You will remember that our Saviour had been speaking to the woman of Samaria concerning living water. He had endeavoured to catch her attention by using a metaphor to her work and her position. Water was uppermost in her thoughts, and Jesus sanctified the element to his own gracious end. Sitting at the well’s mouth, I think I can see his earnest face, and note the woman’s wondering eyes while he talked to her as she had never been spoken to before, concerning water which caused a man never to thirst again. At first the woman raised questions: the sceptical part of her nature took its turn, and cavilled, and carped, and argued. “Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep,” and so on. Do you not see all the elements of the infidel in her? But she is in good hands, and soon she has passed from the period of questioning into that of petitioning, and she cries this time, “Sir, give me this water.” She was still, I am afraid, very ignorant. She did not even understand her own petition. That is clear from the words which follow the text, “That I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.” She was giving a material meaning to a spiritual utterance. She was thinking of the water that could moisten the lips, when Christ was speaking of that living water, his own grace and love, which touches the heart, and the heart only. Her eyes were dark, but her face was turned the right way; and, best of all, Jesus was there, who can lead the blind in a way which they know not. It will be all well with her, you may leave her alone, and think of yourselves.

I hope I am now conversing with some here who have got clear of this woman’s ignorance, and have passed away also, as she did, from the period of questioning; you know best who you are and where you are, but I hope you are desirous to partake of the grace which saveth. You have got away from raising difficulties. You have had enough of that unprofitable hair-splitting and cobweb-making. You feel that you get no good by constantly insinuating doubts as to the possibility of your salvation, and questioning whether Christ is a Saviour or not, and so you are about to leave the sceptical business, and try another line of things. You are now arrived at the point of desiring, not, I hope, the terminus of the line, but only the first or second station. Glad am I that you have come so far. If there be grace to be had, you are saying, “O that I might have it!” If there be pardon, peace, eternal life, you believe all that Jesus Christ says of it, and you want to possess it. You are stretching out your hands, like the drowning man who is ready to catch at the plank. Your desires are awake; your better thoughts are no longer slumbering. You have broken away from indifference and obstinacy, and you are now anxious and desirous to obtain salvation by Jesus Christ.

It is to you that I wish to speak this evening, and I shall first take the text, and try to use it to excite your desire still further by a description of the water spoken of in the text; secondly, I shall try to assure your hearts by some remarks upon the likelihood of your obtaining this water; and then we shall close by urging you not to leave this house until the prayer has been registered in heaven, “Lord, give me this water; give me this water to-night!”

To begin, then, I am to try to excite your desire by a description of the water spoken of in the text.

Water is an essential element in the natural world. There is a spiritual world, in describing which, we are obliged to use analogies taken from the natural world; and the grace of God in the mental and the spiritual world, is just what water is in the natural World. You want water as a man; you must have it; on certain occasions it becomes an imperative necessity: you must drink or die. You want grace as a man, not for your body, but for your soul, and it is imperative that you should have it, or else your soul will first be in pain here, and at death the pangs of remorse will seize it, and afterwards an everlasting thirst, an unsatisfied want, will be the second death to you.

The grace of God is like water in no less than eight senses. But let me not alarm you. I will not weary you; be sure of that, for I long to win you, and weariness will not serve my purpose. I shall only mention the eight parallels with a few remarks, and pass rapidly on from each one.

1. Water, first, is thirst-removing, and so is the grace of God. The man who drinks water, thirsts not, his bodily want is removed; the man who receives the grace of God in his heart, gets that which his nature is wanting, and his painful longings are over. Man by nature is so foolish that he does not know what his nature wants, but he feels that it wants something. Awakened men talk to themselves in this fashion, “I want-I do not know what I want-but I know I want something which the world cannot give me, which I cannot find within myself, which my fellow men cannot bestow upon me; I want a something: O my God, what is it? Tell me what it is!” Friend, if you are in this condition, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is just the thing for you, for in it the Lord not only tells you what you want, but he presents it to you. He tells you that you need his love; that if his grace be shed abroad in your heart, and your sin be pardoned, and you be made to be his child, and accepted through Christ Jesus, then will your soul say, “Now I have what I wanted; now I want no, more; I can sit still and say, Blessed be God that my desires are full. The aching void which the world could never fill, is now filled to overflowing; and my soul has what it was always wanting, though it did not know what it really wanted. I can sit down now perfectly content!” It is a grand thing for a man to be able to say, “I am satisfied,” but the genuine believer in Christ can say that. “Thou hast satisfied my mouth with good things; so that my youth is renewed as the eagle’s.” Believers in Jesus carry the pearl of content in their bosoms. Jesus takes away the restless spirit, and gives us rest. Jesus is the door that fits the heart, and when he is near to us he shuts out the world’s cold and heat, and gives us sweet content. O ambitious man, thou that runnest after something, and thou canst not tell what it is that can gratify thine immortal spirit, turn to the cross, for at the foot of it there springs a sacred fount of soul-satisfying delight, and if thou wilt but stoop and drink, thine ambition shall be over, and thou shalt want no more. There is satisfaction for the deepest longings of heart, and head, and conscience, in the fount which springs from the wounds of Jesus. Faith is the silver cup. Dip it into the overflowing stream and drink. O Holy Spirit, put the cup to my poor thirsty brother’s lip!

2. Secondly, water is also life-preserving. In the wilderness, where there is no water, the lip becomes chapped; the skin is dried; the tongue is like a firebrand, and the mouth is like an oven; and the weary traveller must drink or die. O for a draught of water there! A bag of diamonds could not buy a flagon there! Priceless is the life-draught. And far out on the salt, salt sea, with

“Water, water everywhere,

But not a drop to drink,”

the mariner, though he may seek to satisfy himself with the brine around him, feels that it will be death sooner or later to him unless he can get some pure, clear, refreshing drops of water to drink. Drop, ye heavens in pity, or let some friendly bark espy the castaways. Such is the grace of God to the soul of man. The whole world over, there is nothing that can save a soul apart from the grace of God. Your good works can no more save you than the salt sea can give the sailor drink. Ceremonies can no more fill your heart with peace and give it life, than the hot sand of the wilderness can quench the thirst of the weary traveller. God must lead you to the river of eternal life flowing out of the Rock that was smitten. You must get grace through Jesus Christ, or hope shall never dawn upon you, but despair’s midnight shall be your everlasting portion, where lost spirits wail out their undying lives in one endless death. O soul, if thou gettest God’s grace, thou shalt never die! Believest thou this? If that grace of God shall come flowing into thy soul, thou shalt possess eternal life, an immortal principle which shall bid defiance to the grave, and make thee sing in the very jaws of death, for he that drinketh of this water, shall live in Christ for ever. “He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” This grace of God, then, is life-preserving, as well as thirst-quenching: Have you found it so? for, friend, I cannot afford to let you hear me, and yet escape a squeeze or two. If you forget this sermon, it shall not be because I did not press you to remember it.

