Last Thursday evening,* as many of you will remember, I addressed you upon the final perseverance of the saints. I have been greatly surprised and gratified during the week to learn how many persons found comfort and cheer from the simple explanation of that doctrine, which I then gave you. In fact, on the two past Thursday evenings we have been handling a precept and a promise both relating to the same matter, though each putting it in a different light. The one admonished us to perseverance by holding fast; the other assured us of preservation, because we are fast held. The welcome you gave to these familiar expositions has led me to think it would be acceptable, specially, to such of you as have been lately brought into the sacred household, and who may not even know the rudiments of religious experience, were I to-night to follow up those two elementary discourses with some little account of the great inward conflict to which the believer’s life is exposed.

The passage before us tells a portion of the experience of the Apostle Paul. We all of us concede that he was a most eminent saint. Indeed, we place him in the front rank. For this reason his experience is the more valuable to us. If the greatest saints have their inward struggles, how much more should we expect to have them who have not attained the same degree of grace the apostle did. If he who was not a whit behind the very chief of the apostles yet had to say, “When I would do good evil is present with me,” then you and I, who can only take the position of babes in grace, or of ordinary disciples of Jesus Christ, must not be surprised if we have to bear assaults that surprise us and enter into struggles that distress us, and often are fain by stress of emotion to cry out, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

I shall ask you, therefore, for your personal consolation to notice, first of all, that the ruling power in the Christian’s mind is a strong affection, and, therefore, an intense pleasure in that which is pure and holy,-“I delight in the law of God after the inward man;” secondly, that there are passions and propensities within the breast of a man which come into direct conflict with this holy principle,-“I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind;” and, thirdly, that the discipline involved in this constant hostility, despite all the fretfulness and irritation it causes, is not without true and satisfactory evidence of our spiritual welfare. “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

1. It may be said of every true Christian that the ruling power in him delights in the law of God. The new nature which God has created in every believer cannot sin because it is born of God. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, and as such without guile, unblemished, incorruptible. We are made partakers of the divine nature. The divine nature, so far as it is communicable, is given to us when we are begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We are born not of the flesh, not of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God. We receive from God a new nature at the time of our regeneration. This new nature, though it is the younger, compels the older nature within us to submit to it. It has a struggle, but it gets the victory; that significant augury, “The elder shall serve the younger,” is abundantly fulfilled in the little kingdom within our souls. It has a long struggling trial before the full subjugation; there are many harassing rebellions to encounter, but at length that which is born of the Spirit shall overcome that which is born of the flesh, and the divine nature within us shall vanquish the sensual nature. The Christian man because of this new nature implanted in him delights in the law of God. He has no desire to change that law in any way whatever. When we read the ten commandments, our conscience approves the ordinances of God while it reproves our own culpable shortcomings; yea, we feel that only God could have drawn up so complete, so perfect a code. We would not wish to have one single iota, word, or syllable of that law altered, though it condemns us. Though we know, apart from the precious blood of Christ, it would have cast us into hell, and most justly so, yet with holy instinct, pure taste, and righteous judgment we consent unto the law that it is good. It expresses God’s mind on the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood, harmony and discord, and our mind agrees with God’s mind. We perceive it not as truth established by investigation, but as truth all radiant, shining in its own majesty. We would willingly take our place on Mount Ebal or Mount Gerizim to give our tremulous Amen to the curses pronounced on disobedience, or to hail with solemn joy the blessings avouched to those who observe and do his commandments. Nor, beloved, would the Christian man wish to have the spirituality of the law in any degree compromised. He is not only pleased with the law as he reads it, though, as I have said, it condemns him, but he is pleased with the very spirit of the law. What if the law condemns in him an unchaste look as well as an unchaste action? He condemns that unchaste look in himself. What if the law reaches to the heart and says, “Thou shouldst not even desire thy neighbour’s goods, much less shouldst thou steal them?” He feels in his soul that it is sin, and that it is a bitter thing in him even to covet where he does not defraud. He never thinks that God is too exacting. He never for a moment says, “I knew that thou wast an austere man, gathering where thou hadst not strewed,” but he consents to the law though it be high and broad, exceedingly broad. Though the thunderings, the lightnings, and the voices which usher in that law do terrify him, yet the wisdom, the equity, and the benevolence which ordained it resolves this awe into admiration. Being born from above, in fellowship with Christ, at peace with God, his very constitution is in unison with the law of the Lord. Is the law spiritual, so is he. The pact is unbroken, the concord perfect. I trust full many of you, my hearers, can endorse this; for, doubtless, as many of us as have been born again can bear witness that we delight in the law of God after the inward man.

Again, no Christian desires to have any dispensation to exempt him from complying with any one of the Lord’s commands. His old nature may desire it, but the inner man saith, “No; I do not wish to get or to give any concession to the flesh, to have an allowance or make an excuse for sin in any point whatever. The flesh craves for liberty, and asks to have provision made for it. But, does any believer here want liberty to sin? My brother, if it were possible to conceive without blasphemy that the Lord should say to you, “My child, if there be one sin that you love, you may continue in it,” would you desire any sin? Would you not rather say, “Oh, that I may be purged from every sin, for sin to me is misery, it is but another term for sorrow. Moral evil is its own curse; a plague, a pest, at the thought of which I shudder.” It is thought a blessing in the Church of Rome, that a dispensation be given to men from certain religious duties. We ask no such favour; we value not their boon. Liberty to sin would mean putting double fetters upon us. A license even for a moment to relax our obedience to Christ would be but a license to leave the paths of light and the way of peace to wander awhile in darkness and danger; to exchange the glow of health for sore distemper and smarting pain. Brethren, I am sure you never did, and never will, if you be believers, ask the Lord for permission to transgress his statutes. You may have taken leave to do what you did not know was sinful at the time. There may have been a desire in your heart after something that was wrong. I grant you that. But the new-born nature, the moment it discovers its culpability, recoils at it and turns from it; it could do no otherwise. It cannot sin, for it is born of God. The new nature that is in you shudders at sin; it is not its element; it cannot endure it, whereas before you could riot in it and take pleasure in it, and drink iniquity like water. You ask no dispensation that you may escape from the law. You delight in it after the inward man.

The new-born nature of the Christian also laboriously desires to keep the holy law according to the mind of God. If it were proposed to any one of us that we should have whatever we would ask for,-if in a vision of the night the Lord should appear to us, and say to us as he did to Solomon, “Ask what I shall give you,” I do not think any of us would hesitate. I cannot imagine myself asking for riches or honour, or even for wisdom, unless it were wisdom of a far higher order than is commonly esteemed among the sons of men. But the gift which I feel I should crave beyond every other boon is holiness, pure and immaculate holiness. Possessing now an interest in Christ, knowing that my sins are forgiven me for his name’s sake, the one thing I desire beyond everything else is to be perfectly free from sin, and to lead an unblemished life without sin of omission or sin of commission. Now, every Christian that has that desire within his soul will never be satisfied until that desire is fulfilled; and this shows that we delight in the law of God after the inward man. Nor is it long ere that desire will be fulfilled. Why, we shall be like him when we shall see him as he is; and until we do see him as he is and are like him, we shall always have restlessness of spirit, and always be crying out for more grace, and labouring against the evil that is in us, if by any means we may subdue it. O yes, beloved, in the fact that this is what we hope for, this is what we pray for, this is what we fight for, this is what we would be willing to die for, that we might be entirely conformed to the mind and will of God, there is evidence that we see that the law of God is good and delight in it after the inward man.

