“O Lord, I have heard thy speech!” This is the language of reverent obedience, and is a fit preface to a fervent prayer. If we are not willing to hear God’s voice, we cannot expect him to hear our voice. It is an admirable preparation for prayer, first to hearken diligently to what God the Lord shall speak, and then to be obedient to his commands. He who would hear God speak needs not to wait long, for God speaks to men continually by the Scriptures, which are given to us by inspiration. Alas that we should be so deaf to its teachings! This wonderful volume, so full of wisdom, is so little read that few of us could dare to gaze upon its pages and say, “O Lord, in this Book I have heard thy speech.” At other times, the Lord speaks by providence; both national providences and personal providences have a meaning; providences that are afflicting, and providences which are comforting, all have a voice; but, alas! I fear that oftentimes to us providence is dumb because we are deaf. How often, in our stubbornness, we are like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding, and when God speaketh to us we do not regard him; he therefore multiplies our afflictions, and holds us in with the bit and bridle of adversity, because we will not be governed by gentler means. Look, my brethren, at the providence of God throughout the whole of your lives, and I am afraid few of you can say of it, “O Lord, in providence I have heard thy speech.” The God of heaven speaks to men by his Holy Spirit. He does this, at times, in those common operations of the Spirit upon the ungodly which they resist, as did also their fathers. The Spirit strives with men; he calls, and they refuse; he stretches out his hands, and they regard him not. The unregenerate man is like the deaf adder that will not hear, charm we never so wisely. Even when the Holy Spirit speaks to us his people, we are not always willing and obedient; but though we have ears to hear, we frequently quench the Spirit; we grieve him, we neglect his monitions, and, if we do not despise his teachings, yet too often we forget them, and listen to the follies of earth, instead of regarding the wisdom of the skies. I am afraid that in looking into our own hearts and studying them in connection with the operations of the Holy Spirit, not one of us could dare to say, without exception, “O Lord, I have heard thy speech.” In the text before us we meet with a prophet whose ear had been spiritually opened, and who therefore heard the still, small voice of Jehovah, where others perceived neither sound nor utterance. There are times even with us when, being under the influence of the Holy Spirit, we hold near communion with our God; then are our hearts like wax to his seal, receiving the impress of the Divine Mind. Are you not conscious of having been in such a state? It must be so, dear hearer, in a measure, with all the Lord’s servants; but especially must it be often so with those of us who are called to bear his messages to the people. I have most solemnly sought to hear the speech of Jehovah in my own soul before I came into this pulpit, and I pray that his divine power may enable me to convey that speech to you. I have been afraid this week, as I have heard the voice of God in this land; trembling has taken hold upon me, as Jehovah has spoken in thunderclaps, and made the whole land to echo with his terrible accents. I may be to some of you as an interpreter, and you who are spiritual men, you will discern and judge whether I have heard the speech of God or not. If you shall find it to be God’s voice to you, I hope you will be led to the farther carrying out of the language of the text in that much-needed prayer, “O Lord, revive thy work.”

There are three things in the text; an alarming voice, an appropriate prayer, and a potent argument-“in wrath remember mercy.”

Hear, with solemn awe, the alarming voice. The speech of God demands your humblest attention. We need not enter into particulars of the heavy tidings which came to the ear of Habakkuk when he set him upon the tower, and watched to see what the Lord would say unto him. Our business this morning is to tell you, in all solemnity, what the voice of God has been saying to us. In my lonely meditations I heard a voice, as of one that spake in the name of the Lord. I bowed my head to receive the message, and the voice said, “Cry,” and when I said, “What shall I cry?” the answer came to me as to Isaiah of old, “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it; surely the people is grass.” Then I thought I saw before me a great meadow wide and far reaching, and it was like to a rainbow for its many colours, for the flowers of summer were in their beauty. In the midst thereof I marked a mower of dark and cruel aspect, who with a scythe most sharp and glittering, was clearing mighty stretches of the field at each sweep, and laying the fair flowers in withering heaps. He advanced with huge strides of leagues at once, leaving desolation behind him, and I understood that the mower’s name was Death. As I looked I was afraid for my house, and my children, for my kinsfolk and acquaintance, and for myself also; for the mower drew nearer and nearer, and as he came onward a voice was heard as of a trumpet, “Prepare to meet thy God.” Moreover, as I mused on I heard a rumbling in the bowels of the earth, as though the destroyer were traversing the dark pathways which the miner has digged, and doing his fearful work among the stones of darkness which lie at the roots of the mountains. I wondered with sore amazement, and behold there came up from the mouth of the pit a thundering cloud of vapour, of smoke and fire, and dust, and rushing whirlwind, which told to wailing women that they were widows and their children fatherless; and the angel of death again cried in mine ears, “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.” I have come here this morning sore afraid, and much bowed down because of the mortality of man, and the certainty of death. We shall soon be gone, every one of us to his grave; if not by such an alarming catastrophe as that which has amazed and troubled us during this week, yet by the common processes of decay. Ye whom I now see before me are the meadows, and death is in your midst. Ye are the flowers, and I hear the terrible blast, which, alas! must wither even you. I see you, but there is no joy in my eye, for the cheek of beauty shall pale, and the eye of youth shall grow dim, and the sinews of the strong shall fail them, and the arms of the mighty shall be powerless in the tomb. As the autumn leaves are gone, so are our fathers; and as the floods hasten to the ocean, even so are we hastening away. An irresistible torrent hurries us to our doom; a mighty wind from the Lord sweeps us for ever onward. While we thus quietly consider it the great mystery is being enacted, a thousand graves are being digged, and a thousand corpses are being laid in new-made sepulchres. At this moment hundreds are wading into the cold, chill stream of Jordan; passing into the disembodied state to hear the judgment of the Great King.