3. Water, in the third place, is filth-purging. Man seeks no more than to get to the stream to wash when he is defiled. Many and many a time in passing through a country, the poor traveller comes to a brook so clear that he can see his face reflected in it, and he stoops down and laves his brow again and again, and takes his bath, and goes his way all bright and shining, as though he had exchanged sorrow for gladness, and received the oil of joy for mourning. Now, the guilty sinner, and such are we all by nature, however foul he may be, has but to stoop down at the river of eternal grace and wash, and he shall be clean. This stream can take out spots which nothing else can remove. Our sin is of such a crimson dye, naturally, that it might incarminate the Atlantic before it should be washed away, but this water of life can do it; it takes away the stain of blasphemy and lust; it removes the pollution of theft and murder. All manner of sin shall be forgiven unto that man who comes to the cross and trusts in Jesus. Whosoever believeth in the world’s great Redeemer, shall find full and complete pardon for every offence that he has committed. O try it, thou blackest of the black, if thou be here! Thou who hast gone to the greatest extent of sin, cast thy guilty soul into this fountain, and see if thou dost not rise from it with thy flesh like unto that of a little child, clean and pure, and not a spot remaining on thee. This filth-removing is the grace of God streaming from the cross, where Jesus suffered in our stead the wrath which was due to us for our transgressions.

“Calvary’s wonders let us trace,

Justice magnified in grace;

Mark the purple streams, and say,

Thus my sins were washed away.”

Friend, can you do this by faith, trusting for pardon to the blood of God’s dear Son?

4. Water, again, is well known very frequently to be softening. There are some things which, when laid in water, soon lose their hardness, and are soft and pliable. This water of the grace of God, which it is my longing desire to commend to you, has a marvellous softening power. Adamant, millstone, ay, the nether millstone, northern iron and steel, have been melted when laid asoke in this fount. The hardest heart yields before the power of the love of God revealed in Christ Jesus. I think I hear one of you exclaim, “That is good news for me; I know that Christ can pardon me, but I cannot feel my sin as I ought: I am such a stiff-necked sinner, so hardened, so perverse, I cannot feel my need as I would wish to.” Soul, if the grace of God shall flow upon thy heart, it shall turn the stone, by a wondrous transformation, into flesh at once. There is no stubbornness which the grace of God cannot overcome. What a blessed thing it is for the preacher that he has not to give his hearers soft hearts, nor even to find tender hearts in them to begin with; how delightful it is for him to remember that he preaches a gospel which works wonders, wonders even greater than the rod of Moses; for when with the gospel we smite even a rock, penitential streams gush forth, and yet more, the rocky soul is itself dissolved under a sense of sin. O that some Saul of Tarsus might be washed by this stream now! He would no longer be the enemy of God’s church, but would seek out some poor disciple to ask him what he must do to be saved. It is a heart-softening water. May the Lord give it to every one of us who have hard hearts remaining; fain would I bathe in it anew, that I might the more tenderly feel for you. Friend, will you never feel for yourself?

5. In the fifth place, this water has the property, like earthly water, of being fire-quenching. There is nothing like water after all, with all your new inventions, for putting out fire. We run for the engines, and turn on the main, what can we do better? But there are fires that burn within the human heart, deep volcanic fires fed from the depths of hell, furious flames which roar within the inner man, and anon roll over in torrents of sin-lava in his daily life-these are fires which never will be put out except by heavenly water. Oh, that fire of lust! How many a man has been consumed by it! It has devoured him as the fire devoureth the stubble. But when the grace of God comes, how soon that fire is damped, and even quenched for ever! And there are other fires which burn in the soul-the fire of envy and of malice, the flames of anger and of unholy desire-how these will rage and glow until the grace of God comes! I know it puzzles many a man to know how he could live without such-and-such sins. “Oh,” says he, “I could not live without them, I have fallen into the habit of them, and I must have them.” Ah! but you shall be made a new man, such a new man, that if you were to meet your old self, you would avoid the wretch or struggle with him in deadly hand to hand encounter, out of sheer hatred to so mean a thing. Let me tell you you will never be on good terms with your old self so long as you live. You will hate that old self of yours, and it will be your daily desire to kill him. You will try to drive the nails through his hands and feet, and crucify him upon the cross of Jesus; and you will not be content unless you can kill him daily, mortifying him with his affections and his lusts. Oh, mighty grace of God that can put out the flames of sin! O sinner, the very flames of hell are put out by this grace of God; I mean so far as the saved soul is concerned: for the soul that is washed in this fountain, there is no hell in which God can punish it. How can he punish a pardoned sinner? How can he that is in Christ Jesus be cast into the flames?

“No condemnation now I dread,

For justice smote my Surety’s head.”

“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” He that has Christ to be his substitute is beyond all fear of hell. He can look down into that dread abyss, and feel that there is not a burning coal there for him, and that whoever may perish, yet he, being in Christ Jesus, can never die. Friend, have the fires in your soul met with this glorious antagonist? Are the engines of grace casting their floods upon thy soul? Let conscience give its reply, and let it have thine ear.

6. A sixth property is one that is not found in ordinary water, and that is, that it is a spring-creating water. Wherever the water of life falls, it makes a new spring, which begins to bubble up directly. By this I mean that if the grace of God enters into a man’s heart, it is an immortal principle, and, as the Saviour says, “Out of the midst of him shall flow rivers of living water.” “The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” What a great difference there is between a pool and a running spring! Frequently in crossing the Alps, when one has been very faint and thirsty, it has been a sweet rest to sit down by a running spring, and wash one’s face and feet, or bathe one’s self in it. You may have walked till you are very footsore-you sit down to bathe your feet, and if you have found a mere pool, you will stir the bottom of it, and it will soon be very filthy; but when it is a running spring, you can sit and wash, and wash, and wash again, and if you do stir the sand at the bottom, the earth is all gone in a moment, because the water still comes bubbling up fresh and fresh, and therefore it is always clean. So it is with the grace of God in a Christian: it never gets flat, and dull, and dead; and the daily pollutions, and washing of our feet, do not stain it, because it is a living spring, and arises from those “fresh springs” which David sings about which he rejoiced to find in the Lord his God. It is very hard work to play the part of a Christian if you have not a spring within you. For a man to have to keep up year after year a profession without life, why, it must be slavish work. Do you think that I would come and take a seat in this place, or in any other place of worship, and occupy it merely because it was respectable to do so, if I had no care for it? I would as soon be a slave! Base is the man who even in his religion is the serf of tyrant fashion. To come up to the house of God because you love to be there, and to sing because you cannot help singing, and to unite with God’s people because “birds of a feather” must “flock together,” and you love to be among them-why there is something in that, something which tastes of reality and sincerity. He who has no great deeps of godliness in his soul makes a bondage of religion, he lives the life of a dog, and does not even get the crumbs from under the table as his portion. Mark you, brethren, it is harder to preach without this spring than it is to hear without it, because if you have not a spring in you, you may go foraging this dead man’s books, and that other dead man’s stores, to find a subject, but you will soon run dry; but if God the Holy Ghost is a spring within you, you may remain full of precious truth, and pour it out so long as God shall give you utterance, and you shall not run dry. What a blessing it is when the living water makes a spring within the Christian! What a curse to be one of the stagnant ponds of formality exhaling the putridity of hypocrisy. Friend, where are you, I must have my hand on you again, what are you in this matter as in the sight of God?

7. Seventhly, it is fruit-producing water. What fruit would there be upon the trees, what pasture in the meadows, what harvest in the field, if it were not for the rain? Everything would be barren without water, and even where there is fruit, if there be not also a fair share of water, what poor stuff it is! When I was in the country in June, and there were some heavy showers, I could not help thinking what good they were doing. There was the wheat just wanting plumping out, and the rain came to fill it, and to make the ears full. It might have been wheat of course without it, but the ear is likely to be more full of grain when the drought is gone. So, brethren, we may produce some little fruit when we have but little grace; but if we had more grace, how that fruit would plump out! how would our fruit be more rich, and fat, and mellow! How would our service to God be improved and perfected if we had more of this fruit-producing water! You cannot serve God without his grace. You cannot give him true praise, nor true prayer, nor true service, nor anything that is acceptable, unless he first shall give you of the rain of his grace, grace for grace. “By their fruits shall ye know them:” friend, what fruit have you? O that grace may turn the barren fig-tree into a good fruit-bearing tree!

