Peter’s wife’s mother had been sick of a great fever, and had been restored by the touch of the Saviour’s hands, and by the power of the Saviour’s word. The grace of God does not secure us from trial. The house of Peter and of Andrew, (for it was common to them both,) was a highly favoured one; the grace of God had passed by many other houses, but had selected this for its dwelling-place; and yet in that abode there was great sickness,-the wife’s mother lay sick of a fever, and was near to die. This was no small grief to the household, but that grief was for their lasting benefit. God loves his chosen too well to let them always live without the rod. If he loved us less he might allow us unalloyed pleasure, but the love of our wise Father is too great to deprive us of the sacred benefits of affliction. Sickness came to that house not as an enemy, but as a friend; for it was the means whereby Christ’s great power was made manifest to that family, and through his power his love. The wife’s mother could never have been so distinguished a subject of the Redeemer’s power if she had not been prostrated with fever. The malaria from the marshes around the city occasioned her being made a trophy of our Lord’s divine energy; the worst of ills are often the black horses upon which the very best of blessings ride to us. It was no small honour to Peter that his house became the head-quarters of the Saviour. The sick thronged the door; as the sun went down, and the Sabbath was over, the multitude brought persons afflicted with all manner of diseases and panted to reach that favoured dwelling to lay them before the Lord. The healing power which had displayed itself within, poured forth from the house like a mighty flood, and all who drank of it were restored; that house contained the spring-head, and was beyond measure honoured thereby. Surely for many a year that house would be one of the most notable in the city:-surely it would be called the House of the Great Physician. Not like that ancient house in Antwerp detestable because it was the den of the Inquision, but dear to many of the healed ones and their sons, as the Hospital of Mercy, the Palace of Blessing.

Peter among the Apostles is singularly honoured, for everything about him was in some way or other connected with a miracle. His person-it was by a miracle that he had walked the waters; it was by a miracle that he had been saved from drowning when the Saviour stretched out his hand and bade him stand fast upon the liquid wave. There was a miracle in connection with his boat, for it was from that boat that the miraculous draught of fishes had been taken, and it was filled so full that it began to sink, and Simon knelt down and adored the Saviour. There was a miracle in connection with Peter’s rusty sword; he cut off with it the ear of the high priest’s servant, but the Master healed the wound that his rash defender made. And here, in this case, there was a miracle performed upon his relative,-his wife’s mother was restored from a great fever by the almighty power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Every Christian man should be ambitious to have the hand of God connected with everything that he has, so that when he looks upon his house he may see God’s providence in giving it to him; when he looks upon the garments that he wears he may see them to be the livery of love, and may view the food upon his table as the daily gift of divine charity. In looking back upon his whole biography, the believer may see bright spots where the presence of God flames forth and makes the humblest circumstances to be illustrious: but, above all, it ought to be his prayer that God’s hand should be very conspicuous in connection with his relatives, that of every one of them it might be said, “The Lord restored her,” or, “The Lord gave him spiritual life in answer to my prayer.” May husband, wife, children, servants, all receive healing from “the beloved Physician”; may our whole household be, “holiness unto the Lord,” and may all sing for joy, because the Lord has done great things for them whereof we are glad.

The occurrence about which we are to speak this morning happened on a Sabbath day. Sabbaths were generally Christ’s great chosen field days to break down the superstitiously rigid observance of the Sabbath amongst the Pharisees, and because it seemed as a holy day to be peculiarly adapted for the display of the greatest works of the holy Saviour. It was a Sabbath day, and the poor patient was probably lying there complaining in her soul that she could not go to the synagogue, or mingle with the people where prayer was wont to be made. Perhaps her fever had reduced her to such a state that she was quite unable to remember Christ the healer, and unable to breathe a prayer to him. But Peter and Andrew went to him, and told the case, and besought him to come and heal her. It is a blessing for thee, my friend, even though thou be sick in soul, to have saints for thy relatives-to have some in the household who will remember thee in prayer, and speak into the ear of Christ on thy behalf; if through despair or depression of spirit thou canst not pray for thyself, happy art thou that there are compassionate friends who will speak unto the King on thy behalf. One Christian in a family may bring a great blessing to it; but here were two, for Simon and his brother Andrew were both here; and if two of you are agreed as touching any one thing concerning the Master’s kingdom, it shall be done unto you. The two prevailed with the Saviour, and, on that Sabbath day, when the patient little dreamed it, the Saviour came to her lowly room, and, standing over her in infinite pity, he first spoke a royal word of rebuke to the disease, and then, lifting her up gently in his own kind familiar manner she found herself perfectly restored to health. What love she must have felt to her gracious benefactor! Little wonder is it that thankfulness glowed in her heart, and being healed, she rose at once and began to serve her healer. Her ministering commenced from the very hour of her recovery. Of that ministering we are about to speak. “Immediately she arose and ministered unto them.”

Now, the fact that this restored woman began at once to minister to Christ and to his disciples proves, first, the certainty of her cure; and there are no better ways of proving the thoroughness of our conversion than by conduct similar to hers. Suppose now, in order to prove that this woman was really restored, we were critically to examine the modus operandi of Christ, the way in which he usually worked, and show that on this occasion he operated in the regular orthodox fashion; suppose the Master had been accustomed, as he was not, to use one set of ceremonies over everybody whom he healed, and we were to say, “Well, he has done this, that, and the other, as he is accustomed to do; therefore, the woman is healed.” it would not be at all conclusive reasoning; yet this is the reasoning of a great many. This child was baptised, this young person was confirmed, and afterwards took the sacrament, and consequently this individual is regenerated in baptism, and established in grace, and so on. The ceremonials are correct, and therefore the work is done. Some may believe such reasoning; I marvel that they should; but to us it seems that there is a far better way of testing whether persons have grace or not; and, moreover, if these aforesaid baptismally-regenerated people and sacramentally-confirmed people live in sin like other people, it appears to us that they have none of the grace of God in them, let them pretend to have received it however they may. If the woman had still been hot with fever and had all the symptoms of her disease continued in her, it would have availed nothing to have said, “This has been done and the other;” the woman would not have been healed; and if men live like unregenerate sinners, depend upon it the work of the Holy Spirit is not in them.

Suppose the patient had lain there and had begun to talk about how she felt, how much better she was, what a strange sensation passed through her when the Saviour rebuked the disease, and how strangely well she felt; yet if she had not risen up, but had lain there still, there would have been no evidence of her restoration, at any rate none that you or I could judge of. So when persons tell us that they have felt great changes of heart, that they know they are renewed because they enjoy this and love that, and hate the other, we are very hopeful, and desire to believe what they say; but, after all, trees are known by their fruits, and converted people, while they will themselves know their inward experience, cannot convince us by it; we must see their outward ministerings for Christ. If their actions be holy, if their lives be purified, then shall we know, but not till then, that their nature is renewed.

Suppose this good woman, still lying upon her bed, had begun to say, “Well, I hope I am healed,” and had begun to express some feeble expectation that one day she would be able to exercise the functions of health, we could not have known that she was restored. Something more was wanted than mere hopes and expectations. Or suppose she had leaped out of her bed in wild excitement, rushed down the street, and performed strange antics, it would have been no proof that she was recovered, but it would have made us feel sure that she was in a delirium, and the fever still strong upon her. So when we see persons inactive as to holiness, we cannot believe that they are saved; or when we see them full of empty excitement about religion, but not serving God in the common acts of life, we think them to be in the delirium of a sinful presumption, but cannot regard them as healed by the cooling, calming hand of the Great Physician, who, when he puts out the fever, restores the soul to quiet and peace. The woman gave a much better proof than any of these could be. This leads us to remark that the only irresistible proof with on-lookers of a person being spiritually healed by Christ, must be found in the change in his conduct, and especially in his henceforth living to serve Christ, and to be obedient to him. This is the test and nothing short of it.

When we see holy living in the man who was once a gross offender, we are quite sure that Christ has healed him, because the man begins to do what he could not have done before. Perhaps this poor fevered woman might have made some shift to have done something for the Saviour, but the unconverted man is dead in trespasses and sin; he may go through forms of religion, but real holiness is far above and out of his sight; he cannot obey the law of God; his nature is set against it; he is unable to walk in the way of God’s commandments; therefore, when we see him doing so, we exclaim, “This is the finger of God; God has healed that man, or else he would not be able to live as he is now living.” Besides, the unconverted man before conversion hates holiness, he is disinclined to it, so that in his case, when his life becomes pure and upright, when he spends and is spent in the service of Jesus Christ, you know that this must be the work of the Holy Spirit in his soul, for nothing else could have changed his nature but the same Omnipotence which first of all created him. God’s hand is in that conversion, which is proved by the holiness of the man’s outward character. Beside this, while the sinner is disinclined to everything that is holy, we know that he especially despises the Saviour, and thinks little of his people; consequently, when a man is brought to serve the Saviour, and to be willing to do good to the children of God for Christ’s sake, there is a sure mark that a miracle has been wrought in him which has touched the secret springs of his being, and altogether transformed him. The woman’s rising up to minister to our Lord was a sure sign of returned health, and the change of outward character which leads a man to devote himself to the service of Christ, is even more infallibly a proof of true salvation.