As I thought upon this matter, and desired to hear God’s speech therein, I saw a precipice, whose frowning steep overhung a sea of fire. Leading up to its brink I saw a road exceeding broad, a road which was crowded from side to side with a thronging multitude, who pressed and trod one upon another in their raging zeal to reach the summit of the crag. They went gaily on, merrily laughing, singing to sprightly music, many of them dancing, some of them pushing aside their fellows that they might reach sooner than was imperative upon them the end of what they knew so little. As I looked at that end which none of them could see, I saw a cataract of souls, falling in ceaseless, headlong stream into depths unutterably profound. As the crowd came on rank by rank to the edge of this precipice, they fell, they leaped over, or were dashed from the treacherous crag, and descended amid cries and shrieks surpassing all imagination into a lake of fire, wherein they were submerged with an everlasting baptism, overwhelmed with destruction from the presence of the Lord. I thought I heard their groans and moans their shrieks and sighs as they first caught sight of the terrible abyss and would have shrunk back from it, but were quite unable, for the time to pause was past. Even now I see before my eyes that terrific Niagara of souls descending by thousands every hour into the gulf unknown. This is the broad road of which we had heard so often, wherein multitudes delight to walk. “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many are they that go in thereat.” Sure and terrible is the doom of every one who treads therein. Oh that men would forsake it at once and for ever! Alas! alas! are not the great mass of our fellow citizens, beneath the sceptre of our Queen, travelling in this broad road? Even if we could conceive that all who attend the places of worship were in the narrow way that leadeth unto life eternal, if we could be charitable enough to believe that, yet look at the multitude of outsiders! Look at this city, with far more than a million for whom the sound of the church-going bell is meaningless; who know not God, neither regard him, to whom the name of Christ is but a word to curse with or to ridicule: they are going, my brethren, men of the same country as yourselves, men of the same race and tribe, speaking our own language, they are going downward to destruction! Among them your own children, mayhap your wives, your husbands, your sons, your daughters, your parents, going in that motley crew, onward, swiftly onward, towards their dreadful end. My God will cast them away; their end will be destruction; they will be driven from the presence of the Lord. Let these two thoughts, my brethren, burn in your souls until all coldness and indifference are consumed. Men die, and their souls are lost. Men die and their bodies are laid in the grave, but their souls descend into hell. Scarcely were the first death a thing to be mourned over, if it were not for the second. It might be superfluous to shed so much as a single tear for all the men that died, if we knew that they rested in the arms of Jesus, and were for ever blessed; but this is the sting of death, its bitterness, its wormwood and its gall, that sinners are condemned by justice, and driven by vengeance from the presence of mercy into the place where hope can never follow them. Christian men and women, hear ye this voice of God and be afraid.

Over and above all this, there came upon me a horror of great darkness as I perceived something even more terrible than this. You will say to me, “How more terrible?” In certain aspects so it seemed to me. Hear it and judge. What if it be true that within the last twelve months the church of the living God has scarcely made the slightest approach to an advance? What if this be true as respects a far longer period? Let the first sad fact rise before us with its proof. For the last twelve months no apparent increase has been made to the number of professed disciples of the Lord Jesus. Do you ask me for the proofs? I can prove it alas! too surely. Our own body, the Baptist denomination, is upon the whole, and all things considered, in as sound and healthy a state as any Christian community now existing; I am persuaded that in some respects it is more sound and more healthy; but do you know what will have been the increase during the twelve months of the entire denomination in England, Scotland, and Ireland, so far as we can ascertain it? Well, with the exception of London and the county of Glamorgan, in Wales, there will be no increase worthy of the name. In many parts of Wales, where we are strongest, there will be a positive decrease; and I think, in fifteen counties of England, we shall have lost numbers instead of making any advance, and when the whole are put together, the good with the bad, and this London of ours, wherein God has greatly blessed us of late, is counted with the rest, our entire increase for all the churches with all their ministers will not make up four thousand souls. It is true that our statistics are not very accurate, but if they were more accurate I believe the result would be more unfavourable. This is the more fearful to me to contemplate, because the increase of the denomination, which by God’s grace we might naturally look for merely from the increase of population, should have been very much more than this. If other Christian churches have not increased more, and I am persuaded that most of them have increased less, far less than we have, then I am correct in saying that positively the Church of God in Great Britain and Ireland, instead of making any real advance, has, in proportion to the increase of population, absolutely gone back, and I believe it would be accurate and truthful, and could be borne out by statistics, that if at this day there were taken a census of the number of persons who commune at the Lord’s table, it would be found to be smaller instead of larger than the number at the corresponding period of last year. As for abroad, what have our missions done? Brethren, if there were but one soul we ought to rejoice, but the result of missions has been of late so terribly little as to call for great searchings of heart. Is it not a fact that there are missionaries of ten years’ standing who never had a convert? Is it not also a sad fact that the number of members in all our native churches is probably less now than it was twelve months ago? Where is the nation that has been born in a day in this year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six? Where are the kings that have bowed down before King Jesus? Where are the nations that have called him “Blessed”? Is there so much as one little tribe, however insignificant, that has owned Christ during the past year? Not one, not one! There has been no visible advance. The armies of the living God have rather suffered a repulse than gained a victory, and instead of the morning coming and the light arising, and the sun advancing to a noonday height, it seems as though at the best he stood still, if the light did not even retrograde. Surely there is a voice from God here, and as I hear it I am afraid.

Meanwhile, what kind of an age has this been in which we have lived? Is it so impassive and thoughtless that progress is impossible? Are we living in one of those dark ages in which mind is rocked to sleep and the soul is stupified? Has this last year been one in which the somnolence of the human intellect has prevented our presenting the truth to the sons of men? I think not. I believe, brethren, that this year has been one of the most wakeful in the annals of human history. At this moment London is like the city of which the prophet said, “It is full of stirs.” There are political stirs in which the Christian minister finds no theme for sorrow, for when men’s minds are but awake for anything there is then an opportunity for the propagation of truth. Truth dreads nothing so much as a sleepy audience. Give her but minds on the wing, and she will train them to the skies. This has been a year in which both upon politics and religion the human mind has been active, and had the Christian churches been filled with the Spirit, and therefore zealous and faithful, I cannot comprehend that she would at the close of the year have had to cry, “Who hath believed our report?” We have indulged the fancy that we have had a general revival, and that our churches are in a healthy state, but is it so? Let our non-success answer the question.

In the meantime, while truth slumbereth, the legions of evil spirits cease not their mischievous endeavours. How swiftly have the locusts of priestcraft ascended from the smoke of the bottomless pit and covered the land! While we are compelled to fear that evangelical truth has made no advance, we cannot say this of ritualism, for its progress has been perfectly astounding. Though a prophet should have told us that this Anglican Popery would have made so great an advance in so short a time, we should have said, “Impossible! England is soundly Protestant; she will never bear to have incense smoking under her nose, and to see the millinery of the Church of Rome flaunted before her face;” but she has borne it, and she likes it well. Despite much that has been said concerning Puseyism being non-English, we are inclined to question the statement. Where are the greatest crowds in the Establishment? Are they not at the feet of these priests of Baal? Do not rank and fashion gather most readily in those places where their senses are delighted while their souls are deluded? Yes, through the means of our Popish establishment there has been an onward rush of error which is perfectly appalling. Watchman, when they ask thee, “What of the night?” canst thou say, “the morning cometh”?

