be at once obeyed.

Moreover, my undecided hearers, you have had other calls beside those from the Book. There have been calls through the living ministry, when the minister has spoken as pointedly to you as if he were a prophet, and you have known that the Lord spake by him, for he has depicted your circumstances, described your condition, and the word has come to you, and you have with astonishment owned that it found you out. The message has also been spoken to you by a mother’s tender love and by a father’s earnest advice. You have had the call too in the form of sickness and sore trouble. In the silence of the night, when you could not sleep, your conscience has demanded to be heard, the inward strivings of the Holy Ghost have been with you, and loud have been the knocks at your door. Who among us has not known the like? But, alas, the Lord has called and has been refused, he has stretched out his hands and has not been regarded. Is it not so with many of you? You have not been like Samuel who said, “Here am I, for thou didst call me,” but like the adder which shutteth her ear to the voice of the charmer. This is not to be done without incurring great guilt and involving the offender in heavy punishment.

Abraham had a call, so have we, but here was the difference, Abraham obeyed. Well doth Paul say, “They have not all obeyed the gospel”: for to many the call comes as a common call, and the common call falls on a sealed ear, but to Abraham and to those who by grace have become the children of faithful Abraham, to whom are the blessings of grace, and with whom God has entered into league and covenant, to touch it comes as a special call, a call attended with a sacred power which subdues their wills and secures their obedience. Abraham was prepared for instant obedience to any command from God; his journey was appointed, and he went. He was bidden to leave his country, and he left it; to leave his friends, and he left them all. Gathering together such substance as he had he exiled himself that he might be a sojourner with his God, and took a journey in an age when travelling was infinitely more laborious than now. He knew not the road that he had to take, nor the place to which his journey would conduct him: it was enough for him that the Lord had given him the summons. Like a good soldier, he obeyed his marching orders, asking no questions. Towards God a blind obedience is the truest wisdom, and Abraham felt so, and therefore followed the path that God marked out for him from day to day, feeling that sufficient for the day would be the guidance thereof. Thus Abraham obeyed! Alas, there are some here present, some too to whom we have preached now for years, who have not obeyed. Oh sirs, some of you do not require more knowledge, you need far more to put in practice what you know. Would you wonder if I should grow weary of telling some of you the way of salvation any longer? Do you not yourselves weary of persuading those who will not yield? So far as I have reason to fear that my task is hopeless it becomes a heavy one. Again, and again, and again have I explained the demands of the gospel, and described the blessings of it, and yet I see its demands neglected and its blessings refused. Ah sirs, there will be an end to this ere long, one way or the other, which shall it be? O that you were wise and would yield obedience to the truth! The gospel has about it a divine authority, and is not to be trilled with. Notwithstanding that grace is its main characteristic it has all the authority of a command. Do are not read of those who “stumbled at the word, being disobedient”; surely there must be a command and a duty, or else there could not be disobedience. It is awful work when through disobedience to the command of the gospel it becomes a savor of death unto death instead of life unto life, and instead of a corner-stone it becomes a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. Remember, upon whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder. Christ himself has said it, and so it must be. Stay lo of his infinite mercy give us the willing and the obedient mind that we may not pervert the gospel to our own destruction.

But I reminded you that the main point concerning Abraham was this, he obeyed the call because he believed God. Faith was the secret reason of his conflict. We read of certain persons that “the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it,” and again we read that” some when they had heard did provoke.” But in Abraham’s case there was neither misbelief nor provocation, he believed God with a childlike faith. His faith, I suppose, lay in the following items:—When the Lord spoke he believed that it was the living God who addressed him. Believing that God spoke, he judged him worthy of his earnest heed; and he felt that it was imperative union him to do as he was bidden. This settled, he desired nothing more to influence his course: he felt that the will of God must be right, and that his highest wisdom was to yield to it. Though he did not know where he was to go, he was certain that his God knew, and though he could hardly comprehend the reward promised to him, he was sure that the bounteous God never mocked his servants with deceitful gifts. He did not know the land of Canaan, but he was sure if it was a country chosen by God as a peculiar gift to his called servant, it must be no ordinary land. He left all such matters with his heavenly Friend, being fully persuaded that what he had promised he was able also to perform. What a mighty sway faith has over a man, and how greatly it strengthens him. Faith was to the patriarch his authority for starting upon his strange journey, an authority which enabled him to defy alike the worldly wisdom which advises, and the worldly folly which scoffs. Perhaps they said to him, “Why wilt thou leave thy kinsfolk, Abraham?” but he replied, “God bids me.” That was for him a sufficient warrant; he wanted no further argument. This also became to him the guide of his steps. If any said, “But, strange old man, how canst thou journey when thou knowest not the way?” He replied, “I go whither the Lord bids me. Faith found in God, chart, compass, and pole star, all in one. The word of the Lord also became the nourishment for his journey. If any said, “How wilt thou be supplied, Abraham, in those wild lands, where wilt thou find thy daily bread?” he replied, “God bids me go: it is not possible that he should desert me. He can spread a table in the wilderness, or make me lice upon the word which cometh out of his mouth, if bread should fail.” Probably these suggestions of trial may never have occurred to Abraham, but if they did, his faith swept them aside from his path as so many cobwebs. Perhaps some even dared to say, “But whither goest thou? There is no such country, it is an enthusiast’s dream,—a land which floweth with milk and honey, where wilt thou find it? O, greybeard, thou art in thy dotage, seventy years and five have bewildered thee.” But he replied, “I shall find it, for the Lord has given it to me and leads me to it.” He believed God, and took firm hold, and therefore he endured as seeing him that is invisible.

See, then, dear friends, what we must have if we are to be numbered with the seed of Abraham,—we must have faith in God and a consequent obedience to his commands. Have we obtained these gifts of the Spirit? I hope that many of us have the living faith which Folks by love, and if so we shall rejoice in the will of the Lord, let it be what it may; if we know anything to be right we shall delight to do it but as for doubtful or sinful deeds we renounce them. For us henceforth our leader is the Lord alone. But is it so with all of you? Let the personal question go round and cause great searching of heart, for I fear that in many instances precious faith is absent. Many have heard, but they have not believed; the sound of the gospel has entered into their ears, but its inner sense and sacred power have not been felt in their hearts. Remember that “without faith it is impossible to please God,” so that you are displeasing to the Lord. How long shall it be so? How long shall unbelief lodge within you and grieve the Holy Spirit? May the Lord convince you, yea, at this moment, may be lead you to decision, and enable you henceforth to live by faith. It may be now or never with you. God grant it may be now!