I want you to note however, dear friends, for a moment, the nature of the acts which this restored woman performed, because they are symbolical of the best form of actions by which to judge of a person’s being renewed. Her duties were humble ones. She was probably the head of the household, and she began at once to discharge the duties of a housewife: duties unostentatious and commonplace. Many persons who profess to be converted aspire at once to preaching; a pulpit for them is the main thing, and a large congregation is their ambition. They must needs do some great thing, and occupy the chief seat in the synagogue. But this good woman did not think of preaching; women are always best when they don’t; but she thought of washing Christ’s feet and preparing him necessary food, which was her proper business. To these kind but simple actions she devoted herself. Attention to humble duties is a better sign of grace than an ambition for lofty and elevated works. There is probably far more grace in the loving service of a mother towards Christ in bringing up her children in the fear of God, than there might be if she were well known as taking a leading part in great public movements; there may be more service for Christ done by a workman in discharging his duties as such, and trying to do good to his fellow workmen, than if he aspired to become a great leader of the minds and thoughts of others. Of course there are exceptions, for glorious was Deborah and great shall be her name in Israel, and those who are sent of God to lead his church shall not be without their reward, but even then when they have to look for personal evidences of grace they never dare say, “We know that we are passed from death unto life because we preach the gospel,” for they remember that Judas did the same; they never say, “We are confident of salvation because God has wrought wonders by us,” for they remember that the son of perdition had the same distinction; but they fall back upon the same evidences which prove the truth of the religion of humbler people, they rejoice in testimonies common to all the elect. “We know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren.” The humbler graces and duties are the best tests. Hypocrites mimic all public duties, but the private and concealed life of true godliness they cannot counterfeit; and because they cannot “do so with their enchantments” we feel like the men of Egypt, that “this is the finger of God.”

Remember, too, that this good woman attended to home duties. She did not go down the street a hundred yards off to glorify Christ; she, I dare say, did that afterwards; but she began at home: charity begins there and so should piety. That is the best religion which is most at home at home. Grace which smiles around the family hearth is grace indeed. If your own household cannot see that you are godly, depend upon it nobody else can; and if your parents or children have grave doubts about the sincerity of your religion, I am afraid you ought to have grave doubts about it yourself. Peter’s mother-in-law ministered to Christ at home, and that was clear evidence of her being restored to health, and in your case it will be the best witness to your conversion if you serve Jesus in the bosom of your family and make your house the dwelling place of all that is kind and good and holy.

She attended to suitable duties, duties consistent with her sex and condition. She did not try to be what God had not made her, but did what she could. She attended to natural duties, duties which suggested themselves in a moment, and were not far fetched and fanciful. She set about doing present duties required there and then, and did not wait to serve the Lord in a year’s time. In a quiet natural manner, she pursued her calling as if it never occured to her to do otherwise. If somebody had thought it wonderful that she ministered to Christ, she would have been surprised at them. It seemed to her the most natural thing for her to do. Dear soul, I dare say while lying in bed sick there were fifty things she would have liked to have done-what housewife would not in such a case see many grievous arrears of work all around her?-but Jesus being there, no sooner did she feel her health returned than she at once arose to discharge the offices of grateful hospitality, as a matter of course. How could she do otherwise but wait upon Jesus and his friends. Now, observe, that those good works which prove a man to be a Christian are not such as he could boast of, he does them as a matter of course; he feels he could not do otherwise, and wonders that anybody else can. Is he born of God? He yearns to teach others about the Saviour; he cannot help it; his tongue wants to be talking about Jesus. Then he begins to give of his substance to the poor; it does not strike him as being at all a remarkable or extraordinary thing; he wonders anyone can help being generous to real need. Now, he begins to enquire about the little children in the neighbourhood; can he get them into the Sunday-school? Or he occupies himself with some other form of Christian work, and he does it because he feels it to be inevitable for him to do so; it is one of the instincts of the new nature which God the Holy Spirit has implanted in him. Those natural, commonplace duties which grow out of holy instincts within, are the best evidence of a work of grace: the more genuinely natural and unstrained the better. Vain is the religion which aims at unnatural conditions, and makes much of distinctions of a needless kind. What is there in a peculiar garb, or affectation of speech, or separation of residence? These minister to our own vainglory; true godliness aims not at her own honour, but is content to labour among the many, to be a man among men, yet differing in nothing but character. Ours it is, as the true salt, to mingle with the masses; not to seek a proud isolation. We are men, not monks; and our sisters are women, not nuns. All that interests men interests us, we only differ from our race by being conformed to the image of Jesus, while they wear the image of the fallen Adam. May God grant us grace to exhibit the Christianity of common life, the real and practical Christianity of every day. Christianity is not with hermits in their cells, nor nuns in their convents, nor priests in their cloisters; those are all cowardly soldiers who shun the battle of life, but the true faith is the joy and strength of all who love the Lord and fight his battles on the broad plains of life. True religion must be manifested in your workshops, in your houses, in the streets, and in the fields, in the nursery and in the parlour. This celestial flower reveals its richest perfume, not in the conservatories of unnatural seclusion, but under the clear sky of human life, for “as a flower of the field so it flourishes,” where God has planted it.

One other point before leaving this; these things become a conclusive proof of grace in the heart, when they are voluntarily rendered as this good woman’s ministry was. I do not read that she was asked to do anything for Christ, but it suggested itself to her at once, without command or request. Her work was done promptly, for “immediately she arose” and did it. She no sooner had power to work than the occasion was seized without delay. Promptness is the soul of obedience: “I made haste and delayed not to keep thy commandments.” I doubt not she did her ministering cheerfully. There is all the air of cheerfulness about the words “She arose,” it reads as if with alacrity, vigour, sprightliness, and eagerness she entered into the service. That is the beat service for God that is done promptly, without delay; voluntarily, without pressing; generously, without grudging; heartily, without complaining. With us it is not “This you should do, and this you must do,” but we serve Jesus because we love to do so, and labour for him is to us a joy and a delight.

I have thus brought before you the first point of our discourse, now notice the second one, which is most interesting. This woman’s ministry for Christ and his disciples showed, secondly, the perfection of her cure. It may not strike you for a moment, but just think. She was sick with a fever. Supposing a prophet should visit your house and restore your friend from a great fever; yet the person healed would not be able to rise from the bed for some time; fever leaves extreme weakness behind, and when the fever itself is entirely gone, it needs sometwo or three weeks, and sometimes more, before the person who has been prostrated by it will be able to go about his daily work. This was healing like a God indeed, a divine work emphatically, because the woman was so healed that all her weakness vanished, and she was able to proceed to her work without difficulty. And, beloved, it is one mark of a work of grace in the soul when the converted man becomes at once a servant of Christ. The human theory of moral reformations makes time a great element in its operations. If you are to reclaim a great offender you must win him from one vice first, and then from another; you must put him through a process of education by which he gradually perceives that what he has been accustomed to do is bad for himself, and wakes up to the conviction that honesty and sobriety will be the best for his own profit. Time is required by the moral reformer, or he cannot develop his plans. He ridicules the idea of effecting anything in an hour or two. Man, the creature of time, must have time for the accomplishment of his very imperfect works,-but to the eternal God time is nothing. His miracles annihilate time. A man who is converted is cured at once of his sins; the tap root of his sins is cut away there and then, and though some of his sins linger, yet every one has received the stroke which will prove its deathblow. Once for all, in a moment, when a man believes and is born again, the axe is laid at the root of all the evil trees within him, sin is there and then condemned to die; and what is more, all graces are in a moment implanted in the soul, not in perfection-they will have to grow,-but they are all sown in the man in a moment in embryo, so that the renewed sinner, though he has only been born again five minutes, has within him the embryo of the perfect saint who shall stand before the throne of God; and this is one of the marvels which certify the work to be divine. For note, beloved, those who have just been converted to God can worship God, can praise God, can pray to God, can love God, though they were strangers to these things up to then; and some of the sweetest worship that God himself ever hears comes from the hearts of the newly regenerate. Of all the prayers that strike the Christian’s ear like music, surely among the sweetest are the broken pleadings of those who have just found the Saviour. I delight in the expressions of faith of elderly and full-grown Christians,-they are exceedingly instructive and precious; but, oh! that first grip of the hand, that first flash of the eye, that first tear of joy, when a soul has seen Christ for the first time, and stands astonished at the matchless vision of incarnate love! Why, there is no worship sweeter beneath the sun! The woman arises at once and ministers to Christ, and the sinner arises at once and begins to adore Christ. Did not I say that the newly-converted sinner can love, and does love his Lord as soon as ever he is born to God? I must correct myself. He not only can and does love, but he loves beyond most others, for very seldom does men’s after-love exceed in fervency the love of their espousals, which is also called their first love. This standard love is implanted in us at once, all blooming and full of perfume. Hating Christ one minute, hearts have been brought to be ravished with his love the next; the men were enemies to God an hour ago, and now they could die to defend his gospel, so changed are their natures. This must be a divine work. If that which was waterflood, quenching every spark of fire, should suddenly blaze and glow like Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace, God alone could have wrought the change. Say who has turned the waters of raging hatred into the flame of holy love? Who has done it but the mighty God himself? If the iceberg suddenly becomes a flaming beacon, who can have wrought this marvel but the Miracle Worker who alone doeth great wonders? Glory be to God we often see it, and he shall have the praise of it! How pure some men’s lives become at conversion,-pure at once, though before they were polluted with every vice. Certain sins we may have to fight with all our lives, but a renewed man usually has no difficulty whatever with the grosser sins. For instance, I have known a man habituated to blasphemy, who probably never did since he was a boy speak a dozen sentences without an oath, and yet, after he has been converted, the profane habit has never molested him. We have known some who have been troubled with a ferocious temper which made them like demons, but from the moment of conversion they have been remarkable for their singular gentleness and meekness. We have known misers instantly display the freest generosity, and thieves become scrupulously honest. Though the temptation to old sin may return, yet for the most part those who have been saved from gross vices have been the greatest loathers of the very mention or name of their former abominations. Such is the work of God in the soul, that these evils are driven out at once and sent right away, and then the man who before had been an adept in all manner of evil work becomes as much an expert in all manner of holy labour. He may not at once have picked up the technicalities of religion-perhaps it would be as well he never did-but he gets to the bottom of it, the secret of it, and goes to work for Jesus Christ in his own fashion and way, with wonderful wisdom and extraordinary skill from the very first. Some of the best evangelists we have ever seen have been those who learned at once to evangelise, who seemed to have known it from the first hour in which they were converted to God, taking to it from inward love as the young swans take to the stream. Some of the best persons who speak to others about their souls privately, began to do so immediately they found the Saviour, and attained to the sacred art-and a blessed art it is-as though they were in a moment touched by the hand of God and inspired for the service he meant them to render. Now, what is the practical drift of this second remark but this? As it proved the real divinity of this woman’s cure that she was able immediately to go to work for Christ, so you young converts should hold the honour of Christ in great esteem, and prove the reality of his grace in your souls by bringing forth immediate fruit to his honour. See if you cannot at once rise and minister to him. Be as zealous as the dying thief; he had no sooner known Christ than he confessed him, and he did the only thing he could do for his dying Lord, he rebuked the other malefactor who had reviled the Saviour. Oh, if you love Jesus, do not wait till you have been ten years Christians; serve him now. If you are healed from sin, do not wait for experience; with your inexperience of everything except the new birth, go and seek the good of others. Do not suppose you must be trained for this war through a long process of spiritual drill, but march forward at once with all your heart and soul, in the freshness of your newly-given life. It may be you will achieve greater triumphs than some of the older ones; for, alas! some of them are dry and sapless, and have long forgotten their early days of enthusiasm. In too many Christians the peach has lost its bloom, the flower has withered from the stem; they are not now loving and earnest, but they have declined into the sere and yellow leaf of religion. Go ye with the dew of the morning still upon your spirit, and I know not what great and gracious works the Lord may do by you.