This, however, is proved in a more practical way to onlookers when the Christian shews that the life of God is enabling him to overcome many of the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Oftentimes in striving to be holy he has to put himself to much stern self-denial; but he does it cheerfully. For instance, should it happen in business that by using a very common trick in trade he might gain more profit, he will not do it if he is a Christian; he feels he cannot do this evil and sin against his God. Or should the young convert find that a little divergence from the right path would please the worldly people with whom he is obliged to associate, he may, perhaps, turn aside in his weakness, but the new life within him will never be easy if he does. The inner life, when it is in its vigour, will make him say, “Though I should lose the goodwill of these people, let me serve my Lord and Master. I must forfeit my situation if it come to that sooner than I can do wrong. I must be put even in peril of my daily bread sooner than I will be found wilfully breaking a commandment of Christ. I cannot do it.” Now, I know many of God’s children, who have often suffered very severely, and have passed through a great many trials and troubles because they would not flinch from following their Lord. This is one of the proofs that they delight in the law of God after the inner man. When a man is willing to bear reproach, to be scoffed at, to be ridiculed, and taunted as mad for righteousness sake, when he is willing that men should sneer at him as a hypocrite and yelept him a Pharisee, when he braves the cold shoulder from those whose company he would otherwise have enjoyed, and all because he must and will follow the mind and direction of God’s Spirit, I say then it is that the man gives proof that he delights in the law of God. I thank God there are in this Church those who have given that proof, and I pray that you and I, all of us who have received the divine nature, may give constant evidence by using the good art at all hazards, and taking up the cross at all risks, that our soul, even if it cannot be perfect in action, at any rate, would be perfect in aim, and determined by God’s help to cherish a love and desire in all things to do Jehovah’s will. Is there any one here who is obliged to say, “Well, I do not consent to the law of God: I do not delight in it. When I hear it said, ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy;’ I wish it were not evil to do those things that are forbidden. Pity ’tis our pleasure and our profit, our duty and our delight, should be so much at variance. I would rather there were less law and more license. Those commandments, especially, that touch our thoughts, and trench on the freedom of our will, are harsh and unpalatable. I am not content to be bound by them. I would rather live as I like.” Well, my dear friend, I will say nothing more severe to you than this, you have no part or lot in this matter at all. If you had, if your heart had been renewed, you would talk after a very different matter. Whenever you hear persons commending a low standard of religion, a low standard of morality, whenever you find them vindicating lax views of right and wrong, you may rest assured that the spirit that is in them is not the spirit of the holy God, but it is the spirit of their sinful nature; yea, the spirit of Satan may have come in to make the human spirit even worse than it was before. But, does your heart delight in God’s law? Is there a charm in that which is right to your soul? Is there a beauty in that which is virtuous to your Spirit’s eye? Do you especially admire the character of Jesus because “in his life the law appears drawn out in living characters?” If so, then I trust, dear friends, you give evidence that you have been made partakers of the divine nature, that you are regenerate, and though there is evil in you still, yet there is the life of God in you which will resist the evil and subdue it, till you are brought safely to his right hand.

Now, secondly, we come to the conflict. Where there is this delight in the law of God, yet there is another law in the members. So Paul says, and he seems to me to speak of it in three different stages. He could see it first, and then he had to encounter it, and at length to some extent he was enthralled by it; for he says, “bringing me into captivity.”

There is in each one of us a law of sin. It may always be seen even when it is not in active operation, if our eyes are lightened. Whenever I hear a man say he has no propensity to sin, I infer at once that he does not live at home. I should think he must live a long way from home, or else he has never been anywhere except in the front parlour of his house where he keeps his profession. He cannot have gone through all the chambers and searched them thoroughly, or he would somewhere have discovered that there is an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. This is true of the believer; he has to cry out against another nature, and say, “Help thou mine unbelief.” It is always in the man. Sometimes it is dormant. I do not know whether the devil ever goes to sleep, but our sinful nature seems for a time to do so: not, indeed, that it is any the less sinful when asleep than when it is awake. It is just as bad as it can be. Gunpowder is not always exploding, but it is always explosive. Bring but the spark to it and anon it bursts out, as though it had been ready and waiting to exert its powers of explosion. The viper may be coded up doing no damage; but it hath a deadly virus beneath its fangs. It is still a a viper even when it is not putting forth its poisonous tooth. There is within our nature that which would send the best saint to hell if sovereign grace did not prevent. There is a little hell within the heart of every child of God, and only the great God of heaven can over-master that mischievous indwelling sin. This sin will crop up when it is least expected, generally it breaks forth suddenly, taking us by surprise. I have known it to my sorrow. I am not going to stand here and make many confessions with regard to myself. Howbeit I did know a man once who, in attending a prayer-meeting felt his heart much lifted up in the ways of God, drew very near to his heavenly Father, held sweet communication with Christ, and enjoyed much of the fellowship of the Spirit. Little did he think that the moment the prayer-meeting was over somebody in the congregation would insult and bitterly affront him. Because he was taken unawares his anger was roused, and he spake unadvisedly with his tongue. He had better have held his peace. Now, I believe, that man if he had been met at any other time, for he was of a tolerably quiet temper, would have taken the insult without resenting it or making any reply whatever; but he had been unwarned, therefore he was unguarded. The very love shed abroad in his heart caused the animosity he encountered to shock his feelings the more. He had been so near heaven that he expected everybody present had thoughts in harmony with his own; he had not reckoned upon being assailed then. When there is most money in the house, then is the likeliest time for thieves to break in; and when there is most grace in the soul the devil will try, if he can, to assault it. Pirates were not accustomed to attack vessels when they went out to fetch gold from the Indies: they always waylaid them when they were coming home, with a view of getting rich spoil worth the capture. If you have enjoyed a sermon, if you have got near to God in prayer, if the Scriptures have been very precious to you, you may expect just then that the dragon that sleeps within will wake up and disturb the peaceful calm of your soul:

“We should expect some danger nigh,

When we receive too much delight.”

Let us be the more watchful then in seasons of tranquility. This evil nature, you see, will sometimes be excised, as if by jealousy, when we are being refreshed with good. It will certainly be developed when we are exposed to evil. The man who congratulates himself because he feels no sinful proclivities, no unholy thoughts, no impure imaginations, no conceited ideas, no turbulent passions had need be reminded of that saying of old Rutherford-“When the temptation sleepeth the madman is wise, the harlot is chaste; but when the vessel is pierced out cometh that which is within, be it wine or water.” O my soul, thou hast only been at rest awhile, because there was not any exciting cause for a time. Put into the company of godly people and the mind occupied with good things continually, the bad instincts may sleep; but cast into other society, it only needs a slight provocation, and oh, how soon the evil that always was within manifests itself abundantly. There are weeds in almost every soil. If you throw up the soil from ten or twenty feet deep there will be found the seeds from which they grow. Now, those seeds cannot germinate until they are put in a convenient place; then let the sun shine and the dews fall, and the weeds begin to show themselves. There may be many weeds in our nature, deep down, out of sight, but should they be thrown up by some change of circumstances, we shall find in ourselves evils we never dreamt of. Oh, let no man boast; let no man say, “I should never fall into that particular sin.” How knowest thou, my brother? thou mayst never have been in that position in which such a sin would have allured you? Beware! perhaps where thou thinkest thou art iron, thou art clay; and when thou thinkest that the gates are closed with bars of brass it may be but rotten wood. With respect to none of us, even the holiest, is there reason to trust his best faculties, his best desires, his best resolutions; we are utter weakness through and through, and to transgressions prone, notwithstanding all that God’s grace has done for us. The sin which is in us as a taint in our constitution, might easily break out as a loathsome distemper, spreading over the entire man from head to foot, and spoiling all the character. I pray God it never may.