II. This brings me to the second part of our subject, WHAT WAS THERE PECULIAR IN ABRAHAM’S CONDUCT? for whatever there was essential in his conduct there must be the same in us, if we are to be true children of the father of the faithful. The points of peculiarity in Abraham’s case seem to me to have been five.

The first was this, that he was willing to be separated from his kindred. It is a hard task to a man of loving soul to put long leagues of distance between himself and those he loves, and to become a banished man. Yet in order to salvation, brethren, we must be separated from this untoward generation. Not that we have to take our journey into a far country, or to forsake our kindred—perhaps it would be an easier task to walk with God if we could do so—but our calling is to be separate from sinners, and yet to live among them: to be a stranger and a pilgrim in their cities and homes. We must be separate in character from those with whom we may be called to grind at the same mill, or sleep in the same bed; and this I warrant you is by no means an easier task than that which fell to the patriarch’s lot. If believers could form a secluded settlement where no tempters could intrude, they would perhaps find the separated life far more easy, though I am not very sure about it, for all experiments in that direction have golden down. There is, however, for us no “garden walled around,” no “island of saints,” no Utopia; we sojourn among those whose ungodly lives cause us frequent grief, and the Lord Jesus meant it to be so, for be said, “Behold I send you forth as sheep among wolves.” Come, now, my hearer, are you willing to be one of the separated? I mean this—Dare you begin to think for yourself? You have let your grandmother’s religion come to you with the old arm chair and the antique china, as heirlooms of the family, and you go to a certain place of worship because your family have always attended there. You have a sort of hereditary religion in the same way as you have a display of family plate; pretty battered it is, no doubt, and rather light in weight by this time, but still you cling to it. Now, young man, dare you think for yourself? Or do you put out your thinking to be done for you, like your washing? I believe it to be one of the essentials of a Christian man, that he should have the courage to use his own mental faculties, and search the Bible for himself; for God has not committed our religious life to the guidance of the brain in our neighbour’s head, but he has bestowed on each of us a conscience, and an understanding which he expects us to use. Do your own thinking, my friend, on such a business as this. Now, if the grace of God helps you rightly to think for yourself, you will judge very differently from your ungodly friends; your views and theirs will differ, your motives will differ, the objects of your pursuit will differ. There are some things which are quite customary with them which you will not endure. You will soon become a speckled bird among them. The Jews in all time have been very different from all other nations, and although other races have become permanently united, the Jewish people have always been a family by themselves. Though now residing in the midst of all nations, it is still true “the people shall dwell alone, they shall not be reckoned among the nations.” In all the cities of Europe there are reattains of the “Jews’ quarter,” and we in London had our “Old Jewry,” the Jews being evermore a peculiar people. We Christians are to be equally distinct, not in meats, and drinks, and garments, and holy days, but as to spirituality of mind and holiness of life. We are to be strangers and foreigners in the land wherein we sojourn. For we are not resident traders in this Vanity Fair, we pass through it because it lies in our way home, but we are ill at ease in it. In no tent of all the fair can we rest. O traders in this hubbub of trifles, we have small esteem for your great bargains and tempting cheats; we are not buyers in the Roman row nor in the French row, we would give all that we have to leave your polluted streets, and be no more annoyed by Beelzebub, the lord of the fair. Our journey is towards the celestial city, and when the sons of earth cry to us, “What do ye buy?” we answer, “We buy the truth.” O young man, can you take up in the warehouse the position of being a Christian though there is no other believer in the louse? Come, good woman, dare you serve the Lord, though husband and children ridicule you? Man of business, dare you do the right thing in business, and play the Christian, though around you the various methods of trading render it hard for you to be unflinchingly honest? This singularity is demanded of every believer in Jesus. You cannot be blessed with Abraham unless like him you come out, and stand forth as true men.

“Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone;
Dare to have a purpose true,
Dare to make it known.”
May God grant to us grace to be Daniels, even if the lions’ den should threaten us.

A second peculiarity of Abraham’s conduct is seen in the fact that he was ready for all the losses and risks that might be involved in obedience to the call of God. He was to leave his native country, as we have already said: to some of us that would be a hard task, and I doubt not it was such to him. The smoke out of my own chimney is better than the fire on another man’s hearth. There is no place like home wherever we may wander. The home feeling was probably as shone in Abraham as in us, but he was never to have a home on earth any more, except that he was to realize what Moses afterwards sung, “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.” For him there was no rooftree and paternal estate, he owned no portion of the land in which he sojourned, and his sole alcove was a frail tent, which he removed from day to day as his flocks required fresh pasturage. He could say to his God, “I am a stranger and a sojourner with thee.” He had to leave those whom he loved, for, though they accompanied him part of the way, they would not go further; if he followed the Lord fully he must go alone. The patriarch knew nothing of half measures, he went through with his obedience, and left all his kindred to go to Canaan, to which he had been summoned. Those who wished to stop at Halam might stop there. Canaan was his destination, and he could not stop short of it. No doubt he had many risks to encounter on his journey and when be entered the country. The Canaanite was still in the land, and the Canaanites were a fierce and cruel set of heathen, who would have utterly destroyed the wanderer if the Lord had not put a spell upon them, and said, “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.” It was a country swarming with little tribes, who were at war continually. Abraham himself was, for Lot’s sake, to gird on his sword, and go forth to fight, peace-lover as he was. Of all discomforts and dangers, loss of property, and parting with friends, Abraham made small account. God commanded, and Abraham went. Now, brethren, can you and I do the same? Oh, you who desire to be saved, I say, can you do this? Have you counted the cost and determined to pay it? You must not expect that you will wear silver slippers and walk on green rolled turf all the vary to heaven: the road was rough which your Lord traversed, and if you wall: with him yours will be rough too. Can ye bear for Jesus’ sake all earthly loss? Can ye bear the scoff, the cold shoulder, the cutting jest, the innuendo, the sarcasm, the sneer? Could you go further, and bear loss of property and suffering in purse? Do not say that it may not occur, for many believers lose all by having to leave the ill pursuits by which they once earned their bread. You must in your intention give all up for Jesus, and in act you must give up all to Jesus. If he be yours, you must henceforth have all things in common with him; you must be joint heirs together, his yours and yours his; you may be well content to make joint stock, when you have so little and he has so much. Oh, can you stand to it, and give up all for him? Well, if you cannot, do not pretend to do it. Yet, except ye take up your cross, ye cannot be his disciples. Except you can give up everything for him, do not pretend to follow him. Listen to this. If you think heaven worth nothing, and Christ worth nothing, if you consider worldly gain to be everything, and comfort everything, and honor everything, if you could not die a martyr’s death for Christ, your love to him is not worth much, and the Abraham spirit is not in you. May God enable us to take our places in the battle in the front of the foe, where the fight is most furious. May grace make us sing,—

“Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave and follow thee,
Destitute, despised, forsaken,
Thou, from hence, my all shalt be.”