Now we pass on to a third head briefly. Peter’s wife’s mother in ministering to Christ proved her own gratitude. Her acts of hospitality were an exhibition of her thankfulness. Brethren, if we want to evidence our gratitude to Christ we had better do it in the same way as she did. There is no record of her having fallen at Jesus’ feet, and saying, “Blessed be thy name;” she may have done so: the Bible has not room for many holy expressions, though it finds space for gracious acts. I do not know that she sat down and sang a hymn, perhaps she did: good women before her have done so, and I hope they will after her; but the hymn is not recorded: Holy Scripture has not room for all the hymns which good people sing, but it finds a corner for the actions which they perform. We have the Acts of the Apostles, though we have not the devotional emotions, the hymns, or the pious resolutions of the apostles. This good woman proved her gratitude by tangible deeds. Did she not say to herself, “The Lord has served me; I will serve him!” It never strikes an awakened person that mere words are a fit return for the grace of God. Can you give for the Lord’s healing fruit a handful of mere leaves from the tree of talk? It looks like mockery. Give him the leaves, but wrap the fruit up within them. Let him have true action, consecrated service, for this is the fittest fruit of a grateful heart.

Observe that it is not said that she waited upon Christ before she was healed. The fevered patient is first restored, and then she begins to minister. I am far from exhorting any of you to serve Christ in your lives if your inner life be not first of all renewed by him. There must be a regenerated heart through his blessed touch, or else a renewed life may be imitated but cannot be truly possessed. First the healing, then the serving. The healing is first, but note well that the serving follows close at its heels. If thou be saved, arise and work out thine own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in thee to will and to do of his own good pleasure. Since the light is now kindled, let it shine forth from thee; since Christ has opened in thy soul a well of living waters, let it flow out of the midst of thee, as a river of water, for his service and the benefit of thy fellowmen.

This good soul knew to what end she had been raised up. She knew from whom she had received the healing: it was from the Lord alone. She knew from what she was restored, namely, from the very jaws of death. She knew to what she was restored, for she felt that health and strength had returned to her, and, therefore, she guessed rightly for what she was restored, namely, that she might wait upon the Lord. Thou, my brother, art saved from hell, thou art lifted up into spiritual life and acceptance, thou art ennobled and made an heir of heaven; what was this done for but that thou mightest minister to thy Lord here, and glorify him hereafter? Our gratitude ought to teach us the divine object of grace, and we ought to take care that it be attained. The Lord cannot have saved us at such an expense as the death of his own Son, for any reason less than that we should live unto him. What is the reckoning of all our grateful hearts about this? Is it not this, that if we are bought with a price, we are not our own: that if the Holy Spirit has given us a new nature, it must be that we should lead a new life, and that our new life must be consecrated to him who is the author of it? Beloved, true gratitude always leads us to serve, and it distinctly makes our healing Lord the object of our service; it puts him in the forefront. “She arose and ministered unto them.” To him first, and to his disciples next-to the Head, and for the Head’s sake to all the members; to the Redeemer, and because of him to all the redeemed. I put to each one here present who has been healed from sin and saved from spiritual death by Christ, this question-What art thou rendering unto thy Lord? What art thou doing for him? Begin with him; do it as unto him; do what thou doest in his presence, and present it at his dear feet; then I know thou wilt be doing something for his people too: his poor thou wilt befriend, his backsliding ones thou wilt seek to gather in, his sick ones thou wilt visit, his comfortless ones thou wilt console, his wandering ones-as yet uncalled-thou wilt seek after them; his lost sheep, thine anxieties will go out for them; thou wilt minister to him and to his chosen, to all the members of his body. What art thou doing, brother? What art thou doing, sister? I do not ask you now in my own name, for I am no master of yours, neither are ye accountable to me, but I ask it in the name of him whose hands were pierced for you, and whose heart was set abroach by the soldier’s spear for your redemption. Oh, what are you doing for him? Do you love him? If you love him feed his lambs and his sheep. If you love, serve; and if you serve, serve him first, and serve his children and his people next, and you will prove your gratitude.

But now, lastly, this woman’s ministering to Christ proved in the fourth place the condescension of the physician. He who healed her of the fever did not need her to minister to him; he who had power to heal diseases had certainly power to subsist without human ministry. If Christ could raise her up he must be omnipotent and divine, what need then had he of a woman’s service? Might he not have used the grand style of the Old Testament, and said, “If I were hungry I would not tell thee, for the cattle on a thousand hills are mine;” but instead of this the mighty Master of all angels condescended to be waited upon by a poor female. It was great condescension on Christ’s part that he needed ministry, and great gentleness that he so often chose woman’s ministry; he came to earth and the first garments of his infancy were wrapped about him by a woman’s hands, and here he dwelt till at last he died, and holy women bound him up in the cerements of the tomb and laid him in the sepulchre. Matchless marvel was this of condescension, that he who is almighty and ever-blessed should stoop from heaven to need the ministry of human beings. He has ministered to us by humbling himself to accept mortal ministry.

Peter’s wife’s mother was one of the despised poor, but Jesus honoured her. What was she but a fisherman’s wife, at any rate the mother of a fisherman’s wife, a poor, obscure, illiterate woman, yet Christ allowed her to wait upon him, an honour which Herodias the royal princess never had. So the Lord to-day should be beloved of us for his humility in allowing us to wait upon him, in allowing me, in allowing you, to do anything for his dear name’s sake. I do not wonder that Christ allowed Paul and Peter and John to serve him, but that he should suffer me to do it! I am overwhelmed with astonishment at it! Do not you marvel also? It seems easy enough to believe that the blessed Virgin and Mary Magdalene and other holy women were honoured of God; but that you, dear sister, should be allowed to take a part in his service, is not this marvellous? Will you not bless him, and minister with the utmost cheerfulness because you feel it to be so great a grace?

Is it not gracious on our Lord’s part to leave room in his church for ministry? Suppose, now, the Lord had made all his people rich: then there would be no room for the generosity of his people to help his poor saints, and you would not have had the opportunity of proving your love to him as now you can. Suppose he had converted all his elect by the secret working of his Spirit without any teaching, then he would not have wanted you in the Sunday School, nor you with your tracts, nor me with my sermons, and we should have had nothing to do for Christ; we should have been sighing and crying, “The good Master has not permitted us to give him anything? Why, on our birthdays our little children love to give their father something, if it is only a bunch of flowers out of the garden, or a fourpenny piece with a hole in it; they like to do it to show their love; and wise parents will be sure to let their children do such things for them. So is it with our great Father in heaven. What are our Sunday-school teachings and our preachings, and all that, but these cracked fourpenny pieces? Just nothing at all; but the Lord allows us to do his work for his own love’s sake. His love to us finds a sweetness in our love to him. I am most thankful that in the church there is room for such a variety of ministries. Some brethren are so queerly constituted that I cannot tell what they were made for; but I believe if they are God’s people there is a place for them in his spiritual temple. A man who was accustomed to buy timber and work it up, on one occasion found a very crooked stick of wood in his bargain, and said to his son as he put it aside, “I cannot tell, John, whatever I shall do with it; it is the ugliest shaped piece I ever bought in my life;” but it so happened while building a barn that he wanted a timber exactly of that shape, and it fitted in so thoroughly well that he said, “It really seems as if that tree grew on purpose for that corner.” So our gracious Lord has arranged his church, so that every crooked stick will fit in somewhere or other, if it be only a tree of his own right hand planting: he has made it with a purpose, and knows when it will answer that purpose. How this ought to rebuke any who say, “I do not see what I can do.” Dear friend, there is a peculiar work for you; find it out,-and methinks it will not be far off: the exercise of a little reflection will soon enable you to discover it. Be grateful that this is a certain fact, without exception, that every child of God who has been healed has some ministry which he can render to Christ, and which he ought to render at once. May the Lord give to everyone of you to show your gratitude in this way, and while you do it, let it always be in an adoring spirit, saying, “Lord, I thank thee I am allowed to go to my Sunday-school class.” Do not look at your work as a burden: say, “Lord, I thank thee I am permitted to do it.” “O God, I bless thee that I am allowed to go round that little district and call at the houses.” You Bible-women, bless God that he has let you be Bible-women: and you city missionaries, thank God that you are allowed to be city missionaries. “Oh,” saith one, “I can hardly do that because I suffer so much abuse and so much ill-treament.” Bless God, dear brother, that he counts you worthy to suffer for his name’s sake. You know the old story of Sir Walter Raleigh. When Queen Elizabeth, one day, came to a miry place in the road, he took off his cloak for her to walk upon. Did he regret it? No, he was delighted at it, and half the court wished for another muddy place that they might be able to do the same. Oh, you that love your Lord, be willing to lie down for Christ’s sake, and pave the miry parts of the way by being despised for his name’s sake. This honour you should covet, and should not shun. Arise, and minister ye healed ones; and as for you who are not healed, may you believe in him who is able to restore you with his touch. He is mighty to save. Believe in him and you shall live. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon, Luke 4.