It is remarkable how sin will show itself in the Christain, even in the holiest of his duties. Suppose it is prayer. When you feel that you ought to pray, and would draw near to God, do you not find sometimes an unwillingness as if the knees were stiff and the heart was hard. In prayer, when your soul is led away with thoughts of things divine, straight across your soul like some carrion crow flying across a landscape, there comes a bad thought and you cannot get rid of it, or per-perhaps you get through your devotion with much delight in God; but you have not got out of your little room before an alien pleasure steals over your mind, a self-satisfaction that you have prayed so well that you are growing in grace; that you are rising to the fulness of the stature of a man in Christ. Is it so, that you come from the chamber of reverent worship musing on your own importance; meditating your fitness to occupy a place above the common rank and file of the soldiers of Christ-or that you might very well take a lieutenant’s rank in the church of God. Perhaps, again you did not feel any liberty in prayer, and then with a peevish freeful temper you will inwardly murmur, if you do not actually say, you might as well give up praying such prayers as those, there can be no use in them. So do what you may, or leave undone what you may, yet still the evil that is within will rise; it will intrude upon you at some time or other to let you know of its existence. You may bolt the door, and you may fancy that no thief can get in, and begin to take off your clothes and go to rest, while yet the thief is under the bed. So many a man has thought “I have barred the door against those temptations,” and, lo, they have been hidden in his soul like the images which Rachel took that were concealed under the camel’s furniture. Somewhere or other they were secreted where he had not discovered them. Take it for granted, dear friends, and do not doubt it. The Apostle Paul saw it, so you may if you choose to look. He said, “I see another law in my members.”

And this law in his members, he goes on to tell us, was “warring against the law of his mind.” It strove to get the mastery, and the new nature, on the other hand resisted and would not let it get the mastery. The old lusts fight and then the new life fights too, for there must be two sides to a war. Such is the warfare going on within the renewed soul. We have known this warfare take different shapes. At times it has been on this wise. A wrong desire has come into a Christian, and he has loathed it, utterly loathed it, but that desire has followed him again and again. He has cried to God against it; he has wept over it; he has not consented to it; he fears lest he may have found it sweet or palatable to him for the moment, but when he has had time for reflection he shudders at the very thought of giving way to that temptation; and yet by the restiveness of his own flesh and by the reprisals of Satan that hateful desire will come up and up and up again. He will hear it baying behind him like a bloodhound following his prey, and sometimes it will take a leap and grip him by the throat and cast him down. It will be as much as that poor man can do to keep down that ferocious temptation that has arisen in his spirit. I can bear witness that such warfare is a very terrible ordeal, for it sometimes lasts for days, and weeks, and months together. I have known thoughtful Christians who have been harassed with doubts which have been suggested about the inspiration of Scripture, about the deity of our Lord, about the sureness of the covenant of grace, or some other fundamental doctrine of our most holy faith; or, even it may be the temptation has been to blasphemies, which the believer has abhorred from his very soul. Yet the more bitterly he has detested it the more relentlessly it has pursued him. Would he drive it away, it returned with redoubled force. “Is it true?” “Is it so?” Mayhap, that a hideous sentiment is wrapped up in a neat epigram, and then it will haunt the memory, and he will strive in vain to dislodge it. He would gladly hurl the thought and the words that clothe the thought into the bottomless pit. Out, cursed spectre, he will cry. Back, like the ghost of one’s own crimes, it comes. Whence these evils? May they sometimes be traced to Satan? Ay, but most commonly temptation derives its strength, as well as its opportunity, from the moods or habits to which our own constitution is prone. In the discharge of public duties, when straining every nerve to serve the Lord, we may meet with men whose temper acts on our temper to stir up the bile and make us think evil of those to whom we are bent on doing good. In the peaceful shades of retirement which wise men seek out as a relief from the distractions of society, what strange fancies and monstrous vagaries will often come into the heart and confuse the brain. Or, sad to tell, in the walks of study where thoughtful men set out reverently to enquire into the counsels of God, how frequently have they been lured from the open paths to trespass on dangerous ground, to lose themselves in labyrinths, to leave the footsteps of the flock; and so to become giddy and high minded. Anywhere, everywhere, we are challenged to fight, and we must give battle to the sin that besets us.

But, the war carried on by this evil nature is not always by the continual besieging of the soul, at times it tries to take us by assault. This is a favourite mode of warfare with our own corrupt heart. When we are off our guard up it will come and attack us, and as I have said before, we are apt to be off our guard when we have been brought up into the high mountain apart, when we have been near the Lord. In that exalted sphere of communion we have not thought of the devil, his existence has not come across our mind; but when we go down again into the plain, we soon find that he is still living, still distressing our brethren, still lying in wait to ensnare us. For this cause, our experience should quicken our sympathy. Full many a Christian has been surprised into a sin for which he was to be greatly blamed, but for which he ought not to have been condemned by his fellow Christians with so much severity. They ought to condemn the sin, but to remember themselves lest they also should be tempted. Many a man has been good because he had not a chance of being bad, and, I believe, many a professing Christian has stood because the road did not happen to be very smooth, and there was not much to be gained by falling down. We do not judge each other as God does. He knows the infirmities of his dear children. While he does not make excuses for their sin-he is too pure and holy for that-yet, having blotted out their sins through the atonement of Christ Jesus, he does not cast them off and turn them out of fellowship, as sometimes his people do their poor brethren, who may, after all, be as true children as they are themselves, and have as much real love to their Father. This evil nature when it is warring, laughs at our own resolutions, and mocks our own attempts to put it down. It must be warred against by grace. No arm but the Almighty arm can overcome our natural corruption. Like a leviathan it laugheth at the spear: it counteth it but as rotten wood. You cannot come at a besetting sin as you would. At times you fancy, “I’ll wound it to its deadly hurt;” and in the very act of wounding one sin you are calling another into play. Many a man has tried to overcome his propensity to faintheartedness, and he has run into presumption. Some have tried to be less profuse in their expenditure, and they have become penurious. Some have said, “I will be no more proud, and then they have become mean-spirited. I have known some that were so stern for the truth, they became bigoted, who have afterwards become latitudinarian and hold the truth with so loose a hand that their constancy could hardly be relied on. Look straight on and “do the duty that next lies before you.” It is no easy thing, believe me, to defend yourself from the surprises of sin. It is a thing impossible, unless God who created the new nature shall come to its rescue, shall feed it with the bread of heaven, shall give it water out of the Rock of Ages, and lead it on its way to the goodly land where the Canaanite shall never be, and where our soul shall feast on milk and honey.