If that be said in truth, it is well, my brother; you bid fair to be in all things a partaker with faithful Abraham: you also shall find much blessing in the separated life.

Thirdly, one great peculiarity in Abraham was that he waived the present for the future. He went out to go into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance. He left the inheritance he then had to receive one which was yet to come. This is not the way of the world. The proverb saith, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” and especially in such a bush as Abraham saw before him. It did not seem very likely he would ever obtain that land; but still he let his bird in the hand go and took to the bird in the bush, being fully persuaded that he should have it in God’s good time. Mr. Bunyan sets this forth in his picture of two children, Passion and Patience. Passion would have all his good things now, and he sat among his toys and joys, and laughed and rejoiced. Patience had to bear to see his brother Passion full of mirth, and to hear his scoffing; but then, as Master Bunyan beautifully says, Patience came in last for his portion, and it lasted for ever, for there is nothing after the last. So, then, if we are to have our heaven last it will last, and no cloud shall mar it, no calamity bring it to an end. He is the wise man who lets go the shadow to grasp the substance, even though he should have to wait twenty, thirty, or forty years for it. He is blessed who leaves earth’s wind and bubble and feeds on more substantial meat. God grant us grace to live more for the future than we have been accustomed to do. Oh ye ungodly ones, you do not care about the future, for you have never realised death and judgment. You are afraid to look over the edge of this narrow life. As to death, nothing frightens you so much. As for hell, if you are warned to escape from it, instead of thanking the preacher for being honest enough to warn you of it, you straightway call him a “hell-fire” preacher, or give him some other ugly name. Alas, you little know how pained he is to speak to you on so terrible a subject! You little dream how true a lover of your soul he is, or he would not warn you of the wrath to come. Do you want to have flatterers about you? Such are to be had in plenty if you desire them. As for heaven, you seem to have no regard for it; at any rate you are not making your title to it sure or clear by caring about divine things. If you would have the birthright you must let the present mess of pottage go. The eternal future must come far before the fleeting trifles of to-day; you must let the things which are seen sink, and bid the “things not seen as yet” rise in all their matchless grandeur and reality before your eyes. You must give up chasing butterflies and shadows, and pursue things eternal. My soul immortal pines only for immortal joys. I leave my present lot to be appointed of the Lord as he wills, so long as he will shed his love abroad in my heart. We must be prepared for eternity, and for that purpose we should concentrate our faculties upon divine truth and personal religion, that we may be ready to meet our God. This, then, was the third excellence in Abraham’s walk, that he waived present comfort for the sake of the future blessing.

Fourthly, and this is the main point, Abraham committed himself to God by faith. From that day forward Abraham had nothing but his God for a portion, nothing but his God for a protector. No squadron of soldiers accompanied the good man’s march, his safeguard lay in him who had said, “Fear not, Abraham, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward.” He had to trust the Lord for his daily bread and daily guidance, for he was to march on and not know half a mile before him. He was ignorant when to stop and when to journey on, except as the Lord God guided him hour by hour. I must not say that Abraham became a poor pensioner upon the daily provision of God, but I will use a better term and describe him as “a gentleman commoner upon the royal bounty of his heavenly King.” His lot was to have nothing but to be heir of heaven and earth. Can you thus walk by faith? Has the grace of God brought you who have been hesitating to resolve henceforth to believe God and trust him? If you do you are saved, for faith is the deciding matter. To realize the existence of God and to trust in him, especially to trust in his mercy, through Jesus Christ, is the essential matter. As for the life and walk of faith, they are the most singular things in the world. I seem myself to have been climbing a series of mysterious staircases, light as air and yet as solid as granite. I cannot see a single step before me, and often there seems to the eye to be nothing whatsoever to form a foothold for the next step. I look down and wonder how I came where I am, but still I climb on, and he who has brought me so far supplies me with confidence for that which lies before me. High into things invisible the ethereal ladder has borne me, and onward and forward to glory its rounds will yet conduct me. What I have seen has often failed me, but what I have not seen, and yet have believed, has always held me stably. Have not you found it so, all ye children of God? Let us pray that the Lord may lead others to tread the same mystic ascent by beginning to-day the life of faith.

The last speciality in Abraham’s procedure was, what he did was done at once. There were no “ifs” and “ands” debatings, considerings, and delays. He needed no forcing and driving—

“God drew him and he followed on,
Charmed to confess the voice divine.”

At once, I say, he went. Promptness is one of the brightest excellencies in faith’s actings. Delay spoils all. Some one asked Alexander to what he owed his conquests, and he said, “I have conquered because I never delayed.” While the enemy were preparing he had begun the battle, and they were routed before they knew where they were. After that fashion faith overcomes temptation. She rims in the way of obedience, or rather she mounts on the wings of eagles, and so speeds on her way. With regard to the things of God our first thoughts are best: considerations of difficulty entangle us. Whenever you feel a prompting to do a good thing do not ask anybody whether you should do it or not; no one ever repents of doing good. Ask your friends afterwards rather than beforehand, for it is ill consulting with flesh and blood when duty is plain. If the Lord has given you substance, and you are prompted to be generous to the cause of God, do not count every sixpence over, and calculate what others would give; count it after you have given it, if it must be counted at all, but it would be better still not to let your left hand know what your right hand doeth. It cannot be wrong to do the right thing at once; nay, in matters of duty, every moment of delay is a sin. Thus we have Abraham before us; may the Holy Spirit make us like him.

Now, this morning, who will listen to the call of God? Who, like Abraham, will quit the world, with all its folly, and resolve henceforth to be upon the Lord’s side? O, Spirit of the living God, constrain many a hidden Abraham to come forth!