MY PRAYER

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s Day Morning, September 22nd, 1872, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“Quicken thou me in thy way.”-Psalm 119:37.

I think you will find the prayer for quickening repeated nine times in this Psalm. The form of it differs, but it is always the same vehement cry, “Quicken thou me, O Lord.” In addition to this, you will hear David twice acknowledge that God had quickened him, saying on one occasion, “Thy word hath quickened me,” and in another place, “Thy precepts have quickened me;” so that eleven times in one Psalm David turns his contemplations to the subject of quickening, and this shows us the very great importance which he attached thereto.

Remember well that this Psalm is dedicated to the praise of the word of God. Throughout its entire length it sounds forth the honour of God’s statutes, and in some way or other the word of the Lord is mentioned in every one of its one hundred and seventy-six verses. The psalm is a star of the first magnitude, and all its beams direct us to the divine statutes. It is clear from this that there must be an intimate connection between quickening and the word of God. Indeed it is so, for when we are much acquainted with the word of God we also discover more of our own deadness and lack of spiritual life. And, moreover, inasmuch as we find David twice blessing God that the word had quickened him, we see another connection between the word and quickening, namely, that while the word convinces us of our death, it is also the means in the hand of the Spirit of God of our resurrection to newness of life. It kills, but it also makes alive. It quickens, and it sustains what it begets. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God” shall man live. Wouldst thou mourn thy sluggishness? See it in the light of God’s word. Wouldst thou escape from thy sloth? Be animated by the holy warmth of revealed truth. For both purposes, for conviction and for edification, the precious truths which are set forth in Scripture by the Holy Spirit will be exceedingly efficacious.

I purpose, this morning, in handling the brief prayer of our text, to note, first, that it deals with the believer’s frequent need; and secondly, it directs him to the sole worker of his quickening; and thirdly, it describes the true sphere of renewed spiritual vigour; and fourthly, it denotes that there may be special reasons and seasons when we should cry, “Quicken thou me.”

The prayer before us, “Quicken thou me in thy way,” deals with the believer’s frequent need. I am sure that this is a frequent want of believers, because we find David in this psalm so often confessing his need thereof; and where the best of God’s servants feel their need of a thing, we may be quite sure that the rest of the family are under the same necessity. David seems to have been by no means sluggish in the divine life. That wonderful photograph of his internal being which we have in the book of Psalms, shows us that he was a man of intensely fervent love to God; a man whose nature was vital to a degree of sensitive and energetic energy seldom, if ever, exceeded. Panting, crying, pleading, or singing, rejoicing, exulting, he was all life, and of him it could not be said that he was neither cold nor hot. Notwithstanding the grievous fault into which he fell, his inner life was as a rule vigorous, healthy, and energetic; and yet that man of God prayed often, “Quicken thou me.” Oh my soul, thou art not to be compared with David for a single moment; what need, then, hast thou to pray again and again, even with agony of soul, “Quicken thou me, O God.”

But, beloved, there is no reason to refer to others of God’s servants for proof of this. You yourselves know, in your own souls, that your spirit is most apt to become sluggish and that you have need frequently to put up the prayer, “Quicken thou me.” Apart from him who is your life, what are you but a mass of corruption? You know this experimentally. Do you not? There are some among you who have received a more abundant measure of spiritual life than the preacher has yet obtained, but I fear me that the great majority of us are in the very opposite condition, and have need to sigh and cry over our lack of inward strength. We need to lament more deeply our manifold deficiencies. If there be a prayer in this book which well becomes my lips, it is just this, “Lord, quicken thou me in thy way.” I fear that those who are least ready to confess this are the very persons who ought to own it first; and I am certain that a large number of God’s people feel that they are dry and sapless and have need to be revived by flesh life from above. Let us think over this matter a minute. Some years ago we needed quickening most emphatically, but then we had no power to pray, “Quicken thou me,” for we were dead in trespasses and sins. No dead man ever prayed to be quickened; such a prayer would be an index of life. A really spiritual prayer for quickening can only come from those in whom the quickening Spirit has already taken up his abode. Now, beloved, blessed be the name of the Lord, we are no longer dead as once we were: the Spirit of God has breathed into our nostrils the breath of life, and we have become living souls in the family of God. Let us be thankful for this, but let us, as we look around upon the spiritually dead who swarm our streets, take care to pray for them, “Lord, quicken thou the dead in sin.” Let our relatives be the especial objects of our prayers for quickening. If we have a brother who is rotting in the grave of his iniquities, let us pray the Master to say, “Lazarus, come forth.” If we have a son who is dead in sin, let us ask the Lord to raise him up even from the bier of his transgressions. Or if it be a little daughter at home, fair and lovely yet unquickened, let our prayer be to the great Master that he would come and raise her up. He is able to raise any of the spiritually dead, for he hath raised us. Let our own conversion encourage us in praying for the spiritual resurrection of others.

But, brethren, although we ourselves are quickened in that sense, we have still need to continue the prayer. Do you remember the days of your first awakening, when you had only sufficient life to mourn and lament that you had so little? The first sense of life in you was painful; you were under a sense of sin, and your guilt lay heavy upon you; you had only life enough to dread the death that never dies; your life did little else for you but enable you to tremble, to mourn, to dread, and to reproach yourself. It was the dark side of life, the pain which is the true evidence of vitality, but is terrible to endure. Then you needed fuller light and healthier life, and no prayer could have better suited you than this which is now before us, “Quicken thou me.” Oh, the agonising cries of awakened sinners, theirs are no mimicries, but stern realities. Believe me, they do pray.

Since that season, for blessed be God that state is over now, we have joy and peace in believing,-not all the joy and peace we could wish, but still a good share of it; yet have we still great cause to cry aloud, and that right often, “Quicken thou me.” For instance, have you never felt the need of this prayer when you have been cast down by affliction? The spirit, broken and bruised, can only rally through an infusion of fresh life. When you could not get a grip at the promises, because the hand of your faith was benumbed, you needed an increased vitality. In temporal trial, more grace was your best support; and when the trouble was not only bodily, but spiritual, then increased inner life was the doubly efficacious remedy. Do you recollect when you were broken in pieces all asunder through some surprising sin, and God, in chastisement, seemed to hunt you with the terrors of his law, then your expiring faith and swooning hope needed a new vitality? There was no restored joy for you till you learned again the meaning of the Redeemer’s words, “I am the life.” Lying at the foot of his cross you saw the vital blood flowing from his dear wounds, and you cried “Quicken thou me.” Forth from the heart of Jesus came a stream of warm life, which entered your soul, renewed your faith, inspired you with sacred confidence, and diffused within your spirit a blessed calm in which you softly breathed the life of God, and rose as one quickened from among the dead.

How many times, also, have you been the victim of worldliness, that horrible swoon of the heart towards Christ? Even over those who try to live nearest to God, this evil influence exerts itself like some stifling vapour, engendering a dreadful sleepiness, even where it cannot accomplish death. Men after God’s own heart have cried, “My soul cleaveth to the dust: quicken thou me, O God.” You have loved some earthly thing; some child, perhaps, has clambered into your heart’s throne while it has been fondled on your knee. Lawful loves have become unlawfully engrossing, and have eaten the Lord’s portion. The Son of David has been displaced by a usurper, or at least another throne has been set up in his palace. Have you not been horrified at your own idolatry and resolved to have done with it, cost what it may? You have sought for the axe which should remove the right hand sin, the hammer which should dash down the usurper’s image; but your heart has failed you, the fascination of the sin has spell-bound you. Around you the coils of the serpent have been twined, and you could not tear them off, for a poison chilled your blood and stupified your brain and heart. Ah, then you saw the beauty of the prayer, “Quicken thou me,” and well was it for you that, feebly as you uttered it, it was answered from the throne of mercy. What could have stood you in good stead if you had been left a victim to the deadly drugs and mortal opiates of sin? You, my brethren, who are much engaged in business from morning to night, when things go with you very roughly, or on the other hand when they go with you very smoothly, have the deepest cause to pray, “Lord quicken thou me.” Earth sticks to our hearts, especially those forms of it known as gold and silver; and lumps of adhesive earth make a pilgrim’s progress tardy. You cannot wrestle in prayer while you are loaded down with worldly cares. No runner can win a race when he stoops under great weights. It is impossible to commune with God and yet to fix one’s heart on money-making. While business is what it is, and the wheels of trade revolve at such a terrific rate, men had need be very vigorous in grace, or their souls will be ground to dust amid their own machinery. Oh you very busy men, ye ought day by day to plead with the Lord-“Quicken thou me, my God, lest I be overcome by the deadly influences of the world.” Though I mingle little with the business or the politics of the hour, I feel a somnolent influence creep over me, from the smoke of these tents of Kedar in which I dwell, like that which Bunyan mentions in his description of the Enchanted Ground, where the very air made men drowsy. This influence tends to preaching mechanically, as an automaton might do if properly wound up, and it leads to praying by routine, after the manner of a Thibetian windmill or a Ritualistic priest. Hideous is this temptation to perform one’s duties officially, because it is the time to do this and the proper hour to do that. Oh, my God, deliver us from crawling along in the ruts, and slipping sleepily along the grooves. We want life, vivacity, vigour, diligence, fervour, passion, vehemence in the service of our God, or else our Christianity is worth no more than a nutshell out of which the worm has eaten the kernel, and left nothing but rottenness. Our God is a consuming fire, and only by fire can we worship him. Sacrifices without heart are an abomination to him. The name to live is loath-some unless the spirit of life be present. The garments of a man may frighten birds, but only the heart and soul of manhood can avail with heaven. Without the living soul of sincerity and earnestness, what is religion but a charnel house, whitewashed without, but rottenness within? We must have life! First, last, and midst, we must have life; therefore to all professors I commend this prayer, “Quicken thou me.”