Ye that love the Saviour, will you open your ears to catch the meaning of all these things? Men dying, men perishing, the church slumbering, and error covering the land-doth not God say something in all this? Do you not hear out of this thick darkness the voice saying, “O my people, I have somewhat against you”? Did I not hear the Lord saying, “They shall perish, but their blood will I require at the watchman’s hands?” I saw the church of God folding her hands, given to slumber, saying, “I am rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing;” and all the while she was suffering multitudes to perish for lack of knowledge, leaving the banner of truth to be moth-eaten, or to be trailed in the mire, and permitting the friends of error to ride roughshod over all the land. As I saw her thus I said within my heart, Surely the Lord will chasten such a people as this, and I feared that he would send judgments upon his church, and perhaps take away her candlestick out of the place, and give the light unto another people that might serve him more faithfully. Then I felt as Habakkuk did, I heard the voice of the Lord, and I was afraid. I was afraid for my fellow-men, thinking of the multitudes of them that had already gone beyond recall to the land of darkness and to the regions of doom, and for the millions hastening to the same end. I was afraid for the Christian church, lest it should have a name to live and be dead, lest the Lord should give up the church in Britain as he did his church in Shiloh, of which he said, “Go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel.” I feared lest he might do for the church in Britain as he has to the church in Rome-given it over to become an antichrist, and an abomination before the eyes of God and men. I was afraid with exceeding great fear for my fellow ministers, for I feared that all this people could not have perished without their being guilty of some of their blood! How could all this ignorance have remained in this land if the preachers had been faithful? I fear that the blood of souls will be required at the hands of many a minister. What do I see? A gathering of ministers. And what is this I see upon their garments? I see blood on them. I see blood sprinkled on grey heads, and alas! I see blood upon the brows of young men who have but lately entered into the work-blood upon them all. Herein do I much fear for myself, lest I also, addressing this multitude so constantly, should have much blood upon my skirts because of my many responsibilities! O God! it is enough to make us afraid. Why look, my brethren; when God’s servants were truly active, as the first twelve were, did the cause stand still? Did they win here and there a soul, and have now and then a conversion? Did the cause of Christ go back like an army put to the rout? On the contrary, did they not as soon as ever they received the truth, use it like a fire-brand to set the nations on a blaze? They met with persecutions which do not stand in our way; they were assaulted by threats of death which we have not to brave, and yet nothing could stand against their indomitable zeal, the omnipotence of the Holy Ghost rested on them, and they went on conquering and to conquer! And what are we? Oh we are cold and dead where they were full of fire and life. We are the degenerate sons of glorious fathers. Do you think the church could have had it said that she remained a year without increase if there were not blame somewhere? You may remind me of divine sovereignty, if you will, but I remember that divine sovereignty always acts with wisdom and with love, and that the Lord has not said to us, “Labour in vain.” If we had laboured, and if all the Christian church had laboured as they should have laboured, I believe the promise would have been proved, “Your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”

When one is thus bowed down with the voice of God, the most natural prompting of the regenerate soul is to pray; so we turn to the second part of the text which has in it an appropriate prayer. I wish I had power this morning to make you feel the weight of what I have already brought before you. I know I have not put it in such language as I should have chosen, but it seems to me to be perfectly dreadful that there should be this constant dying, this constant ruin, this constant spread of error, and no progress in the church. I am sure when I heard it, if a messenger had told me that I was a beggar, that I had lost everything on earth, I would have been more pleased with such an announcement than to know that God’s church had not increased by the space of twelve months. It seems to me to be a thing to mourn over, a thing to make us go to God with a humble heart, and to feel as if one had been sorely chastened by the Most High. For the Lord knoweth some of us have worked with all our might, and we hope it is not pride when we say the blame does not rest with us, and yet the question must go to us all. We must deal faithfully with ourselves and not be flattered. We would honestly enquire, How much of this lies at my door? How much of this burden of God ought I to bear to-day? Certainly enough to lead us to such prayer as that before us.

Habakkuk, being bowed down, first turns himself to God. His first word is, “O Lord.” To the Most High we must carry both our own and our church’s troubles. Habakkuk turns not to another prophet to ask of him, “My brother, what shall we do;” but he turns to the Master, “O Lord, what wilt thou do?” It will be well for us to confer with one another as to the causes of defeat and the means for securing success, but all conference with flesh and blood is idle unless it be preceded by solemn conferences with God. For God’s church, God is needed; for God’s work, God’s own arm must be made bare. Is it not delightful to notice how heavy trials drive us to God when we might not have gone to him else? The little child, when walking abroad runs before his father, but if he meets some strange man of whom he is afraid, he runs back and takes his father’s hand directly; so should it be with us. If God had prospered all our churches, and everything had gone on as we had desired, we might perhaps have grown self-confident, and have said, “O Lord, thou hast given us power in ourselves;” but now, that we see the contrary, let us run back to closer fellowship and nearer communion with our God than ever, and taking hold upon the arm of his strength, let us stir him up by our continued and fervent prayers.

Notice next, that the prayer of Habakkuk is about God’s church. He knew that there were dark days coming over Palestine, but he does not pray about that land in particular. “O Lord,” saith he, “revive thy work.” Certain would-be prophets tell us, that many wonders will occur in 1866 and 1867, though I notice a propensity to postpone the whole business to 1877. Is this postponement intended that there may be ten years longer in which to sell their books? But whatever is to come, whether the Turkish empire is to be destroyed, or Louis Napoleon is to annex Germany, whether Rome is to be swallowed up by an earthquake, does not seem to me to matter so much as the turn of a button. The great thing to a Christian is, not the fate of earthly empires, but the state of the heavenly kingdom. As to what is to become of this principality or that empire, what have you and I to do with these things? We are the servants of a spiritual King, whose kingdom is not of this world. Let the potsherds strive with the potsherds of the earth, and break each other as they will; our business is with King Jesus and his throne. It is delightful to see the prophet rising beyond the narrow range of the Jew, getting out of nationalities, and praying, “O Lord, revive thy work.” That is the one ship we care for in the storm, that one vessel in which Jesus Christ is riding at the helm, the Captain of salvation, and the Lord High Admiral of the seas. Let the nations mix in dire confusion as they will, God ruleth over all, and bringeth out his church in triumph from all the strife of earth. The one anxiety of our souls should be, the blood-stained banner of the cross; will it wave high? Will King Jesus get to himself the crown, for we have neither will nor wish beyond. So, Christian men, if you have heard God’s voice in the great judgments that are abroad, let those judgments lead you to pray, “Lord, remember thy church-thy church-thy church in England, thy church in America, thy church in France, thy church in Germany, thy church anywhere, thy church everywhere. O God, look upon thine elect ones; let the separate ones, scattered through all nations, receive of thy benediction; as for all else, in providence, we leave it to thy will, for thou knowest what is best.”