III. We have to close with two or three words about what was THE RESULT OF ABRAHAM’S ACTION. The question of many will be, did it pay? That is the inquiry of most people, and within proper bounds it is not a wrong question. Did it answer Abraham’s purpose? Our reply is, it did so gloriously. True, it brought him into a world of trouble, and no wonder: such a noble course as his was not likely to be an easy one. What grand life ever was easy? Who wants to be a child and do easy things? Yet we read in Abraham’s life, after a whole host of troubles, “And Abraham was old and well stricken in years, and the Lord had blessed Abrabam in all things.” That is a splendid conclusion—God had blessed Abraham in all things. Whatever happened, he had always been under the divine smile, and all things had worked for his good. He was parted from his friends, but then he had the sweet society of his God, and was treated as the friend of the Most High, and allowed to intercede for others, and clothed with great power on their behalf. I almost envy Abraham. I should do so altogether if I did not know that all the saints are permitted to enjoy the same privileges. What a glorious degree Abraham took when he was called “the friend of God”; was not his loss of earthly friendships abundantly made up to him? What honor, also, the patriarch had among his contemporaries; he was a great man, and held in high esteem. How splendidly he bore himself; no king ever behaved more royally. That pettifogging king of Sodom wanted to make a bargain with him, but the grand old man replied, “I will not take from a thread even to a shoe-latchet, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abraham rich.” Those sons of Heth also were willing to make him a present of a piece of land around the cave of Machpelah; but he did not want a present from Canaanites, and so he said, “No, I will pay you every penny. I will weigh out the price to you, whatever you may demand.” In noble independence no man could excel the father of the faithful; his contemporaries look small before him, and no man seems to be his equal, save Melchizedek. His image passes across the page of history rather like that of a spirit from the supernal realms than that of a mere man; he is so thorough, so childlike, and therefore so heroic. He lived in God, and on God, and with God. Such a sublime life recompensed a thousandfold all the sacrifice he was led to make.

Was not his life a happy one? One might wisely say, “Let my life be like that of Abraham.” As to temporal things the Lord enriched him, and in spirituals he was richer still. He was wealthier in heart than in substance, though great ever, in that respect. And now Abraham is the father of the faithful, patriarch of the whole family of believers, and to him alone of all mortal men God said, “In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” This very day, through his matchless seed, to whom be glory for ever and ever, even Jesus Christ of the seed of Abraham, all tribes of men are blessed. His life was both for time and for eternity, a great success; both for temporals and for spirituals the path of faith was the best that he could leave followed.

And now may we all be led to imitate his example. If we never have done so, may we this morning be led to give God his due by trusting him, to give the blood of Christ its due by relying upon it, to give the Spirit of God his due by yielding ourselves to him. Will you do so, or not? I pause for your reply. The call is given again, will you obey it or not? Nobody here will actually declare that he will not, but many will reply that they hope they shall. Alas! my sermon is a failure to those who so speak: if that be your answer, I am foiled again. When Napoleon was attacking the Egyptians he had powerful artillery, but he could not reach the enemy, for they were ensconced in a mud fort, and it made Napoleon very angry, because, if they had been behind granite walls, he could hate battered them down, but their earthworks could not be blown to pieces, every ball stuck in the mud, and made the wall stronger. Your hopes and delays are just such a mud wall. I had a good deal sooner people would say, “There, now, we do not believe in God nor in his Christ,” and speak out straightforwardly, than go on for ever behind this mud wall of “We will by-and-by,” and “We hope it will be so one day.” The fact is, you do not mean to obey the Lord at all. You are deceiving yourselves if you think so. If God be God to-morrow he is God to-day; if Christ be worth having next week he is worth having to-day. If there is anything in religion at all, it demands a present surrender to its claims and a present obedience to its laws; but if you judge it to be a lie, say so, and we shall know where you are. If Baal be God, serve him; but if God be God, I charge you by Jesus Christ, fly to him as he is revealed, and come forth from the sin of the world and be separate, and walk by faith in God. To this end may the Spirit of God enable you. Amen and amen.

“O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?”—Matthew 14:31.

It seems as if doubt were doomed to be the perpetual companion of faith. As dust attends the chariot wheels so do doubts naturally becloud faith. Some men of little faith are perpetually enshrouded with fears; their faith seems only strong enough to enable them to doubt. If they had no faith at all, then they would not doubt, but having that little, and but so little, they are perpetually involved in distressing surmises, suspicions, and fears. Others, who have attained to great strength and stability of faith, are nevertheless, at times, subjects of doubt. He who has a colossal faith will sometimes find that the clouds of fear float over the brow of his confidence. It is not possible, I suppose, so long as man is in this world, that he should be perfect in anything; and surely it seems to be quite impossible that he should be perfect in faith. Sometimes, indeed, the Lord purposely leaves his children, withdraws the divine inflowings of his grace, and permits them to begin to sink, in order that they may understand that faith is not their own work, but is at first the gift of God, and must always be maintained and kept alive in the heart by the fresh influence of the Holy Spirit. I take it that Peter was a man of great faith. When others doubted, Peter believed. He boldly avowed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, for which faith he received the Master’s commendation, “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” He was of faith so strong, that at Christ’s command he could tread the billow and find it like glass beneath his feet, yet even he was permitted in this thing to fall. Faith forsook him, he looked at the winds and the waves, and began to sink, and the Lord said to him, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” As much as to say, “O Peter, thy great faith is my gift, and the greatness of it is my work. Think not that thou art the author of thine own faith; I will leave thee, and this great faith of thine shall speedily disappear, and like another who hath no faith, thou shalt believe the winds, and regard the waves, but shalt distrust thy Master’s power, and therefore shalt thou sink.”

I think I shall be quite safe in concluding this morning, that there are some here who are full of doubting and fearing. Sure I am that all true Christians have their times of anxious questioning. The heart that hath never doubted has not yet learned to believe. As the farmers say, “The land that will not grow a thistle, will not grow wheat;” and the heart that cannot produce a doubt has not yet understood the meaning of believing. He that never doubted of his state—he may, perhaps he may, too late. Yes, there may be timid ones here, those who are always of little faith, and there may be also great hearts, those who are valiant for truth, who are now enduring seasons of despondency and hours of darkness of heart.