8. And, lastly upon this point; it is heaven-ascending water. You know there is a rule of this sort in hydrostatics, that water will rise to its own level. Not long ago, I thought such things were gone out. I was riding along where the road was in a little cutting, and a spout was actually taken over the road to carry water from one field to the other, it was dripping fast upon the passengers, and making an ugly place in the road. Now, they might easily have taken the little stream under the road, and up again in a pipe; but, I suppose, when the spout was made, it was not known to those who made it that water will rise as high as its source. Now, the grace of God will rise as high as its source. If you and I have grace that began with us, it will never get higher than we are. If you have grace that the priest gave you when you were christened, it will never get higher than the priest; but if you get the true grace of God which descends from heaven, it will take you as high as the New Jerusalem, from which it came. High up in the throne of God are the everlasting springs of divine mercy; at the foot of divine sovereignty it wells up a spring, clear as crystal, pure without a stain, and it flows down to earth, leaping down by the way of the cross. And it will ascend as high as its source. It will go up to the throne again, that is where it came from, and it will rise to its own level, and it will float you up there with it. If, by the grace of God, you have been taken up by the stream of Jesu’s dying love, it will take you up to its own source, and where God is, there you shall be. Because you have been made to taste, to feel, and to be saturated with the grace that came from God, from a divine source, you shall also have a divine portion for ever. The rivers go to the sea because they originally came from the sea. Did not the sun kiss the sea, and make it ascend to him in clouds, that it might descend in rain? And so, all the rivers of grace in us shall flow into the sea, whence they came, the bottomless, shoreless sea of everlasting love, because that is the eternal source and fountain of them all. Clouds of suffering went up from the heart of Jesus to return to earth in showers of mercy for poor sinners. Friend, do you know anything about this in your very soul?

Now, I have thus spoken of the grace of God which is revealed in Jesus Christ. I only hope that some one here may say, “I wish I were washed in it! I wish my thirst were satisfied with it! I wish that my soul were made to overflow with it! I wish that I might be lifted up to heaven though its energy!” Oh! then, soul, I am glad you have the desire. Turn it into a prayer, and let the prayer be the text, “Give me this water!”

And now, with great brevity indeed, we shall take the second point, that is, to cheer your hearts with some reflections upon the likelihood of your getting this living water.

I am supposing now that you really want it. If you say, “Sir, give me this water,” you will have it; and I will tell you why I think you will have it-because, in the first place, I do not think that an ordinary man would deny another water. If I stood by a well, and you approached me, and said, “Sir, give me this water,” I should say, “As much as you like of it.” Who would not give water? It is the very commonest of gifts. Even in the East, with all the value that is attached to water there, the Saviour mentions that as one of the most ordinary acts of benevolence. “Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, He shall in no wise lose his reward.” Who will deny another a glass of water? Then note, that according to our text, the giving of saving grace is to the great Redeemer no more than the giving of water to you! Grace is a priceless boon for you to receive, but to Jesus it is a delight to give it. If you give water, you have a little less water left, but if Christ gives grace, he has not any grace the less. He still has as much grace in the inexhaustible fulness which dwells in his adorable person. As the sun is just as bright for all its shining, and the ocean still full notwithstanding all the clouds exhaled from it, so Jesus is as abundant as ever in pardoning mercy and saving power. I tell you that for Jesus Christ to be gracious, is as much according to his nature as it is for you and for me to be generous enough to give away water. The blessing of poor needy souls is no labour with Jesus, no loss to him, no tax upon him; all the pain and cost he has borne long ago, and now to save the guilty is his reward in which he sees the recompense of his travail. Now, if in this place the grace of God had been compared to gold, that metaphor would have suited well to express its value; but you would have said, “Who gives gold away?” But here it is compared with water, water which man freely gives, and which our Lord Jesus never denies to those who seek it of him. I do not believe, then, if an ordinary man will give away water-and Christ compares his grace with water, that he will let you say, “Sir, give me this water!” and then send you away without it. Friend, be not so unbelieving as to think that the Lord Jesus is ungenerous and unkind, but ask for the living water, and it shall be given you.

Again, if you would refuse water to some persons, I am very sure that you would not refuse it to a thirsty person. If you saw him panting, and the hot sweat starting to his brow, and if he could scarcely speak, but had only strength enough to gasp out, “Sir, if you would but give me a cup of water, I would bless you for it with all my heart,” why, you would run and bring out the sparkling crystal, and feel a great pleasure in seeing him drink. Would you not? I am sure you would. Now, if you are a thirsty soul, I am quite sure Christ will give you the water of life. He will give it to any that ask, for he refuses none; but to you he will give it so quickly, that he will seem to give it twice over. He will not let you thirst in vain, for has he not promised, “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.” “Oh,” says one, “how I desire to be saved! How I long to have Christ!” Thou mayst have him then, for Jesus Christ never did deny a thirsty sinner, never did refuse to give of his substance to the poor, his clothes to the naked, or his medicine to the sick. He came on purpose to bless such. I say, there are all likelihoods that you shall have the blessing if you will but pray earnestly, “Lord, give me this water;” nay, more, there is a certainty of it.

Another reason gives me comfort for you, and that is-there certainly is a plenty of it, for the apostle John says he saw “a river of the water of life.” Now, nobody is afraid, when there is a deep, broad, flowing river to draw from. Who fears to exhaust the Thames or drain the Danube by his thirst? Moreover, as John Bunyan reminds us, a river is free to everybody to drink. The source of it is private. Many rivers rise in a park or private grounds, but the river itself is public. As soon as it becomes a considerable stream, it becomes a public highway, and a universal water-supply. It is free, it flows the way it wills. Rivers possess a sort of sovereignty, you cannot bid them flow in a straight line, or order them by rules or geometry; they will have their own sweet will. If the river chooses to go by one town and not by another, it will have its way, try to stop it who may? But while it is sovereign in its course and direction, yet it is free for public use; the cattle come to drink, and even a poor dog is not refused when he gets to the river’s brink; if he wants to lap and cool his feverish tongue in the dog days, who shall say him nay? And you, poor sinner, you shall find the grace of God free to you, for there is enough of it; it is up to the banks; nay, it overflows the banks; there is a flood of it, such a flood that there never can by any possibility be any lack, though all men should come. Though ten thousand times ten thousand should come, there would still be found sufficient grace in Jesus to meet the case of all, for whom the Lord brings, the Lord can provide for in Christ Jesus. The grace of God is sovereign in its choice, and discriminating in its course, but still it is free to all thirsty ones who long to partake of its everlasting fulness.

I am comforted, also, by another thought, namely, that this river flows on purpose for the thirsty. I am sure I do not know what there is mercy in the world for, unless it is for those who want it because of their sin and misery. What could Christ have made an atonement for, except for sinners? It is not possible that the beloved Physician came all the way from heaven to heal those who were well and needed no medicine. It is not likely that he opens his great granaries to feed the nations who have a harvest of their own; it must be that our Joseph has stored up the wheat for hungry perishing ones. O ye that need, come and welcome, for the fountain is opened especially for you; it flows, that such as you may come and drink. Friend, shall our invitations have no power with you? O Holy Spirit, make men willing in this the day of thy power!