Observe next that the prophet uses a word which is singularly discriminative: “O Lord, revive thy work.” He does not say, “Lord, prosper my work.” How often do I go to God in concern about the work that is going on in this Tabernacle! I am thankful for all the blessing we have seen, and I grow increasingly anxious lest the Lord should withdraw his hand; but when one looks abroad upon the world, and upon all the Lord’s people in different denominations, one cannot pray, “Lord, prosper my work;” at least, one can pray that, and then cover that over with another-“O Lord, revive thy work.” For what about my work? Well, as far as it is mine it is very faulty. And what about the work of the Baptists? Well, there is doubtless much that is wrong about it. And what about the work of the Methodists, and the work of the Congregationalists, and so on? May God prosper them according as they walk in his truth! but the way to come to the core of our prayer is to cry, “O Lord, revive thy work; whatever is of thee, whatever is thy truth, whatever is thy Spirit’s work in the hearts of men, whatever is genuine conversion and vital godliness-Lord, revive it.” Cannot you, dear friends, in the presence of death which we have been speaking of, and in the presence of judgment, and in the presence of the fact that the Christian church has not been increased these twelve months, shake off all the bitterness of everything that has to do with self, or with party, and now pray, “Lord, revive thy work, and if thy work happen to lie more in one branch of the church than in another, Lord, give that the most reviving. Give us all the blessing, but do let thine own purposes be accomplished, and thine own glory come of it, and we shall be well content, though we should be forgotten and unknown. ‘O Lord, revive thy work.’ ”

Note that the particular blessing he asks for is a revival of God’s work, by which we mean in our time that there should be a revival of the old gospel preaching. We must have it back. It comes to this-our ministers must return to the same gospel which John Bunyan and George Whitfield preached. We cannot get on with philosophical gospels: we must bring together all these new geological gospels and neological gospels, and semi-Pelagian gospels, and do with them as the people of Ephesus did with the books-we must burn them, and let Paul preach again to us. We can do without modern learning, but we cannot do without the ancient gospel. We can do without oratory and eloquence, but we cannot do without Christ crucified. Lord, revive thy work by giving us the old-fashioned gospel back again in our pulpits. It is to be lamented that there are so many who are considered not to be bad preachers who scarcely ever mention Christ’s name, and are very loose concerning atonement by his precious blood. You will hear people say they have gone to such and such a chapel, and whatever the sermon might have been about it certainly was not about the gospel. Oh may that cease to be the case! May our pulpits ring with the name of Jesus; may Christ be lifted up, and his precious blood be the daily theme of the ministry! Oh that thousands might be brought to put their trust in the Lamb slain, and to find salvation by faith in him whom God has appointed to be the Saviour of men!

This, however, would not bring back a revival unless there came with it a revival of the gospel spirit. If you read the story of the Reformation, or the later story of the new Reformation under Whitfield and Wesley, you are struck with the singular spirit that went with the preachers. The world said they were mad; the caricaturists drew them as being fanatical beyond all endurance; but there it was, their zeal was their power. Of course the world scoffed at that of which it was afraid. The world fears enthusiasm, the sacred enthusiasm which love to Christ kindles, the enthusiasm which is kindled by the thought of the ruin of men and by the desire to pluck the firebrands from the flame, the enthusiasm which believes in the Holy Ghost, which believes that God is still present with his church to do wonders; this is what the world dreads, and what the church wants. Pray for it, pray to be baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire. O Lord, send forth this unconquerable spirit! O God, revive thy work!

You perceive that the prophet desires this boon at once. He does not say, “at the end of the years,” but “in the midst of the years;” his prayer is for a present and immediate revival of genuine religion. Let it be ours, not from the teeth outward but from the heart outward to pray for revival; let us long for it with heart and soul and strength, and God will give it to us. Once more note that the prayer of Habakkuk is a very intelligent one, for he indicates the means by which he expects to have it fulfilled; in the midst of the years make known. It is by making known the gospel that men are saved, not by mere thumping of the pulpit and stamping of the foot, but by telling out something which the understanding may grasp and the memory may retain. To publish the doctrine of a reconciled God, to tell men that the Lord has laid help upon Jesus by punishing him instead of us; to proclaim that there is life in a look at the Crucified One, to tell them that the Holy Ghost creates men new creatures in Christ Jesus, to give a full and comprehensive view of the doctrines of grace; this is one of the surest ways, under God, of promoting a revival of religion.

I cannot talk to you but I think I could pray to God, and I hope many of you will do so to-day. O God, send us a revival; this will purge the blood of souls from our skirts, nothing else will. This will roll back the tides of error, nothing else can. This will give to the Christian church triumph of an unusual kind; this will cover the earth with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the deep, but nothing else can or will. Thou gracious God, revive thy work.

And now we close with a potent argument. He uses the argument of mercy-“in wrath remember mercy.” If God were to say to the churches in England, “I will have nothing to do with you; you have been so idle, so worldly, so purse-proud, so prayerless, so quarrelsome, so inconsistent, that I will never bless you again, the churches of God in England might remain as astounding monuments of the justice of God towards the people who forsake his ways. Sorrowfully, not wishing to be an accuser of the brethren, it does seem to me that considering the responsibilities which were laid upon us, and the means which God has given us, the church generally, (there are blessed exceptions!) has done so little for Christ that if “Ichabod” were written right across its brow, and it were banished from God’s house, it would have its deserts. We cannot therefore appeal to merit, it must be mercy. O God, have mercy upon thy poor church, and visit her, and revive her. She has but a little strength; she has desired to keep thy word; oh, refresh her; restore to her thy power, and give her yet to be great in this land.

Mercy is also wanted for the land itself. This is a wicked nation, this England; its wickedness belongs not to one class only, but to all classes. Sin runs down our streets; we have a fringe of elegant morality, but behind it we have a mass of rottenness. There is not only the immorality of the streets at night, but look at the dishonesty of business men in high places. Cheating and thieving upon the grandest scale are winked at. Little thieves are punished, and great thieves are untouched. This is a wicked city, this city of London, and the land is full of drunkenness, and the land is full of fornication, and the land is full of theft, and the land is full of all manner of Popish idolatry. I am not the proper prophet to take up this burden, and to utter a wailing; my temperament is not that of Jeremiah, and therefore am I not well called to such a mission; but I may at least, with Habakkuk, having heard the Lord’s speech concerning it, be afraid, and exhort you to pray for this land, and be asking that God would revive his work, in order that this drunkenness may be given up, that this dishonesty may be purged out, that this great social evil may be cut out from the body politic, as a deadly cancer is cut out by the surgeon’s knife. O God, for mercy’s sake, cast not off this island of the seas, give her not up to internal distraction, leave her not in darkness and blackness for ever, but “revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.”

While I have been addressing Christians, my object has been to bless the ungodly too, and I do trust that some here who are not converted Will enquire, “What then is God’s voice to me?” May you be led to seek salvation, and remember you shall find it, for whosoever trusts Christ shall be saved. If there be a man, woman, or child among you who will now humble himself under the hand of God, and look to the crucified Saviour, you shall not perish, neither shall the wrath of God abide upon you, but you shall be found of him in peace in the day of his appearing. God accept this humble weak testimony for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Habakkuk 3.

LIFE ETERNAL

A Sermon

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.”-John 10:28

Some will say that this is a mixed congregation, and that such a doctrine as this should not be advanced in the presence of ungodly men and women. This shows how little such objectors read their Bible, for this very text was spoken by the Saviour, not to his loving disciples, but to his enemies. Read the thirty-first verse of the chapter, and you will see the temper of the congregation to whom Jesus Christ preached upon this subject-“Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.” So that an indignant multitude of bigots had this hurled into their face by the Saviour, that although they might reject him, and because of their wilful obstinacy might miss the blessings of grace, yet those blessings were rich and rare. He would have them to know that what they lost was inexpressibly precious, and that his message was not to be despised without great damage to their souls. Thus, if there be a mixed multitude here-and I fear the allegation is true, that there are many here who cannot comprehend the preciousness of the things of God-yet, for the same reason which prompted the Saviour to preach of this doctrine to the wicked in his day, we will do the same now, that they may know what it is they lose by losing Christ, what those comfortable things are which they despise, and what are the inestimable treasures which those must miss who seek after the treasures of this world, and let their God, their Saviour go.