Now in endeavoring to comfort you this morning, I would remark that the text goes upon a very wise principle. If a man believes in anything it is always proper to put to him the question, “Why do you believe? What evidence have you that what you believe is certainly correct?” We believe on evidence. Now the most foolish part of many men’s doubts, is, that they do not doubt on evidence. If you should put to them the question, “Why do you doubt?”—they would not be able fairly to answer. Yet mark, if men’s doubts be painful, the wisest way to remove them is by simply seeing whether they have a firm basis. “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” If you believe a thing you want evidence, and before you doubt a thing you ought to have evidence too. To believe without evidence is to be credulous, and to doubt without evidence is to be foolish. We should have ground for our doubts as well as a basis for our faith. The text, therefore, goes on a most excellent principle, and it deals with all doubting minds by asking them this question, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?”

I shall endeavor to exhort you on the same plan this morning. I shall divide only sermon into two parts. First, I shall address myself to those of you who are in great trouble with regard to temporal circumstances, you are God’s people, but you are sorely tried, and you have begun to doubt. I shall then deal with you upon spiritual matters—there are some here who are God’s true, quickened, and living people, but they are doubting—to them also I shall put the same question, “O thou of little faith, wherefore dost thou doubt?”

I. First, then, in TEMPORAL CIRCUMSTANCES, God has not made for his people a smooth path to heaven. Before they are crowned they must fight; before they can enter the celestial city they must fulfill a weary pilgrimage. Religion helps us in trouble, but it does not suffer us to escape from it. It is through much tribulation that we inherit the kingdom. Now the Christian when he is full of faith passes through affliction with a song in his mouth; he would enter the fiery furnace itself, fearless of the devouring flame, or with Jonah he would descend into the great deeps, unalarmed at the hungry sea. As long as faith maintains its hold, fear is a stranger; but at times, during sundry great and sore troubles, the Christian begins to fear that surely at last he shall be overcome, and shall be left to himself to die and perish in despair.

Now, what is the reason why you doubt? I must come to the plan of the text and put the great question, “O thou of little faith, wherefore dost thou doubt?” Here it will be proper for us to enquire: Why did Simon Peter doubt? He doubted for two reasons. First, because he looked too much to second causes and secondly, because be looked too little at the first cause. The answer will suit you also, my trembling brother. This is the reason why you doubt, because you are looking too much to the things that are seen, and too little to your unseen Friend who is behind your troubles and who shall come forth for your deliverance. See poor Peter in the ship—his Master bids him come; in a moment he casts himself into the sea, and to his own surprise he finds himself walking the billows. He looks down, and actually it is the fact; his foot is upon a crested wave, and yet he stands erect; he treads again, and yet his footing is secure. “Oh!” thinks Peter, “this is marvellous.” He begins to wonder within his spirit what manner of man he must be who has enabled him thus to tread the treacherous deep; but just then, there comes howling across the sea a terrible blast of wind; it whistles in the ear of Peter, and he says within himself, “Ah! here comes an enormous billow driven forward by the blast now, surely, I must, I shall be overwhelmed.” No sooner does the thought enter his heart than down he goes; and the waves begin to enclose him. So long as he shut his eye to the billow, and to the blast, and kept it only open to theLord who stood there before him, he did not sink; but the moment he shut his eye on Christ, and looked at the stormy wind and treacherous deep, down he went. He might have traversed the leagues of the Atlantic, he might have crossed the broad Pacific, if he could but have kept his eye on Christ, and ne’er a billow would have yielded to his tread, but he might have been drowned in a very brook if he began to look at second causes, and to forget the Great Head and Master of the Universe who had bidden him walk the sea. I say, the very reason of Peter’s doubt was, that he looked at second causes and not at the first cause. Now, that is the reason why you doubt. Let me just probe you now for a while. You are in despondency about temporal affairs: what is the reason why you are in trouble? “Because,” say you, “I never was in such a condition before in my life. Wave upon wave of trouble comes upon me. I have lost one friend and then another. It seems as if business had altogether run away from me. Once I had a flood-tide, and now it is an ebb, and my poor ship grates upon the gravel, and I find she has not water enough to float her—what will become of me? And, oh! sir, my enemies have conspired against me in every way to cut me up and destroy me; opposition upon opposition threatens me. My shop must be closed; bankruptcy stares me in the face, and I know not what is to become of me.” Or else your troubles take another shape, and you feel that you are called to some eminently arduous service for your Lord, and your strength is utterly insignificant compared with the labor before you. If you had great faith it would be as much as you could do to accomplish it; but with your poor little faith you are completely beaten. You cannot see how you can accomplish the matter at all. Now, what is all this but simply looking at second causes? You are looking at your trouble, not at the God who sent your trouble; you are looking at yourselves, not at the God who dwells within you, and who has promised to sustain you. O soul! it were enough to make the mightiest heart doubt, if it should look only at things that are seen. He that is nearest to the kingdom of heaven would have cause to droop and die if he had nothing to look at but that which eye can see and ear can ear. What wonder then if thou art disconsolate, when thou hast begun to look at the things which always must be enemies to faith?

But I would remind you that you have forgotten to look to Christ since you have been in this trouble. Let me ask you, have you not thought less of Christ than you ever did? I will not suppose that you have neglected prayer, or have left your Bible unread; but still, have you had any of those sweet thoughts of Christ which once you had? Have you been able to take all your troubles to him and say—”Lord, thou knowest all things; I trust all in thy hands?” Let me ask you, have you considered that Christ is omnipotent, and therefore able to deliver you; that he is faithful, and must deliver you, because he has promised to do so? Have you not kept your eye on his rod, and not on his hand? Have you not looked rather to the crook that smote you, than to the heart that moved that crook? Oh, recollect, that you can never find joy and peace while you are looking at the things that are seen, the second causes of your trouble; your only hope, your only refuge and joy must be to look to him who dwells within the veil. Peter sunk when he looked to outward providences, so must you. He would never have ceased to walk the wave, never would he have begun to sink, if he had looked alone to Christ, nor will you if you will look alone to him.