I feel sure, too, that you who seek the Lord, will find his grace, because there never has been one refused yet. A dear brother, who, I believe, is now present, told me that he owed his conversion in early life to hearing a sentence or two of a sermon from a man whose name he never knew, but whom he heard preach standing on a log of wood on a village green. He had never gone to listen to the gospel anywhere, but happened to be straying through the village, and he heard the man say that there never was a soul that sincerely sought God through Jesus Christ, but what ultimately, sooner or later, it was brought into a state of peace. And let me say to you all-it may sink into some heart, and one day yield it comfort-it shall not be said by you in eternity, that you sought the Lord and he would not hear you. I recollect what comfort this gave to me when I heard my mother say, that she had heard many wicked things in the world, but she never heard a man wicked enough to say, that he had sincerely sought God through Jesus Christ, and yet had been refused. When I heard that, I thought I would say it, for I was confident that I had sought the Lord, but I had had no comfortable answer. But I have never said it, I have never had cause to say it, for before I could be driven to that state of despair, I looked unto him and was lightened, and so I am persuaded it shall be with you. There never was one refused who said, “Give me this water,” and you shall not be the first.

To close this point, it is to Jesus Christ’s glory to give of his saving mercy, and therefore be certain that he will not withhold it. It cannot make Christ more glorious to deny a poor sinner his mercy. It cannot be to his profit to shut his door in a seeking sinner’s face. It is impossible that the bleeding Lamb should cease to be pitiful to poor bleeding hearts. By everything that can make the name of the great Physician glorious, by every pang of his soul on account of sinners, I am persuaded that he will not deny you. Why, the more a physician cures, the greater is his fame; the more the Saviour saves, the higher is his honour; the more Jesus Christ can bless, the more lofty will be the praise, and the more exalted that mighty shout of “Hallelujah!” that shall go up from ten thousand times ten thousand of sinners, who have been washed in his blood. Come, then, seeking sinner, come thou now, and by humble faith trust in the Mediator’s sacrifice. Wipe those eyes of thine. Be of good cheer. Be bold in heart. He calleth thee. There is room at his table. The door is open. There is room in his heart, he died for those who rest in him. If thou wishest for Christ, he wishes for thee. If thou longest to go to the feast, he wants guests as much as thou wantest the feast. Only trust thou him! God help thee to trust him by his Spirit, and thou shalt live.

III The last thing was to be this: to urge you to-night, before you leave this house-but my urging will be of no service unless God the Holy Spirit own it-to urge you to pray the prayer of the text.

A desire is like seed in the bag, but prayer sows it in the furrow. A desire is like water in the bottle, but prayer drinks thereof. Now, I commend to you the prayer of my text-“Sir, give me this water.” Begin, then, your prayer by honouring Christ. Do not call him “Sir,” but call him “Lord.” She gave him the highest title that her respect could accord. She did not know him in any other capacity, but she called him “Sir.” Now, call Jesus “Lord,” for thou wilt get no mercy if thou dishonourest Christ. Think thou of him as God’s only Son suffering for sinners. Call him “Lord.” Canst thou do that? If thou rejectest his divinity, thou dost shut thyself out of his kingdom. He must be owned as Lord and God as well as Saviour. “Oh!” sayest thou, “I have long age called him Lord, I know him to be divine; I rejoice in the thought of his eternal power and Godhead; I would honour him with all that I have.” Well, then, thou hast well begun, but may grace make thee go further.

Now, in the next place, if thou wouldst pray this prayer aright, notice it, and confess thine undeservingness. It is not, “Sir, sell me this water,” but, “Sir, give me this water.” Confess that it is a gift. Thou shalt never have it otherwise. Away with thy merit-mongering. Away with thy trusting in thy prayers, and thy tears, and thy sense of need. Mercy must be given, or else thou shalt never have it. “Sir, give me, give me, give me this water. O Lord, give me grace, or else I die; give it me of thy free mercy, because thou hast promised to save the chief of sinners; give it me, Lord. I have done with boasting; I have done with the Pharisee’s thanking thee that I am not as other men are; I come empty-handed; I come naked, poor, and miserable; give it me; I have nought to buy it with. Oh! give me, without money and without price, thy salvation.” Friend, does your pride kick at this? Be wise, I pray thee, and bow thy neck to the yoke of grace.

Take care, too, that you make it a personal prayer-“Lord, give it me.” Never mind your neighbours just now. Care for them when you are saved. Look after their salvation when your own is secure; but just now you have first to do with yourself. Your children? Ay, pray for them. Your relatives? Yes, consider them. But, meanwhile, now it is yourself, your own proper self that is concerned. Do not think of the whole congregation. Think now personally of your own soul, and say, “Lord, give me this water.” I mean you, Mary, and you, Thomas, and you, John, let the prayer come from your own lips, as distinctly being from yourself. As you sit or stand now in this house, silently breathe the petition-“Lord, give thy grace to me, even me.”

“Pass me not, O gracious Father,

Sinful though my heart may be;

Thou might’st curse me, but the rather

Let thy mercy light on me,

Even me.

Pass me not, O tender Saviour!

Let me love and cling to thee;

I am longing for thy favour;

When thou comest, call for me,

Even me.”

Once more, I want you to offer this prayer in the present tense-not “Give me this water to-morrow;” but “To-night give it me; Lord, save my soul now.” The worst of most of men is this: they would be saved, but it must be when they die. You would serve the devil all your life, and then cheat him of your soul at the last! Mean, miserable thought! If God be God, serve him, serve him now; and may the Lord have us in life, as we hope he may have us in our death. “Give me this water.” But you are going out next Wednesday; that will be awkward! “Yes,” said some young woman at a revival meeting, who was in much concern, “but I am going to a ball to-morrow;” and so everything good was put off for that; but she dropped down dead at the ball! God grant there may be no such cases of postponing here, lest we postpone ourselves into eternity, where there are no acts of pardon past. May we have Christ now. We may not live to see to-morrow’s sun. Albeit that the sun is well-nigh gone down, yet the light of this evening may not have gone before our life may be ended. How near to death we stand, and yet we scarcely think of it! Right on the edge of our graves sometimes we are, and yet we sport and laugh as though we had a lease of life! You forget death, most of you. The cemetery is so far out of town, but still you should not quite forget, for the hearse goes to and fro with awful regularity, and the church-bell that tolls is not rusty, and those words, “Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” are still familiar to the ears of some of us. It will soon be your turn to die. You, too, must gather up your feet in the bed, and meet your father’s God; God grant that you may then be found right with him. Little do I know for whom these sentences may have a special bearing; but they may have a bearing, dear friend, upon you. I see some of you dressed in black; you have had to go to the grave mourning because of others: that black will be worn by others soon for you, and the place that now knows you shall know you no more for ever. Oh! by the frailty of life, by the near approach of the Master, or by the certainty of death, I pray you see to it that you breathe the prayer, “Lord give me of thy grace.” The Lord help you to pray it. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Revelation 7:9-17.

SEEING JESUS

A Sermon

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“We see Jesus.”-Hebrews 2:9.