We have no time to loiter, and let us therefore, as the bee sucks honey from the flower, seek after the sweet essence of the text, “I give unto them eternal life.” The connection tells us that the pronoun “them” refers to Christ’s sheep, to certain persons whom he had chosen to be his sheep, and whom he had also called to be such. Lest we should be in the dark as to whom they are, our Saviour has kindly put us in possession of the marks by which his sheep may be discovered. We cannot read the secret roll of election, nor can we search the heart, but we can mark the outward conduct of men, and the verse before the text tells us by what signs we are to know God’s people. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” The marks are the hearing of Christ, and then the following of Christ, first, by faith in him, and then by an active obedience to his precepts. “Faith which worketh by love” is the mark of Christ’s sheep, and it is of true believers that he speaks when he says, “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand.” Would to God that all of us wore the livery of the elect, namely, active, sanctifying faith! Oh that we all listened to the Great Shepherd’s voice, that we received the truth which he delivers! and then resolved by his grace to follow him whithersoever he goeth, as the sheep follow the shepherd.

Having thus explained to whom the text belongs, we will now handle it in a threefold manner. The text implies, first, somewhat concerning the past of these people; the text plainly states, in the second place, a great deal about the present of these people; and, thirdly, the text not obscurely hints at something about their future.

In the first place, the studious reader will observe that the text implies somewhat concerning the past history of the people of god.

It is said, “I give unto them eternal life.” There is an implication, therefore, that they had lost eternal life. Every one of God’s people fell in Adam, and all have fallen also by actual sin; consequently, we came under condemnation, and Christ Jesus has done for us what Her Majesty the Queen has sometimes done for a condemned criminal-he has brought us a free pardon. He has given us life. When our own desert was eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord, Jesus Christ stepped in, and he said, “Thou art forgiven; the sentence shall not take place upon thee; thine offence is blotted out; thou art clear.” Nay, I think the text implies that there was something more than condemnation, there was execution. We were not only condemned to die, we were already spiritually dead. Jesus did not merely spare the life which ought to have been taken, and in that sense gave it to us, but he imparted to us a life which we had not before enjoyed. It is implied in the text that we were spiritually dead; nay, we are not left here to our own surmisings, nor even to our own experience, for the apostle Paul has said, “You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.” What, Paul, dead? Are you not mistaken? Perhaps they were only a little sick? Nay, we are ready to admit, O apostle, that they were sick and near to death, but surely they had a little vital energy, a little power to assist themselves! “No,” says the apostle, “you were dead, dead in trespasses and sins.” The work of salvation is tantamount, not only to the healing of the sick, but to the actual resurrection of a dead man from his grave. All the saints who are now alive unto God were once as dead as others, quite as corrupt and offensive as others, and as much an ill savour in the nostrils of Divine Justice by reason of their sins as even the most corrupt of their fellows. We had altogether gone out of the way; we had altogether become abominable, for “there is none that doeth good, no not one.” When we were all shut up under sin then Jesus Christ came into the region of death, and brought life and immortality to us. Life was forfeited by all the saints; spiritual life they had none: Jesus the Quickener has made them alive unto God.

Is it not also very clearly implied that, so far from having any life, these people could not otherwise have obtained life except by its being given to them? It is a rule well known to all Biblical students, that you never meet in God’s Word with an unnecessary miracle, that a miracle is never wrought where the ordinary course of nature would suffice. Now, my brethren, the greatest of all miracles is the salvation of a soul. If that soul could save itself God would not save it, but would let it do what it could do; and if the spiritually dead could quicken themselves, rest assured, from the analogy of all the divine transactions, that Jesus Christ would not have come to give them life. I believe that it would be utterly impossible for any one of us to enter heaven, let us do what we might, unless Jesus Christ had come from heaven to show us the way, to remove the bolts and bars for us, and to enable us to tread in the path which leads to glory and immortality. Lost! lost! lost! The race of man was utterly lost, not partly lost, not thrown into a condition in which it might be ruined unless it worked hard to save itself; but so lost, that but for the interposition of a divine arm, but for the appearance of God in human flesh, but for the stupendous transaction upon Calvary, and the work of God the Holy Ghost in the heart, not one dead soul ever could come to life. Eternal life would not be the peculiar work of the Lord Jesus if man had a finger in it, but now man’s power is excluded and grace reigns.

It is clearly to be seen in the text, by a little thought, that eternal life was not the merit of any one of God’s people, for it is said that it is given to us. Now, a gift is the very opposite of payment. What a man receives as a gift he certainly does not deserve. If it be given to us, then it is no more a debt, but if it be a debt then it can be no more a gift. None of us merits eternal life, or ever can merit it. Mere mortal life is a gift of divine mercy, we do not deserve it; and as for the eternal life spoken of in the text, it is a boon too high for the fingers of human merit to hope to reach it; if a man should work never so hard after it, yet upon the footing of the law it would be impossible for him to obtain it. Man merits nothing but death, and life must be the free gift of God. “The wages of sin is death;” that is to say it is earned and procured as matter of debt; “but the gift of God,” the free-grace gift of God, “is eternal life.” Now, this is a very humiliating doctrine, I know, but it is true, and I want you all to feel it Children of God, I know you do. You see the hole of the pit whence you were drawn? Do you see it? Or have you grown proud of late? Those fine feelings and prayings of yours have you stuck them like feathers in your cap? I pray you recollect what you were! You be proud! do not forget the dunghill where you once grew! Remember the filth out of which God took you, and instead of being scarlet with the garments of pride, your cheeks may well be scarlet with a blush! Oh! may God forbid, once for all, that we should glory, for what have we to glory in? What have we that we have not received?

It is clear, too, from the text, that those who are now righteous would have perished but for Christ. Christ says, “they shall never perish.” Promises are never given as superfluities. There is a necessity, therefore, for this promise. There was a danger, a solemn danger, that every one of those men who are now saved would have perished eternally. Sin made them heirs of wrath even as others, so Scripture tells us; and justice must have overwhelmed them with the rest if distinguishing grace had not prevented. Even now it is solemnly true, that there is no reason why a truly righteous soul should not perish, except that Christ still prevents it. You are alive, but you would not be spiritually alive an hour, unless the Holy Spirit continued to pour his vital energy into your soul. You shall be preserved, but, mark you, it is stated as a promise, and therefore it is not at all a matter of natural necessity. Apart from grace you are in fearful danger of apostacy, and probably you have fears about it even now; like the apostle, who feared lest after having preached to others, he himself should be a castaway; a very proper fear, a fear which will often come upon sincere souls, who feel a holy jealousy of themselves. But we need have no fear when we come to the promise of God, for if we are really in Christ we have a guarantee of security, since Christ’s own word is, “They shall never perish.” The promise was certainly given because it was wanted. There is a danger of perishing; there are ten thousand risks of perishing; only Omnipotence itself keeps off the fiery darts of Satan; the blessed Physician gives the antidote or the poison would soon destroy us; he who swears to bring us safely home protects us from a thousand foes, who otherwise would work our ill. “They shall never perish.”