And here let me now begin to argue with such of you as are the people of God, who are in sore trouble lest Christ should leave you to sink. Let me forbid your fears by a few words of consolation. You are now in Peter’s condition; you are like Peter; you are Christ’s servant. Christ is a good master. You have never heard that he suffered one of his servants to be drowned when going on his errands. Will he not take care of his own? Shall it be said at last that one of Christ’s disciples perished while he was in obedience to Christ. I say he were a bad master if he should send you on an errand that would involve your destruction. Peter, when he was in the water, was where his master had called him to be, and vou in your trouble now, are not only Christ’s servant, but you are where Christ has chosen to put you. Your afflictions, remember, come neither from the east nor from the west, neither doth your trouble grow out of the ground. All your suffering is sent upon you by your God. The medicine which you now drink is compounded in heaven. Every grain of this bitterness which now fills your mouth was measured by the heavenly physician. There is not an ounce more trouble in your cup, than God chose to put there. Your burden was weighed by God before you were called to bear it. The Lord who gave you the mercy has taken it away; the same God who has blessed you with joy is he that hath now ploughed you with grief. You are where God put you. Ask yourself this question then:—Can it be possible that Christ would put his own servant into a perilous condition and then leave him there? I have heard of fiends, in fables, tempting men into the sea to drown them; but is Christ a syren? Will he entice his people on to the rocks? Will he tempt them into a place where he shall destroy them? God forbid. If Christ calls thee into the fire, he will bring thee out of it; and if he bids thee walk the sea, he will enable thee to tread it in safety. Doubt not, soul; if thou hadst come there of thyself, then thou mightest fear, but since Christ put thee there, he will bring thee out again. Let this be the pillar of thy confidence—thou art his servant, he wilt not leave thee; thou art where he put thee, he cannot suffer thee to perish. Look away, then, from the trouble that surrounds thee, to thy Master, and to his hand that hath planned all these things.

Remember too, who it is that hath thee where thou art. It is no harsh tyrant who has led thee into trouble. It is no austere unloving heart who hath bidden thee pass through this difficulty to gratify a capricious whim. Ah, no, he who troubles thee is Christ. Remember his bleeding hand; and canst thou think that the hand which dropped with gore can ever hang down when it should be stretched for thy deliverance? Think of the eye that wept over thee on the cross; and can the eye that wept for thee be blind when thou art in grief? Think of the heart that was opened for thee; and shall the heart that did bleed its life away to rescue thee from death, be hard and stolid when thou art overwhelmed in sorrow? It is Christ, that stands on yonder billow in the midst of the tempest with thee. He is suffering as well as thou art. Peter is not the only one walking on the sea; his master is there with him too. And so is Jesus with thee to-day, with thee in thy troubles, suffering with thee as he suffered for thee. Shall he leave thee, he that bought thee, he who is married to thee, he that hath led thee thus far, hath succoured thee hitherto he who loves thee better than he loves himself, shall he forsake thee? O turn thine eyes from the rough billow, listen no longer to the howling tempest, turn thine eyes to him thy loving Lord, thy faithful friend, and fix thy trust on him, who even now in the midst of the tempest, cries, “It is I, be not afraid.”

One other reflection will I offer to such of you as are now in sore trouble on account of temporal matters, and it is this—Christ has helped you hitherto. Should not this console you? Ah, Peter, why couldest thou fear that thou shouldest sink? It was miracle enough that thou didst not sink at first. What power is it that hath held thee up till now? Certainly not thine own. Thou hadst fallen at once to the bottom of the sea, O man, if God had not been thy helper; if Jesus had not made thee buoyant, Peter, thou wouldest soon have been a floating carcase. He who helped thee then to walk so long as thou couldest walk, surely he is able to help thee all the way until he shall grasp thy hand in Paradise to glorify thee with himself. Let any Christian look back to his past life, and he will be astonished that he is what he is and where he is. The whole Christian life is a series of miracles, wonders linked into wonders, in one perpetual chain. Marvel, believer, that thou hast been upheld till now; and cannot he that hath kept thee to this day preserve thee to the end? What is yon roaring wave that threatens to overwhelm thee—what is it? why thou hast endured greater waves than these in the past. What is yon howling blast? Why, he has saved thee when the wind was howling worse than that. He that helped thee in six troubles will not forsake thee in this. He who hath delivered thee out of the paw of the lion and out of the paw of the bear, he will not, he cannot forsake thee now.

In all this, I have labored to turn your eyes from what you are seeing to that which you cannot see, but in which you must believe. Oh! if I might but be successful, though feeble my words, yet mighty should be the consolation which should flow therefrom.

A minister of Christ, who was always in the habit of visiting those whom he knew to be eminent for piety, in order that he might learn from them, called upon an aged Christian who had been distinguished for his holiness. To his great surprise, however, when he sat down by his bedside, the erred man said, “Ah! I have lost my way. I did think at one time that I was a child of God, now I find that I have been a stumbling-block to others; for these forty years I have deceived the church and deceived myself, and now I discover that I am a lost soul.” The minister very wisely said to him, “Ah! then I suppose you like the song of the drunkard and you are very fond of the amusements of the world and delight in profanity and sin?” “Ah! no,” said he, “I cannot bear them, I could not endure to sin against God.” “O then,” said the minister, “then it is not at all likely that God will lock you up in hell with men that you cannot bear here. If now you hate sin, depend on it God will not shut you up for ever with sinners. But, my brother,” said the minister “tell me what has brought you into such a distressed state of mind?” “O sir, “said he, “it was looking away from the God of providence, to myself I had managed to save about one hundred pounds, and I have been lying here ill now this last six months, and I was thinking that my one hundred pounds would soon be spent, and then what should I do. I think I shall have to go to the workhouse, I have no friend to take care of me, and I have been thinking about that one hundred pounds of mine. I knew it would soon be gone, and then, then, how could the Lord provide for me. I never had either doubt or fear till I began to think about temporal matters. The time was when I could leave all that with God. If I had not had one hundred pounds, I should have felt quite sure he would provide for me; but I begin to think now that I cannot provide for myself. The moment I think of that, my heart is darkened.” The minister then led him away from all trust in an arm of flesh, and told him his dependence for bread and water was not on his one hundred pounds, but on the God who is the possessor of heaven and earth—that as for his bread being given him and his water being sure God would take care of that, for in so doing he would only be fulfilling his promise. The poor man was enabled in the matter of providence to cast himself entirely upon God, and then his doubts and fears subsided, and once more he began to walk the sea of trouble, and did not sink. O believer, if thou takest thy business into thine own hands, thou wilt soon be in trouble. The old Puritan said, “He that carves for himself will soon cut his fingers,” and I believe it. There never was a man who began to take his own matters out of God’s hand that was not glad enough to take them back again. He that runs before the cloud runs a fool’s errand. If we leave all our matters, temporal as well as spiritual, in the hand of God, we shall lack no good thing, and what is better still, we shall have no care, no trouble, no thought; we shall cast all our burden upon him for he careth for us. There is no need for two to care, for God to care and the creature too. If the Creator cares for us, then the creature may sing all day long with joy and gladness:—

“Mortals cease from toil and sorrow,
God provideth for the morrow.”