I must not linger on this point, but pass on to notice the next. It is a sadder one. The apostle said this warring brought him into captivity to the law of sin. What does he mean by this? I do not think he means he wandered into open flagrant immoralities. No observer may have noticed any fault in the apostle’s character. He could see it in himself, and he saw flaws in his life where we are not able to detect them, and probably that was a habit with the apostle. When I hear a good man lamenting his faults I know what the world will say: they will take him at his word and think that he is as they are, whereas with every godly man, if you knew him and marked his life and conversation you would be compelled, if you judged him candidly, to say that he was like Job, perfect and upright, one that feared God and eschewed evil. Yet that very man would be the first to see spots in himself, because he has more light than others, because he has a higher idea of what holiness is than others, and chiefly because he lives nearer to God than others, and he knows that God is so infinitely holy that the heavens were not pure in his sight, and he charged his angels with folly; therefore, every one who sees himself in the glass of the law sees in himself a filthiness that he never saw before. As Job said, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” But I think the apostle was not referring here to acts of gross misdemeanor having brought him into captivity so far as he himself was concerned; though many who are God’s children, get into sorry captivity because the law of sin and death in their members gets the mastery over them sometimes. Oh, watch against this: weep against this: I was about to say wrestle unto blood against this. Brethren, they that have committed great sins who have been God’s children, though they have been saved, have been saved so as by fire; and if they could tell you how many times they were chastened, how sore the chastening was, how their very bones were broken, how the Lord made them see that he hated sin in his own family even more than anywhere else,-could you hear them confess how they lost the light of his countenance, lost enjoyments, lost the sweet savour of the promises, oh, it would make you say, “My God, be pleased not only to save me at the last but all the journey through. Hold up my footsteps in thy way that they slip not: make me to run in the way of thy commandments.” It is a captivity like that of the Israelites in Babylon itself when a child of God is suffered to fall into some great sin. But, long before it comes to that pass, and I hope in your case it may never go so far, I think this law of sin brings us unto captivity in other respects. While you are fighting and contending against inbred sin doubts will invade your heart. “Am I a child of God? If it be so, why am I thus? I cannot pray as I would. Surely if I were a child of God I should not be hampered in devotion or go out to a place of worship and feel I have no enjoyment, while others feast and sing for joy of heart.” Oh, what a captivity the soul is brought into when it allows inbred sin to cast any doubts upon its safety in Christ. We are saved because we are believers in Christ. Christ, having been all our confidence, is always in us the hope of glory. To as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to as many as believed on his name. If I have believed on his name, whatever my inward experience may be, or may not be in my own estimation, if I have believed on the name of Jesus I have the privilege to be a child of God. But sometimes doubts will come over us, and so we are brought into captivity. I have known those who were almost driven to despair. The child of God, has written bitter things against himself and signed his own death-warrant. Thank God, if we sign our own death-warrant it does not stand for anything. Nobody can sign that but the King, and he will never sign it for any soul that believes in him, however feeble his love may be. We may be brought into captivity by a sense of sin, a temptation to sin, or a yielding to sin. If we ever come to that it will make us weak in serving, cold in prayer; restless when alone, and joyless in the society of the saints; nay, we shall feel almost lifeless. Oh, may God save us from it! Oh, may we wrestle hard; may we wrestle every day that we may keep sin down; may divine grace, even that grace which is treasured up in Christ Jesus, secure to us the victory.

It is some comfort when we feel a war within the soul, to remember that it is an interesting phase of Christian experience. Such as are dead in sin have never made proof of any of these things. Time was when we were self-righteous, lost, and ruined, and without the law, and sin was dead in us, so we thought. We were dead, in trespasses and sins, though we boasted of our own righteousness. These inward conflicts, show that we are alive. There is some life in the soul that hates sin, even though it cannot do as it would. I have known what it is to bless God for the times when my soul has felt inward war, and I would have been glad to feel the war renewed. Rest assured that the strong man of the soul while he keeps the house will keep it in peace. It is when a stronger than he comes to eject him, that there is a fight within your soul; I would suggest it therefore to you as a cause for consolation and thankfulness. Do not be depressed about it. Say-“after all, there is some life here.” Where there is pain there is life. The best of God’s saints have suffered in this very same manner. Your way to heaven is not a bad one. Some, I know, are not so troubled to any great extent, but the majority, of God’s saints have to endure fightings without and fears within. You read of Martin Luther. That great bold man became a master of theology, by being taught in the school of temptation. Even his last hours were full of stern conflict. He was a man of war from his youth up. How constantly did he have to contend against himself. We get the same testimony from this chapter of the life of Paul. Be not, therefore, downcast as though some strange thing had happened unto you. Look up yonder to those saints above in their white robes singing their unending song! Ask them whence their victory came? They will tell you that it did not come to them because they were sinless or perfect in themselves, but through the blood of Jesus.

“Once they were wrestling here below,

And wet their couch with tears;

They wrestled hard as we do now,

With sins, and doubts, and fears.”

The richest consolation comes from the last verse of the chapter. Paul having asked how he should be delivered, answers the question, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” “They shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins,” not only from the guilt of their sins, but from the power of their sins. What a mercy it is that the Lord Jesus has struck a deadly blow at our sin. He has broken the head of it. It is a monster, and has immense vitality; but it is a broken-backed, broken-legged, broken-headed monster. There it is: it lies hissing and spitting, and writhing, capable of doing us much mischief, but he that has wounded it will smite it again and again, until at last it shall utterly die. Thank God it has not vitality enough to get across the river Jordan. No sinful desire shall ever swim on that stream. They are not molested there with tendencies and propensities to sin, and when they shall be restored to their bodies, and their bodies shall rise again, they shall have bodies not of flesh. Bodies of flesh shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven, neither shall their bodies see corruption, but with bodies fit for celestial minds, they shall be eternally free from their former sin. Let us rejoice that Jesus Christ can do it all. He can save us from all sin. He who has bought us with his blood, he will not cheaply lose that which he has dearly bought. He will deliver us from all sin, and he will bring us into his eternal kingdom and glory without fail. So we fall back upon this sweet consolation. Though the fight may be long and arduous, the result is not doubtful. Remember the text of last Thursday night. That shall settle the point. “I give unto my sheep eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand.” “My Father who gave them me is greater than all, and none shall pluck them out of my Father’s hand.” You will have to get to heaven fighting for every inch of the way; but you will get there. Some on boards and some on broken pieces of the ship, they all came safe to land in Paul’s shipwreck, and so shall it be with the saints. When the sheep shall pass again under the hand of him that telleth them one by one, there shall not be one of them missing. They were all so weak that the wolf could have rent them in pieces; they were all so foolish that if left to themselves they would have wandered on the mountains and in the woods, and have been destroyed; but the eternal shepherd makes this a point of honour-“Of all them that thou hast given me, I have lost none. Here am I, and the children that thou hast given me.” It ought to make you quite well now to know that you are sure of victory. Oh, by the lilies of the love of Christ, and by the strong right arm that once smote Rahab, and cut the dragons in twain, let every Christian be of good courage. The Omnipotent is with us; the Invincible is for us. Forward to the charge, onward to the conflict, though the fight wax warmer and sterner still, onward ever, onward without fear or a moment’s hesitation. “He that hath loved us bears us through, and makes us more than conquerors too.” “The breaker is come up before them; they have broken up, and have passed through the gate, and are gone out by it, and their king shall pass before them, and the Lord on the head of them.” They have put to the route their foes. Thus shall it be spoken of all those that follow under the leadership of Christ; this is the heritage of the saints and their righteousness is of me saith the Lord. God grant us to be victors in this holy war, for Christ’s sake. Amen.