It is also implied, that naturally the people of God have ten thousand enemies who would pluck them out of Christ’s hand. They were once in the hand of the enemy; they were once willing bond-slaves of Satan. All this they know, and all this they are willing to acknowledge. I would to God that some here would feel the truth of that which I have been saying. You self-righteous ones will say, “I am all right; I do my best, I go to a place of worship.” Now, soul, that is right enough in itself, but if thou boastest of it, it is an evidence that thou knowest neither God nor thyself. When I have heard of some who have boasted that they felt no inbred sin, I have wished that they would read the story of the Pharisee and the Publican. At the Fulton Street Prayer Meeting, a brother asked for the prayers of believers, because he felt so much the corruption of his own heart, the temptations of Satan, and especially the natural vileness of his own nature. A brother stood up on the opposite side of the hall, and said he thanked God that was not his experience; he did not feel any corruption, and his heart was not depraved. The other one made no reply, but a friend present read these words: “Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” A sense of sin is a blessed sign either of pardon received, or of pardon to come. He that says he has no sin makes God a liar, and the truth is not in him. He who will not confess his sin shall never be absolved; but he who with a broken and a trembling heart goes to the foot of the cross shall find forgiveness there. This much, then, upon the past estate of the heirs of heaven.

And now, to plunge at once into the subject. The text sheds a flood of light upon the present state of every believer.

We shall have to give you hints rather than a long exposition; so kindly take the first sentence, which speaks of a gift received. “I give unto them eternal life.” This gift is, first of all, life. You will make strange confusion of God’s Word if you confound life with existence, for they are very different things. All men will exist for ever, but many will dwell in everlasting death; they will know nothing whatever of life. Life is a distinct thing altogether from existence, and implies in God’s Word something of activity and of happiness. In the text before us it includes many things. Note the difference between the stone and the plant. The plant has vegetable life. You know the difference between the animal and the plant. While the plant has vegetable life, yet it is altogether dead in the sense in which we speak of living creatures. It has not the sensations which belong to animal life. Then, again, if we turn to another and higher grade, namely, mental life, an animal is dead so far as that is concerned. It cannot enter at all into the mysterious calculations of the mathematician, nor revel in the sublime glories of poetry. The animal has nothing to do with the life of the intellectual mind; as to mental life it is dead. Now, there is a grade of life which is higher than the mental life-a higher life quite unknown to the philosopher, not put down in Plato, nor spoken of by Aristotle, but understood by the very meanest of the children of God. It is a phase of life called “spiritual life,” a new form of life altogether, which does not belong to man naturally, but is given to him by Jesus Christ. The first man, Adam, was made a living soul, and all his descendants are made like unto him. The second Adam is made a quickening spirit, and until we are made like the second Adam we know nothing of spiritual life. This body of ours is by nature adapted for a soulish life. The apostle tells us, in that wonderful chapter in Corinthians, that the body is sown-what? “A natural body.” The Greek is, “A soulish body”-“but it is raised”-what? “A spiritual body.” There is a soulish body, and there is a spiritual body. There is a body adapted to the lower life which belongs to all men, a mere mental existence; and there is to be a body which will belong to all those who have received spiritual life, who shall dwell in that body as the house of their perfected spirit in heaven. The life which Jesus Christ gives his people is spiritual life, therefore it is mysterious. “Thou hearest the sound thereof, but thou canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” You who have mental life cannot explain to the horse or the dog what it is, neither can we who have spiritual life explain to those who have it not what it is. You can tell them what it does and what its effects are, but what the “spark of heavenly flame” may be you yourselves do not know, though you are conscious that it is there.

It is spiritual life which Jesus Christ gives his people, but it is more; it is divine life. This life is like the life of God, and therefore it is elevating. “We are made,” says the apostle, “partakers of the divine nature.” “Begotten again by God the Father, not,” says the apostle, “with corruptible seed, but with incorruptible.” We do not become divine, but we receive a nature which enables us to sympathize with Deity, to delight in the topics which engage the Eternal Mind, and to live upon the same principles as the Most Holy God. We love, for God is love. We begin to be holy, for God is thrice holy. We pant after perfection, for he is perfect. We delight in doing good, for God is good. We get into a new atmosphere. We pass out of the old range of the mere mental faculties; our spiritual faculties make us akin to God. “Let us,” said he, “make man in our own image, after our own likeness.” That image Adam lost; that image Christ restores, and gives to us that life which Adam lost in the day when he sinned, when God said to him, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” In that sense he did die; the sentence was not postponed; he died spiritually directly he touched the fruit; and this long-lost life Jesus Christ restores to every soul who believes in him.

This life, you will gather from my remarks, is heavenly life. It is the same life that expands and develops itself in heaven. The Christian does not die. What does the Saviour say? “He that believeth in me shall never die.” Does not the mental life die? Yes. Does not the mere bodily life die? Ay, but not the spiritual life. It is the same life here which it will be there, only now it is undeveloped and corruption impedes its action. Brethren, nothing of us shall go to heaven as flesh and blood, but only as it is subdued, elevated, changed, and perfected by the influence of the spirit-life. Know ye not that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.” Then what is the “I,” the “myself” that shall enter heaven? Why, if you be in Christ a new creature, then that new creature and nothing but that new creature, the very life which you have lived here in this tabernacle, the very life that has budded and blossomed in the garden of communion with God, that life which has led you to visit the sick, and clothe the naked, and feed the hungry, that life which has made tears of repentance stream down your cheeks, that life which has caused you to believe in Jesus,-this is the life which will go to heaven; and if you have not this, then you do not possess the life of heaven, and dead souls cannot enter there. Only living men can enter into the land of the living. “As we have borne the image of the earthy, so also shall we bear the image of the heavenly.” Even now the heavenly life heaves and throbs within us.

I think it may also be inferred from all this that the life which Christ gives his people is an energetic life. If the spiritual life is poured into a man it raises him above his former state, and lifts him out of the range of merely carnal comprehension. He himself is discerned of no man. “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” You cannot expect the world to understand this new life. It is a hidden thing. It will be a mystery to yourselves, a wonder to your own hearts. But oh! how active it will be! It will fight with your sins, and will not be satisfied until it has slain them. If you tell me you never have a conflict within, I tell you I cannot understand how you can have the divine life, for it is sure to come into conflict at once with the old nature, and there will be perpetual strife. The man becomes a new man at home; his wife and family observe it; he is a different man in business; he is a changed man altogether, whether you view him in connection with his fellow-men or with his God. He is a new creature. He feels that the new and wondrous life which has been planted in him has made him of a different race from the common herd, and he walks amongst the sons of men feeling that he is an alien and a stranger. “Beloved, now are we the sons 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.”