The apostle in this place does not claim to have seen the Lord in the flesh, although he boasts in another passage that he has done so, and asserts it as one of the proofs of his apostleship. He is not, indeed, in this text referring to any seeing of the Lord by mortal eyes at all; he is speaking of faith: he means a spiritual sight of the Lord Jesus Christ. The point to which I shall have to draw your attention this evening is, that sight is very frequently used in Scripture as a metaphor, an illustration, a symbol, to set forth what faith is. Faith is the eye of the soul. It is the act of looking unto Jesus. In that act, by which we are saved, we look unto him and are saved from the very ends of the earth. We look to him, and we find salvation.

So far as seeing with these natural eyes of ours is concerned, it is the very opposite of faith. We have heard people speak as though they wished they had lived in the Saviour’s day, and could have seen him. It must have been a great privilege to those who were spiritually-minded, but it was no privilege (as they know now, alas! to their cost), to those who were spiritually blind; for many of those who saw our Lord, and heard him preach, rose up in wrath, to thrust him out of the synagogue, and cast him down the brow of the hill. Instead of being overawed by his sweet majesty, or won by that love which sat upon his brow, they scoffed at him, said he was a Samaritan, and had a devil, and was mad. Even the sight of Jesus Christ upon the cross did not convert the men that stood there, but they thrust out the tongue, and called him by ignominious titles, and increased the sorrows of his death by their scornful expressions. To see Jesus Christ with the natural eye is nothing, my brethren; for this shall be the lot of all men, and they shall look on him whom they have pierced, and shall weep and wail because of him. The sight of him, when he shall come in the latter days to judge the earth in righteousness, will be the source of terror to the wicked, so that there can be no kind of benefit, certainly no saving blessing, from such a sight of Jesus Christ with the eyes as will be afforded even to lost spirits.

The apostle is speaking of the spiritual eye here. He is speaking of that mental vision which God affords to those who have had their eyes anointed with heavenly eye-salve by the Holy Spirit, that they may see, and our business to-night is, first of all, to show why faith is so frequently compared to the sense of sight.

Let us, in the first place, give our attention for a few minutes to the reason why faith is compared to the sight.

Is not sight, in many respects, the noblest of all the senses? To be deprived of any of our senses is a great loss, but perhaps the greatest deprivation of all, is the loss of sight. Certainly, whatever may be the degree of pain that may follow the loss of any other sense, they who lose sight, lose the noblest of human faculties.

For observe, in the first place, that sight is marvellously quick. How wondrously fast and far it travels! It does not take you an hour to make a journey from one part of the country to another by your eye. You are on a mountain, and you can see fifty or a hundred miles, as the case may be, and you see it by the simple opening of the eye. It is all there. Your thought is flashed far away in an instant, in the twinkling of your eye. Standing on some of the Alpine summits, you look far and wide, and see lakes spread at a distance beneath your feet, and far away, there is a range of black mountains, or of hills clothed with snows; you know they are perhaps two hundred miles distant, but in a moment you are there. So quick does the sense of sight travel, that we go to the moon or to the sun without knowing that any space of time is taken up by our eyes travelling there; and those remote stars which the astronomers tell us are so distant that they can scarcely compute how far off they are, yet mine eye travels to them in a second of time, when I gaze upon the starry firmament-so quickly does sight travel-and equally rapid is the action of faith. Brethren, we know not where heaven may be-where the state, the place called “heaven” is, but faith takes us there in contemplation in a single moment. We cannot tell when the Lord may come; it may not be for centuries yet, but faith steps over the distance in a moment, and sees him coming in the clouds of heaven, and hears the trump of resurrection. It would be very difficult, indeed it would be impossible for us to travel backward in any other chariot than that of faith, for it is faith which helps us to see the creation of the world, when the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy. Faith enables us to walk in the garden with our first parents, and to witness the scene when God promised that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head. Faith makes us familiar with patriarchs, and gives us to see the troubles and trials of kings. Faith takes us to Calvary’s summit, and we stand and see our Saviour as plainly as did his mother when she stood sorrowfully at the cross-foot. We this day can fly back to the solemn day of Pentecost, and feel as if we could hear the mighty rushing wind, and see the cloven tongues sitting upon the chosen company, so swiftly does faith travel. And, best of all, in one moment faith can take a sinner out of a state of death into a state of life, can lift him from damnation into salvation, can remove him from the land of the shadow of death, where he sat in affliction and irons, and give him the oil of joy for mourning, and the garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness. O sinner, you can get at Christ in a moment of time. No sooner has your heart trusted Jesus, than you are with him, united to him. You need not say, “Where is he? I would fly to heaven if I could but find him, or dive under hell’s profoundest wave if I could but embrace him.” He is nigh to thee, so nigh that the act of faith conveys thee at once into his bosom, plunges thee into his blood, clothes thee with his righteousness, adopts thee into the family of God, and makes thee coheir with Jesus Christ, joint-heir with him in all things. See, then, why faith is like sight, because of the rapidity of its operations, requiring no time; so that a dying sinner, believing in Jesus, is saved at the eleventh hour, needing not to go roundabout to do penances, and pass through probationary periods, and I know not what besides. He may come to Jesus, weary, and worn, and sad; and the road to Jesus, though it seems long to some, is so short that one step takes you there. You have but to leave self behind, and trust in him, and you are with him. “We see Jesus” then. Faith is like sight for its quickness.

Is not faith like sight too, in the second place, for its largeness? It is a wonderful faculty, that of sight. Your eyes and mine, take in at once the whole of this building, with all the assembled company. This eye will next, if it be placed at a point of vantage, take in the entire city of London with the whole of its populous streets. Give the eye but the opportunity, let the sun go down, and it will take in all the thousands of worlds that stud the brow of night. What is there which the eye cannot grasp, and mark you, not the eye of the great and mighty only, but of the poorest also? Yea, the little insignificant eye of the lark can take in as much, no doubt, as the big eye of the bullock; and the smallest eyes that God creates, he enables to compass greatest things. A marvellous thing is that eye, darting its shafts everywhere, sending its rays around, and embracing all things. Now, just such a power is faith. What a faculty faith has for grasping everything, for it layeth hold upon the past, the present, and the future. It pierceth through most intricate things, and seeth God producing good out of all the tortuous circumstances of providence. And what is more, faith does what the eye cannot do-it sees the infinite; it beholds the invisible; it looks upon that which eye hath not seen, which ear hath not heard; it seeth beneath the veil that parts us from the land of terror, and, moved with fear, it makes us fly to the Saviour. Faith sees through the pearly gate, and, beholding the glory of the better land, it makes us fly to Jesus, who bears the keys of paradise at his girdle. Faith seeth-I know not how to describe fully what faith seeth. What is there she doth not behold? She seeth even God himself; for though in my finite conception I cannot grasp God, and my understanding can only perceive, as it were, his train and skirts, yet my faith, with awful comprehension, can take in the whole of God, and believe what she does not know, and accept what she cannot comprehend. Oh! wondrous faculty of faith! God give it to thee, my dear hearer. God give thee more and more of it, that so it may be to thee the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen, and that all-comprehending faculty shall enable thee to say-

“All things are mine, the gift of God,

The purchase of a Saviour’s blood;

This world is mine, and worlds to come;

Earth is my lodge, and heaven my home.”