Portions of Scripture read before Sermon.-Romans 7, 8.

MOSES’ DECISION

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s Day Morning, July 28th, 1872, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.”-Hebrews 11:24, 25, 26.

Last Sabbath-day we spoke upon the faith of Rahab.* We had then to mention her former unsavoury character, and to show that, notwithstanding, her faith triumphed, and both saved her and produced good works. Now, it has occurred to me that some persons would say, “This faith is, no doubt, a very suitable thing for Rahab and persons of that class; a people destitute of sweetness and light may follow after the gospel, and it may be a very proper and useful thing for them, but the better sort of people will never take to it.” I thought it possible that, with a sneer of contempt, some might reject all faith in God, as being unworthy of persons of a higher condition of life and another manner of education. We have, therefore, taken the case of Moses, which stands as a direct contrast to that of Rahab, and we trust it may help to remove the sneer; though, indeed, that may be of small consequence, for if a man is given to sneering it is hardly worth while to waste five minutes in reasoning with him. The scorner is usually a person so inconsiderable that his scoffing deserves to be unconsidered. He who is great at sneering is good for nothing else, and he may as well be left to fulfil his vocation.

It occurred to me also that, peradventure, some might, in all seriousness, say, “I have, through the providence of God, and the circumstances which surround me, been kept from outward sin; moreover, I am not a member of the lowest ranks, and do not belong to the class of persons of whom Rahab would be a suitable representative. In fact, I have, by the providence of God, been placed in a choice position, and can, without egotism, claim a superior character. It is possible that such persons may feel as if they were placed under a disadvantage by this very superiority. The thought has passed over their mind, “The gospel is for sinners; it evidently comes to the chief of sinners and blesses them. We are free to admit that we are sinners, but peradventure, because we have not sinned so openly, we may not be so conscious of the sin, and consequently our mind may not be so well prepared to receive the abounding grace of God which comes to the vilest of the vile.” I have known some who have almost wished that they were literally like the prodigal son in his wanderings, that they might be more readily like him in his return. It is altogether a mistake under which they labour, but it is by no means an uncommon one. Peradventure, as we introduce to their notice one of the heroes of faith, who was a man of noble rank, high education, and pure character, they may be led to correct their thoughts. Moses belonged to the noblest order of men, but he was saved by faith alone, even by the same faith which saved Rahab. This faith moved him to the faithful service of God and to a self-denial unparalleled. My earnest prayer is that you who are moral, amiable, and educated, may see in the action of Moses an example for yourselves. No longer despise a life of faith in God. It is the one thing which you lack, the one thing above all others needful. Are ye young men of high position? Such was Moses. Are ye men of spotless character? Such also was he. Are ye now in a position where to follow out conscience will cost you dear? Moses endured as seeing him who is invisible, and though for a while a loser he is now an eternal gainer by the loss. May the Spirit of God incline you to follow in the path of faith, virtue, and honour, where you see such a man as Moses leading the way.

We shall first consider the decided action of Moses; and, secondly, the source of his decision of character-it was “by faith.” Thirdly, we shall look into those arguments by which his faith directed his action; after which we shall briefly reflect upon those practical lessons which the subject suggests.

And first let us observe the decided action of moses. “When he had come to years he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.” We need not narrate the stories which are told by Josephus and other ancient writers with regard to the early days of Moses, such as for instance, his taking the crown of Pharaoh and trampling upon it. These things may be true; it is equally possible that they are pure fiction. The Spirit of God has certainly taken no notice of them in Holy Scripture, and what he does not think worth recording we need not think worth considering. Nor shall I more than hint at answers to the question why it was that Moses remained no less than forty years in the court of Pharaoh, and doubtless during that time was called “the son of Pharaoh’s daughter,” and, if he did not enjoy the pleasures of sin, at any rate, had his share in the treasures of Egypt. It is just possible that he was not a converted man up to the age of forty. Probably during his early days he was to all intents and purposes an Egyptian, an eager student, a great proficient in Egyptian wisdom, and also, as Stephen tells us in the Acts, “a man mighty in words and in deeds.” During those early days he was familiar with philosophers and warriors, and perhaps in his engrossing pursuits he forgot his nationality. We see the hand of God in his being forty years in the court of Pharaoh; whatever of evil or indecision in him may have kept him there we see the good result which God brought out of it, for he became by his experience and observation the better able to rule a nation, and a fitter instrument in the hand of God for fashioning the Israelitish state into its appointed form. Perhaps during the forty years he had been trying to do what a great many are aiming at just now, he was trying whether he could not serve God and remain the son of Pharaoh’s daughter too. Perhaps he was of the mind of our brethren in a certain church who protest against ritualism but still remain in that church which gives to ritualism the fullest liberty. Perhaps he thought he could share the treasures of Egypt and yet bear testimony with Israel. He would be known as a companion of the priests of Isis and Osiris, and yet at the same time would bear honest witness for Jehovah. If he did not attempt this impossibility others in all ages have done so. It may be he quieted himself by saying that he had such remarkable opportunities for usefulness that he did not like to throw them up by becoming identified with the Israelitish dissenters of the period. An open avowal of his private sentiments would shut him out from good society, and especially from the court, where it was very evident that his influence was great and beneficial. It is just possible that the very feeling which still keeps so many good people in a wrong place may have operated upon Moses till he was forty years of age; but then, having reached the prime of his manhood, and having come under the influence of faith, he broke away from the ensnaring temptation, as I trust many of our worthy brethren will ere long be able to do. Surely they will not always maintain a confederacy with the allies of Rome, but will be men enough to be free. If when Moses was a child he spoke as a child, and thought as a child, when he became a man he put away his childish ideas of compromise; if, when he was a young man, he thought he might conceal a part of the truth, and so might hold his position, when he came to ripe years enough to know what the truth fully was he scorned all compromise and came out boldly as the servant of the living God.

The Spirit of God directs our eye to the time when Moses came to years: that is to say, when his first forty years of life were over; then, without any hesitation he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, and took his part with the despised people of God.

I beg you to consider first, who he was that did this. He was a man of education, for he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Somebody says he does not suppose the wisdom of the Egyptians was anything very great. No, and the wisdom of the English is not much greater. Future ages will laugh as much at the wisdom of the English as we now laugh at the wisdom of the Egyptians. The human wisdom of one age is the folly of the next. Philosophy, so called, what is it but the concealment of ignorance under hard names, and the arrangement of mere guesses into elaborate theories? In comparison with the eternal light of God’s word all the knowledge of men is “not light but darkness visible.” Men of education, as a rule, are not ready to acknowledge the living God. Philosophy in its self-conceit despises the infallible revelation of the Infinite, and will not come to the light lest it be reproved. In all ages, when a man has considered himself to be wise, he has almost invariably contemned the Infinite wisdom. Had he been truly wise, he would have humbly bowed before the Lord of all, but being only nominally so he said, “Who is the Lord?” Not many great men after the flesh, not many mighty are chosen. Did not our Lord himself say it, and his word is for all time, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes?” But yet, sometimes a man of education like Moses, is led by the blessing of heaven to take the side of truth, and of the right, and when it is so, let the Lord be magnified!