II. But now, in the second part of the discourse, I have to speak of SPIRITIUAL THINGS. To the Christian, these are the causes of more trouble than all his temporal trials. In the matters of the soul and of eternity many doubts will arise. I shall, however, divide them into two sorts—doubts of our present acceptance, and doubts of our final perseverance.

Many there are of God’s people who are much vexed and troubled with doubts about their present acceptance. “Oh,” say they “there was a time when I knew I was a child of God; I was sure that I was Christ’s, my heart would fly up to heaven at a word; I looked to Christ hanging on the cross, I fixed all my trust on him, and a sweet, calm, and blessed repose filled my spirit.

“What peaceful hours I then enjoyed;
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void,
The world can never fill.’

And now,” saith this doubting one, “now I am afraid I never knew the Lord; I think that I have deceived myself, and that I have been a hypocrite. Oh that I could but know that I am Christ’s, I would give all I had in the world, if he would but let me know that he is my beloved, and that I am his.” Now, soul, I will deal with thee as I have been just now treating of Peter. Thy doubts arise from looking to second causes, and not to Christ. Let us see if this is not the truth. Why do you doubt? Your answer is, “I doubt, because I feel my sin so much. Oh, what sins have I committed! When first I came to Christ I thought I was the chief of sinners; but now I know I am. Day after day I have added to my guilt; and since my pretended conversion,” says this doubting one, “I have been a bigger sinner than ever I was before. I have sinned against light and against knowledge, against grace, and mercy, and favor. O never was there such a sinner under God’s heaven out of hell as I am.” But, soul, is not this looking to second causes? It is true, thou art the chief of sinners; take that for granted, let us not dispute it. Thy sins are as evil as thou sayest they are, and a great deal more so. Depend on it, thou art worse than thou thinkest thyself to be. Thou thinkest thou art bad enough, but thou art not so bad in thine own estimation as thou really art. Thy sins seem to thee to be like roaring billows, but in God’s sight they are like towering mountains without summit. Thou seemest to thyself to be black—black as the tents of Kedar; in God’s eyes thou art blacker still. Set that down, to begin with, that the waves are big, and that the winds are howling, I will not dispute that. I ask thee, what hast thou to do with that? Does not the Word of God command thee to look to Christ. Great as thy sins are, Christ is greater than they all. They are black; but his blood can wash thee whiter than snow. I know thy sins deserve damnation; but Christ’s merits deserve salvation. It is true, the pit of hell is thy lawful portion, but heaven itself is thy gracious portion. What! is Christ less powerful than thy sin? That cannot be! To suppose that were that to make the creature mightier than the Creator. What! is thy guilt more prevalent with God than Christ’s righteousness? Canst thou think so little of Christ as to imagine that thy sins can overwhelm and conquer him? O man, thy sins are like mountains; but Christ’s love is like Noah’s flood; it prevaileth twenty cubits, and the tops of the mountains are covered. It Is looking at sin and not looking to the Saviour that has made thee doubt. Thou art looking to the second cause, and not to him who is greater than all.

“Nay, but,” you reply, “it is not my sin, sir, that grieves me; it is this: I feel so hardened, I do not feel my sin as I ought. Oh if I could but weep as some weep! If I could but pray as some pray! Then I think I could be saved. If I could feel some of the terrors that good men have felt, then I think I could believe. But I feel none of these things. My heart seems like a rock of ice, hard as granite, and as cold as an iceberg. It will not melt. You may preach, but it is not affected; I may pray, but my heart seems dumb, I may read even the story of Christ’s death, and yet my soul is not moved by it. Oh surely I cannot be saved!” Ah this is looking to second causes, again! Hast thou forgotten that Word which saith, “God is greater than our hearts?” Hast thou forgotten that? O child of God! shame on thee that thou dost look for comfort where comfort never can be found. Look to thyself for peace! Why, there ne’er can be any in this land of war. Look to thine own heart for joy! There can be none there, in this barren wilderness of sin. Turn, turn thine eye to Christ: he can cleanse thine heart, he can create life, and light, and truth in the inward parts; he can wash thee till thou shalt be whiter than snow, and cleanse thy soul and quicken it, and make it live, and feel, and move, so that it shall hear his simplest words, and obey his whispered mandate. O look not now at the second cause; look thou at the great first cause; otherwise I shall put to thee again the question, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubts”

“Still,” says another, “I could believe, notwithstanding my sin and my hardness of heart; but, do you know, that of late I have lost communion with Christ to such an extent that I cannot help thinking that I must be a cast-away. Oh! sir, there were times when Christ used to visit me, and bring me such sweet love-tokens. I was like the little ewe lamb in the parable; I did drink out of his cup, and feed from his table, and lie in his bosom; often did he take me to his banqueting-house, his banner over me was love. What feastings I then had! I would bask in the sunlight of his countenance. It was summer with my soul. But now it is winter, and the sun is gone, and the banqueting-house is closed. No fruits are on the table; no wines are in the bottles of the promise; I come to the sanctuary, but I find no comfort; I turn to the Bible, but I find no solace; I fall on my knees, but even the stream of prayer seems to be a dry brook. Ah! soul, but art thou not still looking to second causes? These are the most precious of all secondary things, but yet thou must not look to them, but to Christ. Remember, it is not thy communing that saves thee, but Christ’s dying; it is not Christ’s comfortable visit to thy soul, that ensures thy salvation; it is Christ’s own visit to the house of mourning, and to the garden of Gethsemane. I would have thee keep thy comforts as long as thou canst; but when they die, believe on thy God still. Jonah had a gourd once, and when that gourd died he began to mourn. Well might some one have said to him, “Jonah! thou hast lost thy gourd, but thou hast not lost thy God.” And so might we say to you: you have not lost his love; you have lost the light of his countenance, but you have not lost the love of his heart; you have lost his sweet and gracious communion, but he is the same still, and he would have thee believe his faithfulness and trust him in the dark and rely upon him in the stormy wind and tempest. Look to none of these outward things, but look alone to Christ—Christ bleeding, Christ dying Christ dead, Christ buried, Christ risen, Christ ascended, Christ interceding. This is the thing thou art to look to—Christ, and him only. And looking there, thou shalt be comforted. But look to aught else, and thou shalt begin to sink; like Peter, the waves shall fail thee, and thou shalt have to cry, “Lord, save me, or I perish.”