Again, sight is a most remarkable faculty, because, in the judgment of most men, it is very sure. We believe that we are often deceived by hearing. We are inclined often, when we hear a story, to say, “I should believe that if I saw it, but I should not else; I have been so often deceived by hearing tales, that I cannot always credit what my ears tell me.” We know how by feeling we are readily enough deceived, like Isaac, who would not have given his blessing to Jacob had not his eye waxed dim, but his touch deceived him. But “seeing is believing,” according to the world’s proverb. When a man sees a thing, then he says he knows it; though, indeed, of late years especially, we have learned that even sight itself is not always to be trusted, for the most extraordinary illusions have been practised upon persons for amusement, and have become a part of the apparatus of pleasure and philosophy. You cannot believe your own eyes nowadays. You see a great many things, or think you see them, which are not there, and things which you could declare to be in such-and-such a position, turn out not to be there at all; it is merely some reflection, or some delusion, simple enough when explained, but most puzzling until it is opened up to you. However, sight is generally regarded by men to be the surest of all our faculties. If we see a thing, there it is, there is no questioning it. Now, faith has this certifying power in a much higher degree, for the faith which is of the operation of God, and which distinguishes his own elect, is infallible. The faith of God’s people will not believe a lie. It is written, that “if it were possible,” such-and-such “would deceive the very elect,” but it is not possible. Where faith takes the word of God as her basis, and rests upon it, she becomes an infallible faculty, and we may depend upon that which she reveals to us. It is a glorious thing to know certainties, such as the existence of God, and the everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure; such blessed certainties as the effectual atonement which has put away the sin of the Lord’s people; and such certainties as the enjoyment of the presence of the Holy Spirit in his indwelling power within our soul. May we have much of this faith which is like to sight for its certifying power.

Once more, is not faith wondrously like sight, from its power to affect the mind, and enable a man to realise a thing? What I mean is this. That eminent preacher in America, Mr. Beecher, frequently used to address his audience upon negro slavery, and his touching eloquence never failed to move his people to an abhorrence of the thing, and to a sympathy with those who smarted under its power. But on one occasion, as I have been told, he wished to produce an extraordinary feeling in order to raise a large sum of money for a certain purpose. He therefore expatiated upon the sorrows of a beautiful girl, almost white, but still with sufficient African blood in her veins for her master to claim her for his slave, and she was about to be sold far south for the worst of purposes. Mr. Beecher wanted to touch the hearts of his people to purchase her liberty, that she, their sister, might be free. He had spoken earnestly, but to produce the required effect, he called her from her seat, and bade her stand up in the midst, and you may guess that that morning there was no difficulty in collecting all the needed funds to set her free. The sight of the slave-girl had moved their hearts as the preacher’s words could not do. Now, it is so usually. We talk about poverty, but when do you feel your hands go into your pockets so freely as when you have been visiting a poor family where the little ones are crying for bread, and where the parents have no means for providing for them? You feel for orphans. Many of us do very sincerely, but we never felt for them so thoroughly as when we began to deal with them and to see them and their widowed mothers. In our newly-founded Orphanage-for which I would bespeak your help continually-we have had already to deal with many fatherless ones, and we have come more than ever into contact with them, and we begin to feel that the fatherless are indeed objects of pity, for the sight of them and of the widows has put the thing forcibly before us. We have heard of one who, being cold in the streets, and seeing a poor shivering family, thought that winter was very hard, and that when he got home he would take care to put by some money to buy blankets; but when he had sat down by the fire, and thoroughly warmed himself, and had partaken of his cheerful meal, he thought the weather must be changed, and that it was not so bad a thing, after all, to have a little winter; and so the blankets were never bought, and the poor were never cared for. There is nothing like sight, my brethren, to convince, notwithstanding the moment when sight is over, feeling may depart. Now, faith has also this mighty reasoning power in even a higher degree. If it is real faith, it makes the Christian man in dealing with God feel towards God as though he saw him; it gives him the same awe, and yet the same joyous confidence which he would have if he were capable of actually beholding the Lord. Faith, when it takes a stand at the foot of the cross, makes us hate sin and love the Saviour just us much as though we had seen our sins placed to Christ’s account, and had seen the nails driven through his hands and feet, and seen the bloody scourges as they made the sacred drops of blood to fall.

“We were not with the faithful few

Who stood thy bitter cross around;

Nor heard thy prayer for those who slew,

Nor felt that earthquake rock the ground;

We saw no spear-wound pierce thy side:

Yet we can feel that thou hast died.”

Faith realises the thing, and thus becomes “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hence the glory and the beauty of faith. Now, many of you have heard about the wrath of God, but it has all been forgotten. You have heard about the judgment, and the wrath of God to come afterwards. You have heard of the atonement, and the power of Jesus to put away sin; but you have had no effect produced upon your minds, because, as the apostle puts it, “It was not mixed with faith in them that heard it.” But if you had had faith in that which was proclaimed, and had come savingly to trust in the truth which was presented as the ground of your salvation, you would have been moved, and stirred, and excited, and led to hate sin and to fly to Jesus. God grant to us, then, that we may have more and more faith.

I have thus, I trust, at sufficient length, shown the parallel between faith and sight.

And now we shall spend a minute or two upon another thought, namely, that faith, the sight of the soul, is here spoken of as a continuous thing.

“We see Jesus.” It does not say, “We can see Jesus”-that is true enough: the spiritual eye can see the Saviour; nor does it say, “We have seen him;” that also, glory be to God, is a delightful fact, we have seen the Lord, and we have rejoiced in seeing him; nor does the text say, “We shall see him,” though this is our pride and our hope, that “when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is;” but the text says, “We see Jesus;” we do see him now and continually. This is the common habit of the Christian; it is the element of his spiritual life; it is his most delightful occupation; it is his constant practice. “We see Jesus.”

Dear brethren and sisters, I am afraid some of us forget this. For instance, we see Jesus Christ as our Saviour, we being sinners still. And is it not a delightful thing always to feel one’s self a sinner, and always to stand looking to Christ as one’s Saviour, thus beholding him evermore? “As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, even so walk ye in him”-not merely sometimes coming to him as you came at first, but evermore abiding in him. “To whom coming”-always coming, constantly coming-“as unto a living stone.” I was present at a meeting of believers a short time ago, when a conversation of this kind occurred. A brother in the Lord, one of the most fervent men I know, said that sometimes when his piety flagged, and his heart grew cold, he found it a very blessed thing to go and visit the sick and the dying; and he found this to be such a sweet restoration to his faith that he recommended us all, as often as we could, to frequent dying beds. Now, another brother who was present, who preaches the gospel, but who at the same time is a butcher, said he thanked God he did not need to go to a dying bed to see Jesus, and to get his heart set right; that he had had as sweet fellowship with God in Camden Town Market, as he ever had in the house of prayer, and that he found it best always to live, as his brother wished to live sometimes, namely, always conscious of sin, and always looking to the Sin-offering. Come to Jesus, then, as you came at first. Fly to the fountain always as needing constant cleansing-not as though you had not been washed, but still abiding, continuing in blessed recognition of your present cleansing that flows from the fountain filled with blood. It is very sweet to remember that the fountain we sing about as being opened in Jerusalem, is opened “for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem”-not so much for sinners, though it is opened for them, as for saints-“for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” Let us always be coming to it; and each morning and each night, let this be the cry of our spirit, “Still guilty, still vile, still polluted, we see Jesus, and, seeing him, we know that we are saved.”