Beside being a man of education, he was a person of high rank. He had been adopted by Thermuthis, the daughter of Pharaoh, and it is possible, though we cannot be sure of it, that he was the next heir by adoption to the Egyptian crown. It is said that the King of Egypt had no other child, and that his daughter had no son, and that Moses would, therefore, have become the King of Egypt. Yet, great as he was, and mighty at court, he joined with the oppressed people of God. May God grant that we may see many eminent men bravely standing up for God and for his truth, and repudiating the religion of men; but if they do, it will be a miracle of mercy indeed, for few of the great ones have ever done so. Here and there in heaven may be found a king, and here and there in the church may be found one who wears a coronet and prays; but how hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven. When they do so God be thanked for it.

In addition to this, remember that Moses was a man of great ability. We have evidence of that in the administrative skill with which he managed the affairs of Israel in the wilderness; for though he was inspired of God, yet his own natural ability was not superseded but directed. He was a poet: “Then sung Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord.” That memorable poem at the Red Sea is a very masterly ode, and proves the incomparable ability of the writer. The ninetieth Psalm also shows the range of his poetic powers. He was both prophet, priest, and king in the midst of Israel, and a man second to no man save that Man who was more than man. No other man I know of comes so near in the glory of his character to Christ as Moses does, so that we find the two names linked together in the praise of heaven,-“They sung the song of Moses the servant of God, and of the Lamb.” Thus you see he was a truly eminent man, yet he cast in his lot with God’s people. It is not many that will do this, for the Lord has usually chosen the weak things to confound the mighty, and the things that are not to bring to nought the things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence. Yet here he, who will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, took this great man, this wise man, and gave him grace to be decided in the service of his God. Should I address such an one this morning I would anxiously pray that a voice from the excellent glory may call him forth to the same clear line of action.

Next, consider what sort of society Moses felt compelled to leave. In coming forth from Pharaoh’s court he must separate from all the courtiers and men of high degree, some of whom may have been very estimable people. There is always a charm about the society of the great, but every bond was severed by the resolute spirit of Moses. I do not doubt that being learned in all the wisdom of Egypt, such a man as Moses would be always welcome in the various circles of science; but he relinquished all his honours among the elite of learning to bear the reproach of Christ. Neither great men nor learned men could hold him when his conscience had once pointed out the path. Be sure, also, that he had to tear himself away from many a friend. In the course of forty years one would suppose he had formed associations that were very dear and tender, but to the regret of many he associated himself with the unpopular party, whom the king sought to crush, and therefore no courtier could henceforth acknowledge him. For forty years he lived in the solitude of the desert, and he only returned to smite the land of Egypt with plague, so that his separation from all his former friendships must have been complete. But, O true hearted spirit, should it break every fond connection, should it tear thy soul away from all thou lovest, if thy God requires it, let the sacrifice be made at once. If thy faith hath shown thee that to occupy thy present position involves complicity with error or sin, then break away, by God’s help, without further parley. Let not the nets of the fowler hold thee, but as God gives thee freedom, mount untrammelled and praise thy God for liberty. Jesus left the angels of heaven for your sake; can you not leave the best of company for his sake?

But I marvel most at Moses when I consider not only who he was and the company he had to forego, but the persons with whom he must associate, for in truth the followers of the true God were not, in their own persons, a loveable people at that time. Moses was willing to take upon himself the reproach of Christ, and to bear the affliction of God’s people when, I venture to observe again, there was nothing very attractive in the people themselves. They were wretchedly poor, they were scattered throughout all the land as mere drudges, engaged in brickmaking, and this brickmaking, which was imposed upon them for the very purpose of breaking down their spirit, had done its work all too well. They were utterly spiritless, they possessed no leaders, and were not prepared to have followed them if they had arisen. When Moses, having espoused their cause, informed them that God had sent him they received him at first, but when the prophet’s first action prompted Pharaoh to double their toil by an enactment that they should not be supplied with straw, they upbraided Moses at once; even as forty years before, when he interfered in their quarrels, one of them said, “Wilt thou slay me as thou didst the Egyptian yesterday?” They were literally a herd of slaves, broken down, crushed and depressed. It is one of the worst things about slavery that it unmans men and unfits them even for generations for the full enjoyment of liberty. Even when slaves receive liberty we cannot expect them to act as those would do who were free born, for in slavery the iron enters into the very soul and binds the spirit. Thus it is clear that the Israelties were not very select company for the highly educated Moses to unite with: though a prince he must make common cause with the poor; though a free man he must mingle with slaves; though a man of education he must mix with ignorant people; though a man of spirit he must associate with spiritless serfs. How many would have said, “No, I cannot do that; I know what church I ought to unite with if I follow the Scriptures fully, and obey in all things my Lord’s will; but then they are so poor, so illiterate, and their place of worship is so far from being architecturally beautiful. Their preacher is a plain, blunt man, and they themselves are not refined. Scarce a dozen of the whole sect can keep a carriage; I should be shut out of society if I joined with them.” Have we not heard this base reasoning till we are sick of it, and yet it operates widely upon this brainless, heartless generation. Are there none left who love truth even when she wears no trappings? Are there none who love the gospel better than pomp and show? Where God raises up a Moses what cares he how poor his brethren may be? “They are God’s people,” says he, “and if they are very poor I must help them the more liberally. If they be oppressed and depressed, so much the more reason why I should come to their aid. If they love God and his truth I am their fellow-soldier, and will be at their side in the battle.” I have no doubt Moses thought all this over, but his mind was made up, and he took his place promptly.

In addition to other matters, one mournful thing must be said of Israel, which must have cost Moses much pain. He found that among God’s people there were some who brought no glory to God, and were very weak in their principles. He did not judge the whole body by the faults of some, but by their standards and their institutions: and he saw that the Israelites, with all their faults, were the people of God, while the Egyptians, with all their virtues, were not so. Now, it is for each one of us to try the spirits by the word of God, and then fearlessly to follow out our convictions. Where is Christ recognised as the head of the church? Where are the Scriptures really received as the rule of faith? Where are the doctrines of grace clearly believed? Where are the ordinances practised as the Lord delivered them? For with that people will I go, their cause shall be my cause, their God shall be my God. We look not for a perfect church this side of heaven, but we do look for a church free from Popery and sacramentarianism and false doctrine; and if we cannot find one we will wait until we can, but with falsehood and priestcraft we will never enter into fellowship. If there be faults with the brethren it is our duty to bear with them patiently, and pray for grace to overcome the evil; but with Papists and Rationalists we must not join in affinity, or God will require it at our hands.

Consider now what Moses left by siding with Israel. He left honour-he “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter;” he left pleasure-for he refused to “enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;” and, according to our apostle, he left wealth as well, for in taking up the reproach of Christ he renounced “the treasures of Egypt.” Very well, then, if it comes to this, if to follow God and to be obedient to him I have to lose my position in society and become a Pariah; if I must abjure a thousand pleasures, and if I am deprived of emoluments and income, yet the demands of duty must be complied with. Martyrs gave their lives of old, are there none left who will give their livings? If there be true faith in a man’s heart he will not deliberate which of the two to choose, beggary or compromise with error. He will esteem the reproach of Christ to be greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.