My brethren, do not the most warm-hearted among us feel the need of more quickening? Let us consider a few matters which may awaken our desires more fully. First, let us enquire if we are as earnest in the things of God as in the common things of daily life? Is our soul as vigorous in its acts for God as in its emotions towards man? We are told by the Spirit that the time is short, and it remaineth that those who have wives be as though they had not, they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not, and they that weep as though they wept not, because all these things are passing away, and therefore our emotions about them should be comparatively slight; but spiritual things, seeing they endure for ever, ought to have a lodgment in the centre of our being, and concerning them we should think deeply and feel strongly. Sorrow for sin should be the keenest sorrow, joy in the Lord should be the loftiest of joy. Is it so? How find you it with yourselves? Suppose it be the love of a newly-married wife, is there not an intensity about it which needs no inflaming? Do you always or often find your soul so ardent towards the Lord Jesus Christ? Yet ought he not to be before all other? Or suppose it be your weeping for your lost husband or your dear departed child, you do not need excitement to grief; no, your hearts bleed all too freely, and you need arguments to assuage your sorrows: is it thus when you lament the dishonor done to the name of Jesus? Are the waterfloods quite as plentiful? Is repentance as deep and living an emotion with you as sorrow under bereavement? I fear that in these earthly matters our heart is wax, and in spiritual things it is as the nether millstone. Yet is it sad indeed that our affections entwine themselves about a mere creature but put forth no tendrils towards the Lord of love, who laid down his life for us. If you are suddenly made possessors of wealth, the joy you have over your substance is very manifest. None can question it. Or if your wealth be taken away by some loss in trade or otherwise, your distress is by no means superficial; I pray you tell me, are you equally concerned about the true riches? If you have found the priceless pearl, are you enchanted with it? If you have lost fellowship with Jesus, does the loss depress your spirit? Are you as eager to be rich in grace as to be great in wealth? Do you prize Christ as you do your profits? Are you as eager in a prayer meeting as you are on the market? I fear, brethren, that a comparison between our zeal for temporal and spiritual things would lead to very humbling conclusions, and give us reason to cry, “Lord, deaden me to this world, but quicken me towards the world to come.”

The same truth will be apparent if we will think of the earnestness of men of the world in their callings and pursuits. How men will wear themselves out in seeking the secular objects on which their hearts are set! To what sacrifices will they expose themselves! The votaries of science altogether shame the followers of religion. They have penetrated into the densest swamps, defying fever and death; they have lost themselves amongst the wildest savages, or they have died amidst eternal snows. Have they not lost their lives while using deadly drugs, out of which they hoped to discover curative agents; or worn away their eyesight by weary night watchings of the orbs of heaven? Science daily increases her martyrology, but where find we ours? Where is the chivalry of Christians? Alas, where survives the heroism of the cross? In former times the followers of Christ counted not their lives dear unto them for his sake; but now we hug ourselves in ease, and venture little for the Lord. The world has warm followers and devoted friends, but Jesus is attended by a lukewarm band of men who are more likely to sleep at Gethsemane’s gates than to watch with him for a single hour. Oh Lord of love, will thou not quicken us? Behold our need, forgive our sin, and from this good hour teach us how to live.

We shall surely also be rebuked if we think of the zeal of some of the Lord’s servants. Their lives should make us feel how little life we have. Put yourself, beloved brother, side by side with Paul for a few minutes. Think of his zeal unquenchable. Remember his voluntary exposure to a thousand risks; his sufferings, and his labours for the propagation of his Master’s gospel. Where are we, and what are we? Alas! we blush and sink to nothing in the presence of such a man. Others of like energy have been and are in the church. Why are we so unlike them? Shame, shame upon us!

Perhaps it may touch us with some degree of feeling if we recollect what our own zeal was at one time. It never was much to boast of; when we were most earnest we could well have borne to be heated seven times hotter, and yet not become too much inflamed; but are we now as zealous as once we were? May I ask you to look back upon the early days of your religion? Oh, then ye ran where now ye creep. Ye blazed and glowed, where now but a few sparks alone are left. The love of your espousals, when you went after your Master into the wilderness, when nothing was too heavy or too hard for his dear sake, where is it now? Where is it now? As you grew in years you should have grown in zeal, for you know more of him, and you have received more from him; but is it so? Why, we thought we would push the church before us or drag the world behind us, and we meant to do I know not what, but have we done it? Then we cried, “Who art thou, great mountain?” “Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain:” but the great mountain remains where it was, because our faith has declined, and our zeal has flagged. Oh, for the Spirit to re-baptise us into the fulness of his life and strength.

Once more, think dear friends, of our condition of spiritual life, and of what it ought to have been, when we remember our obligations to our Saviour. Stand in spirit at the foot of the cross and see the five wounds and the precious blood that bought us. Can you here remain unmoved? Do we gaze into you dear face, that mirror of love and grief, and feel no love to him? Can we think of his returning into his glory, and bearing our names upon his breastplate day and night before the eternal throne, and feel no enthusiasm for him? Can we meditate upon him as from before all worlds, loving us, and to all worlds loving us still, and yet remain indifferent? O adamant, thou art flesh, and flesh is adamant this day. Why, sirs, if we lived for Jesus solely and evermore, and died a thousand deaths for him, these were cheap things to lay at the foot of his dear cross. He deserveth infinitely more from us.

Think, I pray you, of all the truths of our religion, and ask yourselves what kind of life they require of us. We believe that men are lost, and shall we be idle when in our hands is the gospel, which alone can save them? We know that men are passing into a condition in which they shall for ever abide, everlastingly blessed or eternally accursed of God, and only the truth that we have to tell them can secure them from unending misery, and can we withhold the saving word. I do not wonder that those who believe the contrary to this should take things coolly, but I do marvel at ourselves that we are so insane at heart that we are not moved to passionate earnestness for ourselves and our fellowmen. Fanaticism itself were, under some aspects of it, nothing but cold-blooded reason in the face of such truths as these. We ought to live impassioned lives, full of flaming energy, and we should if this prayer were heard, “Quicken thou me in thy way.”

Thus I have spoken upon the first head. Now may we be helped to dwell upon the second, and may the Spirit bless us thereby.

Our text directs us to the sole worker of quickening. “Quicken thou me.” David seeks quickening from the Lord alone. He goes at once to him in whom were all his fresh springs. Life is the peculiar sphere of God: he is the Lord and Giver of life. No man ever received spiritual life, or the renewal of it, from any other source but the living God. Beloved, this is worth recollecting, for we are very apt when we feel ourselves declining to look anywhere but to the Lord. We, too, often look within. “Why seekest thou the living among the dead?” You might find a diamond upon a dunghill, but you will never find spiritual refreshing in human nature. Look then to some better source than to the howling wilderness of self. We are very apt also to think that in the use of the means of grace we shall necessarily obtain reviving and refreshing. “If I can hear Mr. So-and-so preach, who has often laid his hands among my heart-strings, and brought out music thence, then I should be again awakened. Oh, could I hear him once again I should see better days.” Thou dost not know. That beloved voice may have lost all power over thee. If thou lookest to the servant and not to the Master, the Master will leave the servant and the servant will be of no use to thee. Dig the pools by all manner of means; passing through the valley of Baca make it a well: but the life-refreshing water does not rise from the bottom of the well, it drops from above,-“the rain also filleth the pools.” God out of heaven alone can make instrumentality to be of vital service to us. Not even the sweet succours of the Communion Table can bring back vigorous life to the Christian apart from the anointing of the Holy Ghost. Rest ye not in the outward, for it cannot touch the inward. Above all, never go to the law for reviving. Do not begin chiding yourself by saying, “This I ought to have done and I shall lose the love of God if I do not,” and so on. That is all legal. The child of God, when he hears the roar of Sinai’s thunder, sinks into a deeper death; it cannot rouse him into life. Slaves may be moved by terror, but not the true born child of God; a nobler motive sways his heart. Go not thou, then, to rewards and punishments for thy life; thou wilt never find it there. The ministry of the law is the ministry of death, not of life. We must betake ourselves to the Spirit of God, who is the gift of the gospel, not of the law. Remember, beloved, that Jesus Christ is come that we might have life, and that we might have it more abundantly. Now, if any poor soul first of all obtained life from looking alone to Jesus it is clear that if she wants more life she must get it in the same way. They say that for a sick man his native air is the best. My native air was Calvary: was it not yours, dear brother? Let us together seek the blood-stained spot. Go and breathe the atmosphere of atoning love again! Get back to the cross-foot once more, and you will find effectual quickening. The Holy Spirit is the great agent by whom the life of Jesus is infused into our nature. The Holy Ghost at this moment can come upon the coldest heart in this place, and make it flame and blaze with more than angelic ardour. You are like a bush at this moment, dry and dark, but God has but to put one spark of his life in you and you will be like the bush in Horeb, which flamed like the sun. Dear sister, have you fallen very low? Go to God, for he can lift you up when no one else can. My ministry cannot quicken you, but the Lord can. He has only to send forth the divine life, and the dullest and most slothful, the most barren, the most dead, among us would become warm with apostolic fervour, and the life divine would make us shine as the glittering seraphim which surround the burning throne. Oh God, how this moves us to pray to thee! Thou canst do it. Do it now. “Quicken thou me in thy way.”