But, again, to conclude: others of God’s people are afraid that they shall never be able to persevere and hold out to the end. “Oh!” says one, “I know I shall yet fall away and perish, for look!—look what an evil heart of unbelief I have; I cannot live one day without sin; my heart is so treacherous, it is like a bomb-shell; let but a spark of temptation fall upon it and it will blow up to my eternal destruction. With such a tinder-box heart as I have, how can I hope to escape, while I walk in the midst of a shower of sparks.” “Oh!” saith one, “I feel my nature to be so utterly vile and depraved that I cannot hope to persevere. If I hold on a week or a month it will be a great work; but to hold on all my life until I die—oh! this is impossible.” Looking to second causes again, are you not? Will you please to remember that if you look to creature strength it is utterly impossible that you should persevere in grace, even for ten minutes, much less for ten years! If your perseverance depends upon yourself you are a lost man. You may write that down for a certainty. If you have one jot or one tittle to do with your own perseverance in divine grace you will never see God’s face at last; your grace will die out; your life will be extinguished, and you must perish, if your salvation depends upon yourself. But remember, you have already been kept these months and these years: what has done that? Why, divine grace; and the divine grace that has held you on for one year can hold you on for a century, nay, for an eternity, if it were necessary. He that has begun can carry on and must carry on too, otherwise he were false to his promise and would deny himself. “Ah! but,” you say, “sir, I cannot tell with what temptations I am surrounded; I am in a workshop, where everybody laughs at me; I am called nicknames because I follow the cause of Christ. I have been able hitherto to put up with their rebukes and their jests; but now they are adopting another plan; they try to tempt me away from the house of God, and entice me to the theater, and to worldly amusements, and I feel that, placed as I am, I never can hold on. As well might a spark hope to live in the midst of an ocean as for grace to live in my heart.” Ah! but, soul, who has made it to live hitherto? What is it that hath helped thee up till now to say, “Nay,” to every temptation? Why, the Lord thy Redeemer. Thou couldst not have done it so long, if it had not been for him; and he that hath helped thee to stand so long will never put thee to shame. Why, if thou be a child of God, and thou shouldst fall away and perish, what dishonor would be brought on Christ! “Aha!” the devil would say, “here is a child of God, and God has turned him out of his family, and I have got him in hell at last. Is this what God doth with his children—loves them one day, and hates them the next—tells them he forgives them, and yet punishes them—accepts them in Christ, and yet sends them into hell?” Can that be? Shall it be? Never: not while God is God. “Aha!” again, says Satan, “believers have eternal life given to them. Here is one that had eternal life, and this eternal life has died out. It was not eternal. The promise was a lie. It was temporary life; it was not eternal life. Aha!” says he, “I have found a flaw in Christ’s promise; he gave them only temporary life, and called it eternal.” And again, the arch-fiend would say, if it were possible for one child of God to perish: “Aha! I have one of the jewels of Christ’s crown here;” and he would hold it up, and defy Christ to his very face, and laugh him to scorn. “This is a jewel that thou didst purchase with thine own blood. Here is one that thou didst come into the world to save and yet thou couldst not save him. Thou didst buy him, and pay for him, and yet I have got him, he was a jewel of thy crown, and yet here he is, in the hand of the black prince, thine enemy. Aha! king with a damaged crown! thou hast lost one of thy jewels.” Can it be so? No, never, and therefore every one that believeth is as sure of heaven as if he were there. If thou casteth thyself simply on Christ, nor death, nor hell, shall ever destroy thee. Remember what good old Mr. Berridge said, when he was met by a friend one morning, “How do you do, Mr. Berridge?” “Pretty well, I thank you,” said he, “and as sure of heaven as if I were there; for I have a solid confidence in Christ.” What a happy man such a man must be, who knows and feels that to be true! And yet, if you do not feel it, if you are the children of God, I put to you this question, “Wherefore dost thou doubt?” Is there not good reason to believe. “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” If thou hast believed in Christ, saved thou art, and saved thou shalt be, if thou hast committed thyself to his hands: “I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him.”

“Yes.” says one. “this is not the fear that troubles me; my only doubt is whether I am a child of God or not.” I finish, therefore, by going over the old ground. Soul, if thou wouldst know whether thou art a child of God, look not to thyself, but look to Christ. Ye who are here to-day, who desire to be saved, but yet fear you never can be, never look to yourselves for any ground of acceptance before God. Not self, but Jesus; not heart, but Christ; not man, but man’s Creator. O sinner! think not that thou art to bring anything to Christ to recommend thee. Come to him just as thou art. Me wants no good works of thine—no good feelings either. Come, just as thou art. All that thou canst want to fit thee for heaven, he has bought for thee, and he will give thee; all these freely thou shalt have for the asking. Only come, and he will not cast thee away. But do you say, “Oh, I cannot believe that Christ is able to save such a sinner as I am. “I reply, “O thou of little faith, wherefore dost thou doubt?” He has already saved sinners as great as thou art; only try him, only try him.

“Venture on him, venture wholly;
Let no other trust intrude.”

Try him, try him; and if you find him false, then tell it everywhere that Christ was untrue. But that shall never be. Go to him; tell him you are a wretched undone soul, without his sovereign grace; ask him to have mercy on you. Tell him you are determined, it you do perish, that you will perish at the foot of his cross. Go and cling to him, as he hangs bleeding there; look him in the face, and say, “Jesus, I have no other refuge; if thou spurn me, I am lost; but I will never go from thee; I will clasp thee in life, and clasp thee in death, as the only rock of my soul’s salvation “Depend upon it, you shall not be sent empty away; you must, you shall be accepted, if you will simply believe. Oh, may God enable you, by the divine influence of his Holy Spirit, to believe; and then, shall we not have to put the question, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” I pray God now apply these words to your comfort. They have been very simple, and very homely words; but nevertheless, they will suit simple, homely hearts. If God shall bless them, to him be the glory!