Consider yet once more what Moses espoused when he left the court. He espoused abounding trial, “choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God;” and he espoused reproach, for he “esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.” O, Moses, if you must needs join with Israel there is no present reward for you; you have nothing to gain but all to lose; you must do it out of pure principle, out of love to God, out of a full persuasion of the truth, for the tribes have no honours or wealth to bestow. You will receive affliction, and that is all. You will be called a fool, and people will think they have good reason for so doing. It is just the same to-day. If any man today will go without the camp to seek the Lord, if he go forth unto Christ without the gate, he must do it out of love to God and to his Christ, and for no other motive. The people of God have no benefices or bishoprics to offer; they therefore beseech men to count the cost. When a fervent convert said to our Lord, “Lord I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest,” he received for answer, “Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but I, the Son of Man, have not where to lay my head.” To this hour truth offers no dowry but herself to those who will espouse her. Abuse, contempt, hard fare, ridicule, misrepresentation-these are the wages of consistency; and if better comes it is not to be reckoned on. If any man be of a noble enough spirit to love the truth for truth’s sake, and God for God’s sake, and Christ for Christ’s sake, let him enlist with those of like mind; but if he seek anything over and above that, if he desire to be made famous, or to gain power, or to be well beneficed, he had better keep his place among the cowardly dirt-eaters who swarm around us. The church of God bribes no man. She has no mercenary rewards to proffer, and would scorn to use them if she had. If to serve the Lord be not enough reward, let those who look for more go their selfish way: if heaven be not enough, let those who can despise it seek their heaven below. Moses, in taking up with the people of God, decidedly, and once for all, acted most disinterestedly, without any promise from the right side, or any friend to aid him in the change; for the truth’s sake, for the Lord’s sake, he renounced everything; content to be numbered with the down-trodden people of God.

Now, secondly, what was the source of Moses’ decision? Scripture says it was faith, otherwise some would insist upon it that it was the force of blood. “He was by birth an Israelite, and therefore,” say they, “the instincts of nature prevailed.” Our text assigns a very different reason. We know right well that the sons of godly parents are not led to adore the true God by reason of their birth. Grace does not run in the blood; sin may, but righteousness does not. Who does not remember sons of renowned lovers of the gospel, who are now far gone in Ritualism? It was faith, not blood, which impelled Moses in the way of truth. Neither was it eccentricity which led him to espouse the side which was oppressed. We have sometimes found a man of pedigree and position who has associated with persons of quite another rank and condition, simply because he never could act like anybody else, and must live after his own odd fashion. It was not so with Moses. All his life through you cannot discover a trace of eccentricity in him: he was sober, steady, law-abiding; what if I say he was a concentric man, for his centre was in the right place, and he moved according to the dictates of prudence. Not thus can his decision be accounted for. Neither was he hurried on by some sudden excitement when there burned within his soul fierce patriotic fires which made him more fervent than prudent. No, there may have been some haste in his slaying the Egyptian on the first occasion, but then he had forty more years to think it over, and yet he never repented his choice, but held on to the oppressed people of God, and still refused to think of himself as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. It was faith then, faith alone, that enabled the prophet of Sinai to arrive at his decision, and to carry it out.

What faith had he? First, he had faith in Jehovah. It is possible that Moses had seen the various gods of Egypt, even as we see them now in the drawings which have been copied from their temples and pyramids. We find there the sacred cat, the sacred ibis, the sacred crocodile, and all kinds of creatures which were reverenced as deities; and in addition there were hosts of strange idols, compounded of man, and beast, and bird, which stand in our museums to this day, and were once the objects of the idolatrous reverence of the Egyptians. Moses was weary of all this symbolism. He knew in his own heart that there was one God, one only God, and he would have nothing to do with Amun, Pthah, or Maut. Truly, my very soul cries to God, that noble spirits may in these days grow weary of the gods of ivory, and ebony, and silver, which are adored under the name of crosses and crucifixes, and may come to abominate that most degrading and sickening of all idolatries in which a man makes a god with flour and water, bows down before it, and then swallows it, thus sending his god into his belly, and, I might say worse. The satirist said of the Egyptians, “O happy people, whose gods grow in their own gardens;” we may say with equal force, O happy people, whose gods are baked in their own ovens! Is not this the lowest form of superstition that ever debased the intellect of man. The fetish worship of the negro is not more grovelling O that brave and true hearts may be led to turn away from such idolatry, and abjure all association with it, and say, “No, I cannot, and dare not. There is one God that made heaven and earth, there is a pure Spirit who upholdeth all things by the power of his might, I will worship him alone; and I will worship him after his own law, without images or other symbols, for has he not forbidden them.” Has he not said,” Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God”? Oh that God would give to men faith to know there is but one God, and that the one God is not to be worshipped with man-ordained rites and ceremonies, for he is “a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth!” That one truth, if it were to come with power from heaven into men’s minds, would shiver St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s from their topmost cross to their lowest crypt; for what do these two churches teach us now but sheer clear idolatry, the one of rule and the other by permission, for now men who boldly worship what they call the “sacred elements” have leave and license to exercise their craft within the Church of England. Every man who loves his God should shake his skirts clear of these abominations, and I pray God that we may find many a Moses who shall do so.

The faith of Moses also rested in Christ. “Christ had not come,” says one. Nay, but he was to come, and Moses looked to that coming one. He cast his eye through the ages that were to intervene, and he saw before him the Shiloh of whom dying Jacob sang. He knew the ancient promise which had been given to the fathers, that in the seed of Abraham should all the nations of the earth be blessed; and he was willing, in order to share in the blessing, to take his part in the reproach. Dear Friends, we shall never have a thorough faith in God unless we have also faith in Jesus Christ. Men have tried long, and tried hard, to worship the Father apart from the Son; but there stands it, and it always will be so: “No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” You get away from the worship of the Father if you do not come through the mediation and atonement of the Son of God. Now, though Moses did not know concerning Christ all that is now revealed to us, yet he had faith in the coming Messiah, and that faith gave strength to his mind. Those are the men to suffer who have received Christ Jesus the Lord. If any man should ask me what made the Covenanters such heroes as they were; what made our Puritanic forefathers fearless before their foes; what led the Reformers to protest and the martyrs to die; I would reply, it was faith in the Invisible God, coupled with faith in that dear Son of God who is God Incarnate. Believing in him they felt such love within their bosoms, that for love of him they could have died a thousand deaths.

But then, in addition to this, Moses had faith in reference to God’s people. Upon that I have already touched. He knew that the Israelites were God’s chosen, that Jehovah had made a covenant with them, that despite all their faults, God would not break his covenant with his own people, and he knew, therefore, that their cause was God’s cause, and being God’s cause it was the cause of right, the cause of truth. Oh, it is a grand thing when a man has such faith that he says, “It is nothing to me what other people do, or think, or believe; I shall act as God would have me. It is nothing to me what I am commanded to do by my fellow-creatures, nothing to me what fashion says, nothing to me what my parents say, as far as religion is concerned; the truth is God’s star, and I will follow wherever it may lead me. If it should make me a solitary man, if I should espouse opinions which no one else ever believed in, if I should have to go altogether outside the camp, and break away from every connection, all this shall be as immaterial to me as the small dust of the balance; but if a matter be true I will believe it, and I will propound it, and I will suffer for its promulgation; and if another doctrine be a lie I will not be friends with it, nay, not for a solitary moment; I will not enter into fellowship with falsehood, no, not for an hour. If a course be right and true, through floods and flames if Jesus leads me, I will pursue it.” That seems to me to be the right spirit, but where do you find it now-a-days? The modern spirit mutters, “We are all right, every one of us.” He who says “yes” is right, and he who says “no” is also right. You hear a man talk with mawkish sentimentality which he calls Christian charity. “Well, I am of opinion that if a man is a Mahometan, or a Catholic, or a Mormonite, or a dissenter, if he is sincere, he is all right.” They do not quite include devil worshippers, Thugs and cannibals yet, but if things go on they will accept them into the happy family of the Broad Church. Such is the talk and cant of this present age, but I bear my witness that there is no truth in it, and I call upon every child of God to protest against it, and, like Moses, to declare that he can have no complicity with such a confederacy. There is truth somewhere, let us find it; the lie is not of the truth, let us abhor it. There is a God, let us follow him, and it cannot be that false gods are gods too. Surely truth is of some value to the sons of men, surely there must be something worth holding, something worth contending for, and something worth dying for; but it does not appear now-a-days as if men thought so. May we have a respect for God’s true church in the world which abides by the apostolic word and doctrine. Let us find it out, and join with it, and at its side fight for God and for his truth!