Did you notice that in the text nothing is said about the means by which the Lord is to quicken us? David leaves that to God’s discretion. Let him use his own methods. There is a prayer-you will find it in the one hundred and forty-ninth verse, and also in the one hundred and fifty-sixth-in which David prays, “Quicken thou me in thy judgment,” as if he left it to infinite prudence to select its own methods. He did not pretend to say what was the best way, but left himself in God’s hands, only praying, “Lord, quicken thou me.” Let us consider the various methods by which the Lord can quicken his people. Usually he does it by his word. “Thy word hath quickened me.” There are promises in God’s word of such effectual restorative power, that, if they be but fed upon, and their nutriment be absorbed into our nature, they will make a dwarf into a giant in the twinkling of an eye; and he who lies faint upon the ground, and cannot move hand or foot, shall mount upon the wings of eagles, and run and not be weary, if but one word out of the mouth of God be applied to him by the Spirit.

Sometimes, however, God uses other instruments, such as affliction. It is wonderful how a little touch of the spur will quicken our sluggish natures. God has ways and means of touching our bone and flesh, and rendering sleep an impossibility in more senses than one. Personal affliction is like tonic medicine, by which our relaxed energies are strung up again; but to this end it must be sanctified, or it will fail. Blessed be God for a flick of his whip; we might else have stumbled in our sleep and fallen. It does good to such sorry jades as we are. I pray that some of you may get a touch of it, for you are dull enough. Just a touch now and then does all of us good; and rest assured we shall have it too, if we do not keep awake without it, for God loves us too well to withhold his paternal rod.

At the same time, he can quicken us by great mercies. A man may be stirred up to diligence by a sense of gratitude to God for great mercies. I grant you it does not always have that effect; but it ought to do so. Oh, if our hearts were right, it would be sweet to say, “Here is another mercy, another favour from God; this binds me with another cord to his service; I will love him more, and devote myself more intensely to his work.”

Christian example, too, sometimes stirs us up. I believe the reading of holy biographies has been exceedingly blessed of God. The life of such a man as McCheyne, or the diary of Brainerd or the story of Whitfield’s ministry-such things make us think, “What are we? what are we living for?” Put microscopes upon our eyes, and yet we can hardly see ourselves, we are so little, We are as grasshoppers in their sight, yea, we are as grasshoppers in our own sight. This stimulates us. On the other hand, if you fall in with a number of idle dolts of professors, as sometimes you do, your indignation at them will help to excite you to zeal, or it ought to do so. We have known some who have said, “I am superior to these, at any rate,” and therefore congratulating themselves they have gradually sunk down to the same ignominious level; but in a true heart the sluggishness of others is a spur to greater exertion, for such a man says, “Is my Master served in such a beggarly manner as this? then will I serve him with all my heart, to make up for the lack of service in others.” It is said that Augustus Cæsar was once asked to a feast by one of his subjects, but the attendance was so dilatory, and the feast so mean, that he rose in disgust, and said he supposed he was invited to be honoured, but he had discovered that it was intended to insult him. Truly in many a congregation of Christians, yea, even of our own denomination, the worship of God is done in such a mean, stingy, dead-and-alive way that it seems as if Christ were asked to the assembly to be insulted rather than to be honoured. Verily such treatment of our Lord is enough to make us weep tears of blood, and then drive us onward to a service hitherto unparalleled in these frigid days.

Doubtless, too, a warm-hearted ministry has much to do with quickening us, and if we have a choice of ministries in any place, we should select not that which tickles the ear most, but that which most enlivens the heart. If there are two ministries to be had, one of which is highly rhetorical and exceedingly pleasing to the intellect, but the other, though lacking in these points, nevertheless appeals to our conscience, arouses our heart, feeds us with spiritual meat, and incites to higher degrees of sanctity, choose that, for it is the ministry which God approves.

Under God’s blessing, every one of our graces may become a means of enlivening us. For instance, our faith, as it believes the great things of God will be sure to arouse us; our hope, as she looks forward to the bright reward will cause us to labour where otherwise we should have fainted: and love, which is the fore-horse of the team, will draw us to serve Christ with might and main. True love to Jesus, if it come to a great vehemence will quicken the entire spiritual nature, and then will the prayer be answered, “Quicken thou me.”

Thus, brethren, you see God has both gentle and rough means of quickening us, but for my part if he will but quicken me, I will make no bargain with him: let him do it as he wills. Do what thou wilt with me, my Lord; only keep me from being lukewarm, coldhearted, dead and alive. Do make me to be all on fire for thee.

Remember, beloved, that this is a promised blessing. David says, “Quicken thou me according to thy word.” You will find that thought repeated in the Psalm. It is a blessing to be pleaded for, for in a former verse David says, “Quicken thou me in thy righteousness,” as if he felt that God would not be righteous, would not be keeping his promise, if he did not quicken him. This is a blessing which is always a token of God’s lovingkindness wherever it comes. Look at the eighty-eighth verse and the one hundred and fifty-ninth, and you will find them both saying, “Quicken thou me after thy lovingkindness.”

Our text describes the sphere of renewed vigour. “Quicken thou me in thy way.” I have no business to ask God to quicken me in my own way, no right to ask him to quicken me merely that I may enjoy myself religiously, or be thought to be a very eminent Christian, or be able to sit down and contemplate my own beauties and perfections with self-complacency. Somebody once said to a Christian man, “Pray what faith have you?” Said he, “I have none to boast of.” If you see a fellow about who has not a sixpence to bless himself with, if he chances to possess an imitation diamond ring how careful he is to show it. See how he always puts out his finger to let you see it; but he who is worth his millions never thinks of displaying his gewgaws in that fashion. He that has merely a name to be religious is sure to advertise it, but he who is rich towards God is the very man who thinks himself poor, and cries out, “Lord quicken thou me.”

Now, what is the path in which we require to be quickened? First, it is in the way of duty in common life. Am I a father-quicken thou me to bring up my children aright. Am I a housewife-Lord quicken thou me that my duties at home may be discharged as in thy fear. Am I a servant or master-Lord, quicken thou me. I have my temptations in my daily calling, quicken me to stand against them; and I have also my daily opportunities for serving thee, quicken me to make use of them.

It means next, “Quicken thou me in sacred activity.” Am I a preacher? Lord help me to preach with all my might and with all thy might too. Am I a teacher in a school? Lord grant that I may not go to sleep over my children, but may win their souls, being blest by thee with the earnestness which tells upon youthful minds. Have I any other work to do? Am I a deacon or elder of the church? Let me be so ardent in piety, that my fellow members may be excited by my zeal. You have all some work to do for Christ-I hope you have. If you have not, go home and begin; but if you are doing your work, I know your prayer must be, “Quicken thou me in thy way.”

Did not David mean, again, quicken me in the way of patient suffering? for I must not forget that there are some whose service for Christ is more honourable even than the service of the worker, but who are very apt to think that Christ considers them useless. Oh dear brother and sister art thou called to suffer bodily pain? Your work is to bring forth the inexpressibly sweet fruit of patience. Go and pray, “Quicken thou me in thy way.” You know the story about poor Betty, who said the Lord had called her to do this and that while she was well, but now, “The Lord had said, ‘Betty, go and lie on that bed and cough,’ ” and said she, “I will do it, for his sake.” May you rejoice in the Lord’s will even if it causes you to pine, to cough, and to die. Not even the song of the angels is more sweet to God’s ear than the resignation and patience which are to be found in the hearts of the sons and daughters of affliction. But you will want great grace for this, my sister; you will want a strong inner life for this, my brother; therefore pray, “Quicken thou me in thy way.”

And the same is true of the way of hallowed worship. We want to be quickened there, quickened in private prayer, quickened in public prayer, quickened in our family devotion, quickened in our reading the Scriptures, quickened in our contemplations of divine love, quickened in all forms of worship. We require to be quickened in our growth in grace, in humility, in patience, in hope, in faith, in love, in every good gift. Especially we need to be quickened in communion with our God. Then let us pray the prayer, “Quicken thou me in thy way.”

Lastly, the connection of our text denotes that there may be special reasons and special seasons for this prayer. Just observe it. Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity, and “Quicken thou me in thy way.” You see the connection of the prayer. David is exposed to a temptation: the temptation reaches him through his eyes; he prays God to turn his eyes away from it, and then as a cure for the evil he says, “Quicken thou me.’ ” Brethren, are you never fascinated by a sin? Whenever you have been conscious of that diabolical fascination it has been time to cry, “ ‘Quicken thou me in thy way.’ I see I am weaker than I thought I was; Lord, I was carried away with anger when I thought I had gained a quiet temper at last; Lord, I found my heart going after an evil which I thought I had no relish for. Give me more grace, Good Master. ‘Quicken thou me in thy way.’ ”

A fit time for this prayer is a season of great affliction. The one hundred and seventh verse teaches us that. “I am afflicted very much: quicken me, O Lord, according to thy word.” Times of great temptation of spirit and trial of soul should be seasons for praying that God would give us extraordinary grace. When we have been confessing past sloth we should pray for grace to resist it for the future. If God at this time should convince any of us that we have not done one-tenth of what we ought to have done, and that we have been living at a distance from the love of Christ, then the prayer should arise, “Quicken thou me in thy way.”