Should not this, also, be the mode of our life in another respect? We are now disciples. Being saved from our former conversation, we are now become the disciples of the Lord Jesus; and ought we not, as disciples, to be constantly with our Master? Ought not this to be the motto of our life, “We see Jesus”? We should not regard the commands of Jesus Christ as being a law left to us by a departed Master whom we cannot see, and to whom we cannot fly. Is it not better to believe that Christ is a living Christ, that he is in the midst of his church still, observing our order, noting our obedience or our disobedience, a Master absent in one sense, but still in another point of view ever present, according to his promise-“Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world”? We should

“Stay with him near the tree,

Stay with him near the tomb;

Stay till the risen Lord we see,

Stay watching ‘till he come.’ ”

My brethren, should we be so frequently cold and careless if we could always see Jesus? Would our hearts be so hard towards perishing sinners if we always saw that face which was bedewed with tears for them? Do you think we could sit still, or grow worldly, or spend all our energies upon ourselves, if we could see the Crucified, who though “he saved others, himself he could not save”? I wish I could always come here to preach Jesus “seeing” him by my side, and feeling in my heart that I was preaching in my Master’s presence. I would that you could always come into this place, both at prayer-meetings and at all other times, feeling “The Master is there; let us bow as in his sight; let our worship be given-not to one who is blind, and who will not see us, but to one who beholds us all, and sees our inmost thoughts.” As disciples we should be more punctual in our obedience, more consistent in our imitation of Jesus, if we had him always before us. The Romanist puts up the crucifix before his eyes: well, let us put up Christ in our spirits. He wears the cross on his bosom: let us carry Christ on our heart, still thinking of Jesus, seeing him at all times.

Would it not also, dear friends, be very much for our comfort if we were to see Jesus always as our Friend in our sojourn here? “Henceforth,” saith he, “I call you not servants, but I have called you friends.” You are very poor, my dear brother; do you see Jesus? He was poorer than you. You have somewhere to go to sleep in to-night, but he could say, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.” Are you racked with pain to-night? Let it help you to see Jesus. You are not “exceeding sorrowful even unto death,” nor are your griefs to be compared with his. Have you been deserted and betrayed? See Jesus kissed by Judas! Have you been denied by some friend who promised to be faithful? Look into the face of Jesus as he turns upon Peter! Does death itself stare you in the face? Remember him who, “being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” We should never be alone if we could see Jesus; or at least, if we were, it would be a blessed solitude. We should never feel deserted if we could see Jesus; we should have the best of helpers. I know not if we should feel weak if we always saw him, for he would be our strength and our song, he would become our salvation. The bitter waters of Marah, the afflictions and troubles of the day, would all be sweet if this tree were cast into the flood for us, and if Jesus were brought, in solemn meditation, into contact with our spirits. Oh! to see Jesus. You have seen him as your Saviour: you desire to see him as your Master. Oh! to see him as your Friend, upon whose bosom you can still lean your aching head, into whose ear you can ever pour your tale of sorrow. Through the wilderness you may continually come up leaning on your Beloved, and with him you may have perpetually such sweet enjoyments, that earth, desert as it is, shall seem to blossom like a garden of roses, and your spirit shall enjoy heaven below.

Again, would it not be much better for us, dear friends, if we were to see Jesus as our Forerunner? I do not know whether it is so with the most of you, but while some of us rejoice in the prospect of heaven, yet the thought of death is sometimes surrounded with much gloom. It cannot be an easy thing to go down amidst the chill darkness of the river, and there to be separated, the soul from the body, and to leave this earthly tabernacle behind, an inheritance to worms: it has a hideous appearance to us sometimes. Even the apostle himself shuddered a little at it when he said, “Not that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon.” Death seemeth a bitter pill to us all; and unless it is swallowed up in victory, and the victory takes away the sting of death, the hour of dissolution will be too bitter. But do you not think that our thoughts of gloom about death sometimes arise from a forgetfulness that Jesus will be with us? If our faith could see Jesus as making our bed in our sickness, and then standing by our side in the last solemn article, to conduct us safely through the iron gates, should we not then look upon death in a very different light? You know how Watts’s hymn puts it-

“Oh! if my Lord would come and meet.

My soul should stretch her wings in haste,

Fly fearless through death’s iron gate,

Nor feel the terrors as she pass’d.

Jesus can make a dying bed

Feel soft as downy pillows are,

While on his breast I lean my head,

And breathe my life out sweetly there.”

My dear brethren and sisters, gathering up all I should like to have said, but cannot say, into one, it is this: if we see Jesus, being always with us, from morn till eve, in life and in death, what noble Christians it will make us! Now we shall not get angry with each other so quickly. We shall see Jesus; and we cannot be angry when that dear loving face is in view. And when we have been affronted, we shall be very ready to forgive when we see Jesus. Who can hate his brother when he sees that face, that tender face, more marred than that of any man? When we see Jesus, do you think we shall get worldly? Would you have spoken as you did across the counter to-day, brother, had you seen Jesus? My dear friend, would you have been as you have been to your work-fellow? would you have spoken as you did to your servants? would you have acted as you did to your master, had you seen Jesus? They say “a master’s eye doeth much;” certainly the presence of Jesus would do much. “The master’s eye doeth more than both his hands,” they say. Oh! for that consciousness of the eye of Jesus, which shall be like the hand of Jesus, moulding us according to his will. “We see Jesus.” Now, I hope you do see Jesus, as you sit in the pews there. Sometimes on Sabbath days, when the Lord helps the preacher, and Christ is evidently set forth amongst you, you have seen Jesus; but will you see him after you have gone down those steps? Will you see him when you get home to your houses? Will you see him next morning in the workroom, or at the business, or in the market? This is not quite so easy, and yet I hold that, if we had more grace, we should see Christ just as well in the market, among the baskets of fruit, as we can at the Tabernacle sitting in our pews. We should see him quite as well if we were driving a horse, or walking along Cheapside, as when we are in our closets, bowing the knee; for that is true grace which is with us always, and that is the presence of Jesus which abides with us for ever, and that is true piety which shines the fairest in the midst of worldly cares. May we each one of us have this, and may it be the expression of our life-“We see Jesus;” and then we shall be able to go farther and say, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

I shall detain you just a minute or two longer, for a third point about our sight of Jesus, namely: we have said that faith is like sight, and that our faith should be a present grace, in active operation; but there may be this reflection about our present sight of Christ, that sometimes our faith, like our sight, is not quite clear.

You do not always see, I suppose, equally well. There are many things that affect the optic nerve, and we know that in fair weather we can see a longer distance than we can in cloudy weather. I was at Newcastle some time ago, in a friend’s house, and when I went up to the top window and looked out, he said, “There is a fine view, sir, if you could but see it; we can see Durham Cathedral from here on a Sunday.” “On a Sunday!” I said, “how is that?” “Well, you see all that smoke down there, all those furnaces, and so on; they are all stopped on a Sunday, and then, when the air is clear, we can see Durham Cathedral.” In a moment, I thought-ah! we can see a great deal on a Sunday, when the smoke of the world is gone for a little time; we can see all the way to heaven then; but sometimes, what with the smoke we make in business, and the smoke the devil makes, and the smoke that sin makes, we can scarcely see anything at all. Well, since the natural sight has to undergo variations, both from itself within and from the smoke without, and from the state of the weather, we must not wonder if our faith undergoes variations too. It ought not to do so, but sometimes it does. There are seasons when we realise that Christ is ours. Glory be to his name, if all the devils in hell should speak to the contrary, yet we know that our Beloved is ours, and that we are his. We are sure of it. Though all the angels in heaven should come and deny it, we would face them out, and say, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.” But there are other times when the same believer sings Newton’s hymn, but whenever he does, he ought to sing it alone, for fear anybody should catch the contagion of it-

“’Tis a point I long to know,

Oft it causes anxious thought:

Do I love the Lord or no,

Am I his or am I not?”