I wish there were more time to describe the inward life, but this must suffice to indicate the blessing which Jesus gives to the believer by the work of the Holy Ghost.

There is a word in the text which qualifies it: “I give unto them eternal life.” “Eternal” means “without end.” If Christ puts the life of God into a man that life cannot be taken away. It cannot die, that were impossible. When I have heard one say that you may be a child of God to-day but that next week may find you a child of the devil, I have supposed that the word “eternal” according to him could only have meant five or six days; but according to the dictionary I use, according to the mind of the Spirit, “eternal” means “without end.” If, then, a man says, “I had spiritual life once, but I do not possess it now,” it is clear that either he is mistaken altogether or he never had it at all. If Jesus had said, “I give unto them life which shall last for seven years, but which may perhaps be quenched and put out under temptation,” I could understand a man saying that he had fallen from grace; but if it be “eternal life,” then it must be “eternal;” there is no end to it, it must go on. The mere existence of the soul we believe will be never-ending, but it will be no boon to the ungodly that it will be so. It is not for Christ to give us mere immortality of existence, for that will be a fearful curse to some men. Lost souls would be glad enough if they could be rid of their immortal existence, but Christ gives an eternal, a holy life, a happy life, which is infinitely more than existence. Existence may be a curse, but life is a blessing. This life begins here: “I give unto them.” Not, “I shall give,” but “I give.” Not, “I will give it to them when they die,” but “I give it them here, I give unto them eternal life.” Now, my hearer, you have either got eternal life to-night, or you are still in death. If you have not received it you are “dead in trespasses and sins,” and your doom will be a terrible one; but if God has given you eternal life, fear not the surrounding hosts of hell nor the temptations of the world, for the eternal God is your refuge, and underneath you are the everlasting arms.

This life is given as a free gift to every one of the Lord’s people, and is bestowed by the Lord and by none else.

2. Let us turn now to the second part of the blessing. Here is preservation secured. “They shall never perish.” Certain gentlemen who cannot endure the doctrine of final perseverance manage to slip away from the next sentence, “Neither shall any pluck them out of my hands,” and suggest, “but they may get out themselves.” No. no, no, because the text says, “They shall never perish.” Our present sentence which we have now in hand puts aside all suppositions of every kind about the destruction of one of Christ’s sheep. “They shall never perish.” Take each word. “They shall never perish.” Some of their notions may, some of their comforts may, some of their experiences may, but they never shall. That which is the essence of the man, his true soul, his inward renewed nature, shall never be destroyed. See, then, Christian, you may be deprived of a thousand things without any violation of the promise. The promise is not that the ship shall not go to the bottom, but that the passengers shall get to the shore. The promise is not that the house shall not be burned; the pledge is that you who are in the house shall escape. “They shall never perish.” Take another word: “They shall never perish.” They shall go very near it, perhaps. They shall lose their joys and their comforts, but “they shall never perish.” The life in them shall never be starved out, nor beaten out, nor driven out. If you once get leaven into a piece of bread you cannot get it out; you may boil it, you may fry it, you may bake it, you may do what you like with it, but the leaven is in it, and you cannot get it out. Get the soul saturated with the grace of God, and you can never eradicate it. The man himself shall never perish. He may think he shall, the devil may tell him he shall, his comforts may be withdrawn, he may go to his death-bed full of doubts and fears about himself, but he shall never perish. Now, this is either true or it is not. You who think it is not true tell the Lord so; but I believe that it is a most sure and infallible fact, for Jehovah says it. I do not know how it is that they do not perish, it is a wondrous thing; but then it is all a marvel throughout from first to last. Now take the word “never.” We have shown how long the preservation endures: “They shall never perish.” “Well, but if they should live to be very aged, and should then fall into sin?” “They shall never perish.” Oh! but perhaps they may be assaulted in quarters where they least expect it, or they may be beleaguered by temptation.” They shall never perish.” “Well, but a man may be a child of God and yet go to hell.” How so, if he can never perish? Why, that “never” includes time and eternity, it includes living and dying, it includes the mount and the valley, the tempest and the calm. “They shall never perish.”

“In every state secure,

Kept by the eternal Hand.”

Beneath the wings of the Almighty God night with its pestilence cannot smite them, and day with its cares cannot destroy them; youth with its passions shall be safely passed; middle age with all its whirl of business shall be navigated in safety; old age with its infirmities shall become the land of Beulah; death’s gloomy vale shall be lit up with the coming splendour; the actual moment of departure, the last and solemn article shall be the passing over of a river dryshod. “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee, saith the Lord.” “They shall never perish.”

There is a way of explaining away everything, I suppose, but I really do not know how the opponents of the perseverance of God’s saints will get over this text. They may do with it as they will, but I shall still believe what I find here, that I shall never perish if I am one of Christ’s people. If I perish, then Christ will not have kept his promise; but I know be must abide faithful to his word. “He is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent.” Every soul that resteth on the atoning sacrifice is safe, and safe for ever; “they shall never perish.”

3. Then comes the third sentence, in which we have a position guaranteed-“in Christ’s hand.” We have not time to expound it: it is to be in a place of honour; we are the ring he wears on his finger. It is a place of love: “I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.” It is a place of power: his right hand encloses all his people. It is a place of property: Christ holds his people; “all the saints are in thy hand.” It is a place of discretion: we are yielded up to Christ, and Christ wields a discretionary government over us. It is a place of guidance, a place of protection: as sheep are said to be in the hand of the shepherd, so are we in the hand of Christ. As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, to be used by him, as jewels in the hands of the bride to be her ornament, so are we in the hand of Christ. Now, what says the text? It reminds us that there are some who want to pluck us thence. There are those who, with false doctrine, would deceive, if it were possible, the very elect. There are roaring persecutors who would frighten God’s saints, and so make them turn back in the day of battle. There are scheming tempters-the panderers to hell, the jackals of the lion of the pit, who would fain drag us to destruction. Then there are our own hearts that would pluck us thence. You know in the text before us we need not read the word “man,” for it is not in the original. The translators have put the word “man” in italics to show that it is not in the Greek, and so we may read it-“Neither shall any pluck them out of my hand.” Not only-any “man,” but any devil either. Nothing that is present shall do it, nothing to come; no principality, no power, nothing whatsoever that is conceivable. “None shall pluck them out of my hand.” It does not merely include men, who are sometimes our worst foes, for the worst that we have are they of our own household; it also includes fallen spirits; but none shall be able to pluck us out of his hand. By no possibility shall any be able, by any of their schemes, to remove us from being his favourites, his property, his dear sons, his protected children. Oh, what a blessed promise!