Are we just now called to some extraordinary service? Does the Lord lay upon us a heavy burden for his name? Do not let us shirk it, or say, “I cannot do it.” No, “Lord, quicken thou me.” Give me more grace, and then I shall be equal to any emergency, for as my days my strength shall be.

This prayer is very suitable to the members of this church, because at this time we have seen so many of the good and excellent among us taken away. It scarcely seems as if the Lord would leave us any. During their last few months he has continued to sweep away one and another from us, and this week another valuable brother has been borne to the tomb. Surely every one remaining should say, “Lord, quicken thou me.” Grant that I may live so that if I also am soon to be removed I shall have finished my course, and have fought the fight right through and gained the crown which grace has promised. Perhaps within the course of another week this black upon my pulpit may wear a third significance, as it has a double one already. From which of us shall it derive its third meaning. Do I stand here to preach in feebleness my last sermon to you? Do my beloved church officers sit around me for the last time? And have I here members of this fellowship who are now upon this last occasion gathered for united worship? Brethren, it may be so. Then let us pray for quickening, that we may live while we live, and waste no precious moment of our scant earthly existence. The needs of our church are very great. If I stood in a harvest field, and saw that the crop needed to be ingathered, and that a labourer was working in it till he fainted again and again, and if I saw him in great feebleness grasping the sickle still, impelled by a brave spirit which kept him to his work, I think I should pray, “Lord, help me to reap too, to go into that mass of standing corn and reap too, for I see thy servant overdone with service.” My fellow servants, bought with the same blood, the harvest truly is plenty, but the labourers are few. I entreat you, by the blood and wounds of him who bought you, let not a single one turn away, but rise up and serve God with heart and soul and strength. Ah, we shall soon have to give account for all these things. Within a few short weeks or months we shall stand before his judgment seat whose eyes of fire shall read us through and through. We shall then be called to account for these ungodly ones who sit with us this day. Can we answer for their souls? We are a great church in a great city, and multitudes are dying without knowing Christ; if we do not give them all the help and instruction we can, how shall we answer for it? If standing in this pulpit to preach to crowds I do not stir my soul and preach earnestly, how shall I answer for it? When blood shall be upon these skirts in the day of judgment, the crimson of souls damned through my indolence, how shall I answer for it? Great God, forbid that it should ever be. But it may be so with you as well as with me, each one according to his responsibility and position. I again conjure you by every name that can tell upon your hearts and arouse your consciences, pray to God to quicken you to an ardour of love and an intense diligence of service for his dear and precious name.

Ah, some of you I cannot ask to offer this prayer. I have told you why. Dead souls, how can you pray for life? But I will ask God’s people to pray for you, and I will pray for you, that the gospel which I am commanded to preach even to the dead in sin may come with power to your souls. Here it is: “He that believeth and is baptised, shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned.” The Lord lead you to obey the word. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Psalm 109:25-31.

A HONEYCOMB

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s Day Morning, September 29th, 1872, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.”-Hebrews 12:3.

When the Hebrew Christians were suffering dire persecution the apostle could suggest no better support for their faith than this, “Consider him.” He bade them look to Jesus, and compare their case with that of their Lord. Such contemplations would prove a sovereign balm for their distressed minds. A consideration of our Lord and Master is the best conceivable stay and support during persecution. Let us look into that fact for a few minutes.

The believer under persecution should remember that he is suffering no strange thing, but is only enduring that which fell upon his Master before him. Should the disciple expect to be above his Lord? “If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household.” If they had received Christ they would have received us, but since they reject both Christ and his sayings, the followers of Christ must expect that both their persons and their doctrines will be lightly esteemed.

Remember that in addition to his being our Master, Jesus is also God. Shamefully unrighteous was the opposition of mankind to God, whom by all reasons of right and justice they were bound to reverence: yet he endured, with almighty patience, the contradiction of sinners against himself. A word from his lips would have withered them, but, like a sheep before her shearers, he was dumb. One glance of his eye of fire would have consumed their spirits, but that eye distilled a tear instead. Ye are but men, is it much that men should mock at you? If God himself, in the person of his dear Son, has endured the opposition of sinners, who are you, Oh sons of men, that you should wonder, much less should murmur, when you are reviled for Jesu’s sake?

Remember, too, that our dear Lord and Master was perfectly innocent. It was a cruel thing that he should be opposed who had done no harm to anyone. “For which of these works do you stone me”? said he,-a plaintive question, as much as if he had said, “I have healed your sick, I have fed your hungry, I have raised your dead, and do you thus requite me! Are stones the only testimonials of your appreciation?” They called him a drunken man, yet well we know he was temperance itself. They said he had a devil, though he was the Lord of angels. They charged him with treason, and yet he was himself the King of kings and Lord of all. Now, brethren and sisters, in us there is much that is evil, and when men speak evil of us falsely we may say within ourselves, “Ah, had they known me better they might have truthfully found fault with me in some other direction.” Ye are not innocent, beloved, oftentimes ye bring the rebuke upon yourselves; and the contradiction of sinners against your religion is due to your own fault quite as well as to the world’s opposition to the truth which ye love. Therefore if he, the spotless One, endured, should not ye endure who are so far from innocent? Should not ye be willing for his sake to suffer persecution?

Remember, too, the loving mission upon which our Master came. He came into this world on purpose to save men. He had no sinister motive, nor even a secondary aim. The glory of God in the salvation of lost souls was all he lived for, and yet for all that sinners were infuriated against him, and opposed him with might and main. Now, the good ye can confer upon them is slender enough compared with the rich gifts with which the Master’s hands were laden. Ye come, it is true, to tell them of a Saviour, but ye cannot save them. Ye bring glad tidings of good things, but ye are only tiding-bearers of the good things your Master actually brought. If they persecuted him who gave his blood for their redemption, it is not wonderful if you, who can only tell what he has done, should bear some of the reproaches that fell upon him. We remember, dear friends, how bitter were the reproaches that assailed him, how the enmity of man put forth all its cruel force. They were not content with slandering him in life, they must needs hurry him away to death. Reproach broke his heart, and he was full of heaviness; thus they tortured his soul; and ye have not forgotten their cruelties to him in Pilate’s hall, where the mental and physical agonies were blended. Ye cannot forget the nailing to the cross, and the scorn which saluted him in the midst of his dying grief. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. What have ye endured compared with his? As the poet standing upon the desolate mounds of ruined Rome considering the death-throes of an empire, said, “What are our petty griefs? Let me not number mine.” So may ye say, “What are the sufferings of any of the saints compared with the infinite griefs of the eternal Son of God.” His was suffering indeed. “Consider him, lest ye be weary and faint in your minds.”

Yet reflect, beloved, amid all these sufferings, our Lord’s temper remained unruffled. He spoke strong words against hypocrisy and falsehood wherever he beheld them. He spared neither Scribe nor Pharisee, but in those stern denunciations not a single atom of personal anger was blended. He did not denounce them in resentment of their attacks upon himself, but because they deserved to be denounced, and were in themselves too vile to be tolerated. No personal animosity ever ruffled the serenity of our great Master’s spirit. Moreover, he was never moved to take the slightest revenge upon his foes; even for those who nailed him to the wood, he had no return but the prayer, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And, as he had no vengeance against them, so they exerted no evil influence upon him. He persevered in his life-work just as much as if he had never been opposed. Like the sun that goeth on in its strength whether there be clouds to hide it or whether it shine out of the blue serene, Christ continued in his heavenward way; coming out of his chamber full of love to his spouse like a bridegroom girded for the race he pursued his mighty journey, tarrying not till he had fulfilled his course. Oh, how strengthening is this contemplation! Let us consider him and reflect, that by reason of his sufferings, and his patience, and his forgiveness, and his perseverance, he achieved a triumph over evil, which was in effect a complete victory of righteousness over sin. If he could have been ruffled he had been defeated, if he could have been angered he had been overthrown, if he could have been stayed in his progress, then had he not been victorious; but he bore and bore and bore again, he suffered and he suffered and he suffered still; like the anvil that replies not to the hammer, he yet wore out those hammers by his patience. Brethren, consider this, and suffer yourselves with a patience like your Master’s. Consider Jesus, and push on in the allotted path of holy service, just as he did. Consider him, and look forward with expectancy to the joy of triumphing over evil, for Christ will in you get the victory over sin again, in you he will again be crowned with many crowns, and in you again his cross shall become the symbol and weapon of victory.

But, now, I must confess I did not take this text with the view of preaching from it as it stands, but from a light which breaks out of it. We have given you an outline of what could have been said upon the text, but the thought occurred to me if the consideration of Christ be a most effectual medicine to the persecuted, so as to prevent their being weary or faint in their mind, doubtless the self-same sacred balm would be beneficial to all other cases of spiritual distress; and as I thought of all the diseases of God’s people, and like a physician tried this prescription upon them, I discovered that it was equally suitable and effectual in every case. So I thought I would speak this Sabbath morning to those souls which most want our care, namely, to those who are seeking Jesus, and longing after salvation, but are filled with doubts and despondencies, and I will say to them “consider him.” I am persuaded, beloved, if I am enabled by God’s Spirit to lead any seeking soul to “consider him,” I shall also lead that soul into liberty. I believe this topic will be the opening of the prison doors to them that are bound. I feel for some of you that God has set before you this morning an open door which no man can shut, and my prayer shall be offered over every syllable that I utter, that God may lead you through that open door at this very moment. So that not twenty or a hundred, but thousands of you may find Christ, and be saved with an everlasting salvation. I know the medicine has power in it if God the Holy Spirit will but apply it.

I shall now speak to the seeking sinner, taking him by the hand and appealing to him in simple but earnest language.

Thou that seekest salvation I say unto thee, in the name of the living God, consider Christ Jesus, the Son of God, the only Saviour of man.