There are hours when some of us would be glad to creep into a mouse, hole or hide ourselves in a nutshell. We feel so little, so insignificant. Our faith is at so miserable an ebb, that we know not what to do. Well, let us not be astonished, as though we were not the children of God, because of this. Everything that has life has variations. A block of wood is not affected by the weather, but a living man is. You may drive a stake into the ground, and it will feel no influence of spring, summer, autumn, or winter; but if the stake be alive, and you drive it into the soil where there is moisture, it will soon begin to sprout, and you will be able to tell when spring and winter are coming by the changes that take place in the living tree. Life is full of these changes; do not wonder, then, if you experience them.

Again, faith, like sight, is not only subject to variations, but it has great growth. Our children, in a certain sense, see as truly when they are a day old as when they are grown up to be twenty years old; but we must not suppose that they see as accurately, for they do not. I think observations would teach us that little children see all things as on a level surface, and that distant objects seem to them to be near, for they have not yet received experience enough to judge of the relative position of things. That is an acquired knowledge, and no doubt very early acquired, but still it is learned as a matter of mental experience. And let me say, though you may not have noticed it, all our measures of distance by the eye are matters which have to be gained by habit and observation. When I first went to Switzerland, with a friend, from Lucerne we saw a mountain in the distance which we were going to climb. I pointed out a place where we should stop half-way up, and I said, “We shall be there in about four hours and a half.” “Four hours and a half!” my friend said, “I’d undertake to walk it in ten minutes.” “No, not you.” “Well, but half an hour!” He looked again, and said, “Anybody could get there in half an hour!” It seemed no distance at all. And yet when we came to toil up, the four hours and a half turned into five or six, before we reached the place. Our eves were not accustomed to mountains, and we were not able to measure them; and it is only by considerable experience that you get to understand what a mountain is, and how a long distance appears. You are altogether deceived, and do not know the position of things till you become wiser. And it is just so with faith. Faith in the Christian when he first gets it, is true and saving; but it is not in proportion. The man believes one doctrine, perhaps, and that is so delightful that it swallows up every other. Then he gets hold of another, and he swings that way like a pendulum; no doctrine can be true but that one. Perhaps in a little time he swings back like a pendulum the other way. He is unsteady because, while his faith perceives the truth, it does not perceive the harmonies of truth: his faith, for instance, may perceive the Lord Jesus Christ, but as yet it has not learned the position which Christ occupies in the great economy of grace. He is half-blind, and cannot see far. He has sight, but it is not the sight which he will yet receive. Like the blind man who, when our Lord healed him, saw men at first as trees walking. He came in due time to see clearly, for grace always goes on in its work-it will never halt half-way; but at first all was obscure and confused. Just as when you pass from darkness into light, you are unable to bear it, you are dazzled, and need a short time to accustom the eye to the brilliance; but in due time the eye is strengthened, and you can bear more and more light, till we again see with comfort. Let us ask, then, of the Lord, that he will increase our faith till the mental eye shall become clear and bright, and we shall be made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, to be with Christ, and to see him as he is. If you have but little faith, remember that that will save you. The little diamond is as much a diamond as the Koh-i-noor. So little faith is as truly the faith of God’s elect as the greatest faith. If you do but see Jesus, though it be but by the corner of your eye, yet if you see him, you shall be saved; and though you may not see as much of Christ as advanced saints do, yet if you see enough of him to trust him, to rely on him entirely, your sins which are many are forgiven, and you shall yet receive grace for grace, until you shall see him in his glory. However, always be praying, “Lord, increase our faith.”

The last thing I have to notice about this true faith in Christ as sight, is, that it is at all times a very simple thing to look. Look! No one needs go to a grammar school or to a university to look. Look! The smallest child, as we have said, can look; the most illiterate and untaught can look. If there be life in a look, glory be to God for such a provision, because it is available for each one of us! Sinner, if thou wouldst be saved, there is nothing for thee to think upon but Christ. Do thy sins trouble thee? Go to him, and trust in him, and the moment thou lookest to him thou art saved. “Oh,” says one, “but I cannot do that; my faith is so weak.” Well, when I walk about and see a beautiful sight, very seldom do I think about my own sight; my mind is occupied with the sight, and so let it be with you. Never mind that eye; think more about the vision to be seen. Think of Christ. It would be a pitiful thing if, when there were some great procession in the streets, all you thought about was your own eye; you would see but very little. Think less about your faith, and more about Jesus.

“Weary sinner! keep thine eyes

On the atoning sacrifice;

View him bleeding on the tree,

Pouring out his life for thee.”

Cast thy guilty soul on him,

Find him mighty to redeem;

At his feet thy burden lay;

Look thy doubts and fears away.”

Turn over and over in your mind the great transaction on the cross. I have sometimes said to young seekers, Go home and spend an hour deliberately in reading about the death of Christ, and then in picturing it to your mind’s eye, for it is in that way that faith comes. Through the Holy Spirit’s power, we come to believe that story by thinking upon it, seeing Jesus in it, and then following on, and giving it the full credence of our spirit. Go to the cross for faith if you cannot go with faith, and the Lord grant that you may find in Jesus

“True belief and true repentance,

Every grace that brings us nigh.”

So that you, too, may say with us, “We see Jesus.” What is there in this world which is worth looking at in comparison with him? All else is like the mirage of the desert, which appears but to fade away, deluding the weary traveller with hopes of rest and refreshing, and leaving him sick at heart, because all has passed as the baseless fabric of a dream, leaving not a wreck behind. Can you gain ought by watching the bubbles on the stream of time? Will they shake your death-thirst and cool your brow in the article of death? Is there aught of healing in the uplifted images of earthly gold, and honour, wisdom, and power? You have tried them-well, how do they answer? I know of one who, travelling over a pass in Italy, one evening, secured a light to help him over a dangerous and difficult part of the way further on. It was not needed till the narrow steep descent was reached, in fact, it was in the way till then, but just as the traveller came to the very spot where it was required, it went out and left him in utter darkness. So it is full often in the sinner’s experience, who travels in the dark, his lights go out when most needed. Oh! far better then to walk in daylight, using the eye of faith, in the clear sunshine of gospel light from the Sun of Righteousness. Walk in the light. Come to the light, and live seeing Jesus.

“ ‘We would see Jesus’, for the shadows lengthen

Across this little landscape of our life;

‘We would see Jesus,’ our weak faith to strengthen,

For the last weariness, the final strife.

‘We would see Jesus,’ the great rock foundation,

Whereon our feet were set by sovereign grace;

Nor life nor death, with all their agitation,

Can thence remove us if we see his face.

‘We would see Jesus’-sense is all too blinding,

And heaven appears too dim, too far away;

We would see thee, to gain a sweet reminding

That thou hast promised our great debt to pay.

‘We would see Jesus:’ this is all we’re needing-

Strength, joy, and willingness, come with the sight;

‘We would see Jesus,’ dying, risen, pleading;

Then welcome day, and farewell mortal night!”

The Lord send you away with his blessing, for Jesus’ sake.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Hebrews 2.