Now, do you know, while I have been preaching to you about this, I have been thinking a little about my own history before I knew the Lord. One of the things that made me want to be a Christian was this. I had seen some young lads that I was at school with, they were excellent lads, and some of them had been held up as patterns of imitation to me and to others. I saw them, though only a very few years older than myself, turn out as vain and ungodly as well could be, and yet I knew them to have been excellently well disposed as boys, nay, to have been very patterns; and this kind of thought used to cross my young brain, “Is there not some means of being preserved from making a shipwreck of my life?” When I came to read the Bible, it seemed to me to be full of this doctrine: “If you trust Christ, he will save you from all evil; he will keep you in a life of integrity and holiness while here, and he will bring you safe to heaven at the last.” I felt that I could not trust man, for I had seen some of the very best wandering far from truth; if I trusted Christ, it was not a chance as to whether I should get to heaven, but a certainty; and I learned that if I rested all my weight upon him he would keep me, for I found it written, “The righteous shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall wax stronger and stronger.” I found the apostle saying, “I am persuaded that he that hath begun a good work in you will carry it on,” and such-like expressions. “Why,” I reasoned, “I have found an insurance office, and a good one too; I will insure my life in it; I will go to Jesus as I am, for he bids me; I will trust myself with him.” If I had listened to the Arminian theory I should never have been converted, for it never had any charms for me. A Saviour who casts away his people, a God who leaves his children to perish, were not worthy of my worship, and a salvation which does not save outright is neither worth preaching nor listening to. When I stand here and say to this assembled mass, Trust my Master, believe him, and it is no matter of question as to whether you shall be saved, for he has said that “he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;” when I say that, I feel that I have something to say which is worth listening to. My dear hearer, with a new heart and a right spirit you will be a new man. As you now are, if you were to be pardoned to-night you would be condemned to-morrow, for the tendencies of your nature would lead you astray. But if God shall put a new nature into you, your old nature shall not be able to control it. The new immortal principle shall get the mastery; you shall be kept from sinning; you shall be preserved in holiness, and though you will have to mourn over your imperfection, yet you will feel that you have God’s own life in you; though you will realize that you are not perfect, yet you will wish you were, and this wishing to be so will be a sign of grace in your soul, and these wishes and desires will go on waxing stronger and stronger, till, having mastered sin by the power of the Spirit, the day shall come when this body shall be dropped off, and the new life, disencumbered of the vile rags which it was compelled to wear while it was here, shall leap in its disembodied existence into perfection, and then shall wait for the trumpet’s sound, and the body itself, purified and made fit for the new and higher life, shall be again inhabited, and so both the body and the soul, delivered from all sin, shall be an everlasting testimony to the promise of Christ, for those who rest in him shall have eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of his hand.

I have anticipated the last point, as to the outlook of my text into the future.

If God has given you eternal life, that comprehends all the future. Your spiritual existence will flourish when empires and kingdoms decay. Your life will live on when the heart of this great world shall grow cold, when the pulse of the great sea shall cease to beat, when the eye of the bright sun shall grow dim with age. You possess eternal life. When, like a moment’s foam which melts into the wave that bears it, the whole universe shall hare gone, and left not a wreck behind, it shall be well with you, for you have eternal life. Yon have an existence that will run parallel with the existence of the Deity. Eternal life! Oh! what an avenue of glory is opened by those words-Eternal Life! “Because I live,” saith Christ, “ye shall live also.” As long as there is a Christ there shall be a happy soul, and you shall be that happy soul. As long as there is a God there shall be a beatified existence, and you shall enjoy existence, for Jesus gives you eternal life. Spin on, old world, until thine axle is worn out. Fly on, Old Father Time, until thine hour-glass is broken, and thou shalt cease to be! Come, mighty angel! plant thy foot upon the sea and upon the land and swear by him that liveth that time shall be no more, for even then every Christian shall still live, because Christ gives unto them eternal life.

Does not the next sentence also look into the future?-“They shall never perish.” They shall never cease to exist in perpetual blessedness! never cease to be like God in their natures; never. Think you have been in heaven a thousand years-can you realize it? A thousand years’ blessed communion with the Lord Jesus! A thousand years in his bosom! A thousand years with the sight of him to ravish your spirit! Well, but you will have just as long to be there as if you had never begun, for you shall never, never perish. When the millennium shall come, or when the judgment shall sit, and when all the great transactions of prophecy shall be fulfilled, these need not distress you, for if you trust Christ you shall never-oh! turn that word over-you shall never, never, never, never, never perish! What an eternity of glory, what unspeakable delight is wrapped up in this promise-“They shall never perish!”

Then, surely, this is another glance into the future-“And none shall pluck them out of my hand.” We shall be in his hand for ever, we shall be in his heart for ever, we shall be in his very self for ever-one with him, and none shall pluck us thence. Happy, happy is the man who can lay claim to such a promise as this!

Oh! there are some of you to whom I wish this promise belonged! It is very rich, and very full of comfort; I wish it belonged to you. Dost thou say, “I wish it belonged to me”? Oh! friend, I am glad to hear thee say that! Dost thou know, soul, that there is but one key to open this precious treasure, and that is the key of the cross of the Lord Jesus? What sayest thou? Canst thou trust him? When one told me the other day she could not trust Christ, I looked her in the face and said, “What has he done that you should not trust him? Can you trust me?” “Yes,” she said, “I can trust my fellow-creatures, but I cannot trust God.” Oh! I thought, what terrible blasphemy! It was honestly spoken, and it was spoken by one who did not perceive the greatness of the offence in it, but I do not know that there is any worse thing that can be said than that-“I cannot trust God!” Well, sir, you have made him a liar then! That is the practical result of it; for if you believe a man to be honest you can always trust him. Can I trust my fellow-man, and not trust God? Oh! the horror of that thought! There is such an amount of blasphemy in it that I must not quote it again! Not trust Christ! “Well,” says one, “but may we not have a merely natural trust and so be deceived?” I do not know of any trust in Christ except a spiritual one, nor do I believe in any. If thou trustest Christ thou hast not done that of thyself. There was never a soul that did trust Christ unless he was enabled to do it by God the Holy Spirit, and if you wholly and simply trust Christ you need not ask any questions about natural trusting or spiritual trusting. If you trust the Lord Jesus wholly you are right. Rest on him then; rest on him only, wholly, and solely, and if you perish then I do not understand the gospel, and I cannot comprehend what the Bible means. I will tell you one thing, and then close. If you trust Christ and you perish, then I must perish most certainly, and so must all my brethren and sisters here who have believed in Jesus. It is all over with us if it is all over with you. When there is a storm, one passenger cannot very well go to the bottom, if he is in the ship, unless the whole of the ship’s company go too. We must go together. We have got into the life-boat, and if the life-boat goes down with you it must go down with all the saints, and all the apostles, and all the martyrs too. They went to heaven resting upon Christ, and if you rest on Christ you will get there also.

Oh! sinner, mayest thou be led to-day to rest on Jesus and on Jesus only, and then take the text. Do not be afraid of it-“I give unto my sheep eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand.”

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-John 10:1-30.