Once again, Moses had faith in the “recompense of the reward.” He said thus within himself, “I must renounce much, and reckon to lose rank, position, and treasure; but I expect to be a gainer notwithstanding, for there will be a day when God shall judge the sons of men; I expect a judgment throne with its impartial balances, and I expect that those who serve God faithfully shall then turn out to have been the wise men and the right men, while those who truckled and, bowed down to gain a present ease, shall find that they missed eternity while they were snatching after time, and that they bartered heaven for a paltry mess of pottage.” With this upon his mind, you could not persuade Moses that he ought to compromise, and must not be uncharitable, and ought not to judge other good people, but should be largeminded, and remember Pharaoh’s daughter, and how kindly she had nurtured him, and consider what opportunities he had of doing good where he was; how he might befriend his poor brethren, what influence he might have over Pharaoh, how he might be the means of leading the princes and the people of Egypt in the right way, and perhaps God had raised him up on purpose to be there, who could tell, and so-on, and so-on, and so-on-yon know the Babylonian talk, for in these days you have all read or heard the plausible arguments of the deceivableness of unrighteousness, which in these last days teaches men to do evil that good may come. Moses cared for none of these things. He knew his duty, and did it, whatever might be the consequences. Every Christian man’s duty is to believe the truth, and follow the truth, and leave results with God. Who dares do that? He is a king’s son. But again I say it, who dares do that in these days?

Thirdly, we are going to run over in our minds some of the arguments which supported Moses in his decided course of following God.

The first argument would be, he saw clearly that God was God and therefore must keep his word, must bring his people up out of Egypt and give them a heritage. Now he said within himself, “I desire to be on the right side. God is almighty, God is all truthful, God is altogether just. I am on God’s side, and being on God’s side I will prove my truthfulness by leaving the other side altogether.”

Then, secondly, we have it in the text that he perceived the pleasures of sin to be but for a season. He said to himself, “I may have but a short time to live, and even if I live to a good old age, life at the longest is still short; and when I come to the close of life what a miserable reflection it will be that I have had all my pleasure, it is all over, and now I have to appear before God as a traitorous Israelite who threw up his birthright for the sake of enjoying the pleasures of Egypt.” Oh that men would measure everything in the scales of eternity! We shall be before the bar of God all of us in a few months or years, and then think you how shall we feel? One will say, “I never thought about religion at all,” and another “I thought about it, but I did not think enough to come to any decision upon it. I went the way the current went.” Another will say, “I knew the truth well enough, but I could not bear the shame of it, they would have thought me fanatical if I had gone through with it.” Another will say, “I halted between two opinions, I hardly thought I was justified in sacrificing my children’s position for the sake of being out and out a follower of truth.” What wretched reflections will come over men who have sold the Saviour as Judas did! What wretched death-beds must they have who have been unfaithful to their consciences and untrue to their God! But oh! with what composure will the believer look forward to another world! He will say, “By grace I am saved, and I bless God I could afford to be ridiculed, I could bear to be laughed at. I could lose that situation, I could be turned out of that farm, and could be called a fool, and yet it did not hurt me. I found solace in the society of Christ, I went to him about it all, and I found that to be reproached for Christ was a sweeter thing than to possess all the treasures of Egypt. Blessed be his name! I missed the pleasures of the world, but they were no miss to me. I was glad to miss them, for I found sweeter pleasure in the company of my Lord, and now there are pleasures to come which shall never end.” O brethren, to be out and out for Christ, to go to the end with him, even though it involve the loss of all things, this will pay in the long run. It may bring upon you much disgrace for the present, but that will soon be over, and then comes the eternal reward.

And, then, again, he thought within himself that even the pleasures, which did last for a season, while they lasted were not equal to the pleasure of being reproached for Christ’s sake. This ought also to strengthen us, that the worst of Christ is better than the best of the world, that even now we have more joy as Christians, if we are sincere, than we could possibly derive from the sins of the wicked.

I have only this to say in closing. First, we ought all of us to be ready to part with everything for Christ, and if we are not we are not his disciples. “Master, thou sayest a hard thing,” says one. I say it yet again, for a greater Master has said it,-“He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” “Unless a man forsake all that he has he cannot be my disciple.” Jesus may not require you actually to leave anything, but you must be ready to leave everything if required.

The second observation is this-we ought to abhor the very thought of obtaining honour in this world by concealing our sentiments or by making compromises. If there be a chance of your being highly esteemed by holding your tongue, speak at once and do not run the risk of winning such dishonourable honour. If there be a hope of people praising you because you are so ready to yield your convictions, pray God to make you like a flint never to yield again; for what more damning glory could a man have than to be applauded for disowning his principles to please his fellow-men! From this may the Lord save us!

The third teaching is that we ought to take our place with those who truly follow God and the Scriptures, even if they are not altogether what we should like them to be. The place for an Israelite is with the Israelites, the place for a Christian man is with Christian men. The place for a thorough going disciple of the Bible and of Christ is with others who are such, and even if they should happen to be the lowest in the land, and the poorest of the poor, and the most illiterate and uneducated persons of the period, what is all this if their God loves them and if they love God? Weighed in the scales of truth the least one among them is worth ten thousand of the greatest ungodly men.

Lastly, we must all of us look to our faith. Faith is the main thing. You cannot make a thorough character without sincere faith. Begin there, dear hearer. If thou art not a believer in Christ, if thou believest not in the one God, may the Lord convert thee, and give thee now that precious gift! To try and raise a character which shall be good without a foundation of faith is to build upon the sand, and to pile up wood and hay and stubble, which wood, hay, and stubble are very good things as wood, hay, and stubble, but they will not bear the fire; and as every Christian character will have to bear tire, it is well to build on the rock, and to build with such graces and fruits as will endure trial. You will have to be tried, and if you have, by sneaking through life as a coward, avoided all opposition and all ridicule, ask yourself whether you really are a disciple of that master of the house whom they called Beelzebub, whether you are truly a follower of that crucified Saviour who said, “Except a man take up his cross daily and follow me, he cannot be my disciple.” Suspect the smooth places; be afraid of that perpetual peace which Christ declares he came to break. He says, “I came not to send peace on the earth, but a sword.” He came to bring fire upon the earth; and “what would I,” said he, “if it be already kindled.”

“Must I be carried to the skies

On flowery beds of ease,

While others fought to win the prize,

And sailed through bloody seas.

Sure I must fight if I would reign,

Increase my courage, Lord,

I’d bear the toil, endure the pain,

Supported by thy Word.” Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Proverbs 1.