And do this first to meet thine own consideration of thy sin. You are awakened enough to know that you have sinned against God. Though a little while ago sin seemed a trifle, you now know that it is a terrible thing, a deadly thing, and the thought oppresses your spirit that your sin deserves the wrath of God, that it must be punished, that God would not be a just moral Governor if he were to pardon you absolutely: he must take vengeance upon your inventions and punish you for your iniquity. Now I am glad that you have considered your sin and the heinousness of it; but, poor soul, let me take you by the hand and say to you, consider him-the Saviour, Christ Jesus. For if you will bethink yourself concerning him you will remember that God has been just and has laid the sin of his people upon the Lord Jesus Christ. It was impossible that sin should be wiped out with no remark from God, but he has been pleased to accept a substitute in the person of his only begotten Son, who could lawfully be a substitute because he is the head of his people, and it was natural that in their fall he should take an interest as being to them what Adam was to the whole human race. Now, the Lord need not punish thee, Oh sinner, for sin, for he has punished Jesus Christ in the stead of all believing sinners; he need not visit thee with stripes, for the stripes due to thy sin, if thou believest in Jesus, were laid upon another’s back; thine iniquities were gathered all together in one mighty load and then placed upon the shoulders of Jesus Christ, the great scape-goat for sin. Does not that remove distress from thy mind? If thou considerest thy sin consider also the five wounds, consider the bloody sweat, consider the tortured person of the immaculate Christ, who was God at the same time that he was man, and say unto thy soul, “If Jesus died in thy stead, there is a sufficient recompense made to the injured honour of Almighty God, so that he can be just and yet the justifier of the ungodly.”

But there rises in thy mind this thought, “My sin has placed me in a miserable position, for I am a sinner, and being a sinner I must be obnoxious to the anger of God. It is not possible that a pure God could permit me to dwell in his presence, for he cannot look upon iniquity. How can I hope for acceptance before God when I am defiled?” Now hearken, soul. Thou art a sinner, but “consider him,” ask thyself what is Jesus Christ? I speak with reverence of his name, as our Redeemer, what is he apart from sinners? Is not his name “Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” If there were no sinners, what could be the value of his name? It would be an empty sounding title without a meaning. How could he save if there were no lost ones to be saved? He could only be called a Saviour by way of compliment and fancy. Bethink thee, what did Jesus come from heaven for if he had not a relation to sinners? “It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” He came for nothing if he does not find sinners and save them; and if you, and such as you, have no right to look to Jesus, then what did he come to earth for? If there be a righteous man here who has no sin, Christ has nothing to do with you, you will perish without a Saviour; but if you are a sinner, you are the kind of person that he came to save, and the fact of your knowing that you are a sinner should give you comfort.

Look at the characters of Christ-“consider him.” Is he not a priest? And what is a priest for, but to make propitiation for the sins of the people? Is not our Lord described as a sacrifice for sin? But to what end is there a bloody sacrifice if there be no sin to put away? Jesus is our advocate. What says the apostle? “If any man sin, we have an advocate.” Who wants an advocate with God, but the man who has offended? Jesus is an intercessor, too, but who wants him to intercede for him if he be innocent? He maketh intercession for the sins of his people. You see, then, if you will consider him, that as a poor man is needful before there can be an almsgiver, as a disconsolate soul is needful before a comforter can exercise his office, so a sinner is necessary before a Saviour can be what he is ordained to be. Jesus needs your sinnership that he may exercise his sacred craft upon it. Put a surgeon down amidst men who are never sick, and what is there for him to do? Tell a physician that in a certain city no one is ever ill, and he will take himself off by the next train. If there were no sinners what use would a propitiation be? Therefore as you consider him, though your sense of sin will not vanish, your despair about it will be driven quite away.

“Yes, but,” saith another, “while I have been considering my sin I have been stunned altogether by a sense of its greatness. Oh, sir, mine has not been mere verbal sin, I have committed crimson transgressions of which it were a shame to speak. I have defiled myself by actual crimes which I cannot efface from my memory.” Be it so, but I bring thee my one remedy, “Consider him.” What sort of a Saviour is Jesus Christ, a little Saviour or a great one? Is he not the Son of God, and himself God? What need of a divine person to be a propitiation for limited sin? It was the infinity of sin that required the Godhead itself to become incarnate, in order that human guilt might be put away. If thou sayest, “I have but little sin;” I tell thee Christ will have nothing to do with thee. He came not from heaven to be a physician to a pin’s prick on a man’s finder which will heal of itself, but he is a physician who delights to heal putrifying sores and gaping wounds, and incurable diseases. And thou, great, big, black, devilish sinner, thou art just the sort of man that Christ delights to operate upon, for in thee will he show his power, his mercy, his grace, his sovereignty. There is room to display the infinity of his mercy in such a one as thou art. Therefore, be not cast down, be not faint and weary in thy seeking after him, but come at once and close in with him who is mighty to save.

“Yes,” said another, “but in turning over my sin I see the peculiarity of it. I believe my case is one by itself. I do not think another man could have committed the sin I have done under the circumstances, and with the peculiar aggravations.” Be it so. Thou art a unique sinner, but “consider him” for he is a unique Saviour. Was there ever such a one as Jesus? Thou art a wonderful sinner, but his name it also called Wonderful. If thou art a sinner of such a class, that, if thou be saved, all the angels will throng the streets to see thee come to heaven and point at thee, and say, “Behold a monstrous sinner, saved”; I say, if it be so thou wilt bring all the more glory to Christ, thou wilt only make his name the more famous through every heavenly street. But I tell thee, however much by thyself thou mayest be Christ will meet thee. If thou hast outsoared all others in the daring flights of thy sin, Jesus has gone beyond thee in the flights of his mercy. Though thou shouldst have gone as near the gates of hell as possible, and have imitated the devil in his worst qualities, yet the Redeemer is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him. He is a Saviour, and a great one. If thou canst ever find such a Saviour as Christ, then I will ask thee to find such a sinner as thyself; but since thou art a nonpareil sinner, since thou must say of thyself, “Ne plus ultra,” I will say the same of Jesus,-there is none beyond him. He stands alone and by himself, and so the sinner and the Saviour are well matched. Let thy fears be hushed to sleep, and put thy trust in him.

Now, the same precious sentence will be useful to the seeking soul, if its contemplation should have taken another shape. I can well believe that some of you are grievously oppressed with the sense of the greatness of God. You have lived for years negligent of the God who created you and supplied your wants, but now you have been awakened and aroused to the fact that there is a God, a God whom you have despitefully entreated, whom you have shamefully disregarded; and you are shocked to find that it is so, for now you have a sense of the greatness of God, and you are afraid that he will crush you. You know the justice of God, and you are sure that he must avenge the injuries you have done to his holy law, and, therefore, you go about every day with a dreadful sound in your ears, crying, “Whither shall I go from his presence, and how shall I escape from his vengeance?” You are surrounded with God, and in him you live and move and have your being, and this everywhere present God is your enemy, for you have made him so by your rebellions against him.

Now as a cure for all this, I have to say to you “consider him”-Christ Jesus. You are afraid of God because he hates sin. Your fears are based on truth. God hates sin infinitely. If there were only one grain of sin in the whole universe, he would burn it to ashes to get rid of that grain of sin, for it is such a detestable thing in his sight. But now consider Christ Jesus; for sin was laid on him. If thou wilt come now, and put thy trust in Jesus, thou mayest be sure that thy sin was laid on Christ, and the wrath of God concerning sin was spent upon him. The vials of Jehovah’s indignation were poured upon the devoted head of the Great Shepherd of the sheep. God hates sin, but he will not hate thee, for thou hast no sin if thou believest in Jesus, seeing thy sin is transferred to thy surety and laid upon Christ, and thou art dean.

Ah, but thou sayest, “He is such a holy God, how can I approach him?” Well, I will tell thee the most blessed secret out of heaven. It is this-thou canst, by faith, put on the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus, and when thou hast it on thee thou wilt be as holy in the sight of God as Christ is holy. Did not Jesus keep the law? What need was there that he should? He needed not to have become a servant to his father. He has a righteousness to spare, and he gives it to us, for he is made unto us “wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.” When a soul puts on the righteousness of Christ by faith, even the all-seeing eye of God cannot see a flaw in that righteousness. Adam in the garden had a perfect righteousness, but then it was only a human one; you and I, when we believe in Jesus, have a perfect righteousness which is divine-the righteousness of the Eternal Son of God himself, and so we can come to God as if we had been perfectly innocent, and stand on terms of full familiarity with the thrice holy One.

“Ah,” saith one, “there is good cheer in all this, but still I have some dread remaining, for God is infinitely great.” It is true, it is true, but I would have thee “consider him,” for recollect, the God thou hast to do with is not God as seen on Sinai, or rather as obscurely heard amidst the dense darkness of the trembling mountain, but thou hast to do with God in Christ Jesus, and therefore “consider him.” Now bethink thee for a minute. Jesus is a strong God it is true. Do you not see him walking the waters of the sea? But why does he pause in the midst of his wondrous marchings over the waves? It is to stretch out his hand and save Peter from sinking, who had said, “Lord save me, or I perish.” The strength of God shall do the same for thee; as thou art sinking and ready to perish, the omnipotent God will put out his hand and snatch thee from the waves of fire, and deliver thy soul from destruction.

Consider Christ Jesus a moment as a strong God, and how he uses his strength. He walks down the streets where the sick folk lie in their beds, and does he trample on them and crush out the last spark of life from those poor wretches? No, but he touches this one and an eye is opened, and he puts his finger on another and an ear is unstopped, he lays his hand on the dead and they arise. Oh, yes, and he will do this to thee. Be thankful for a mighty God, for in Christ Jesus the omnipotence of God will only come to heal thy woes. See this omnipotent One take the loaves and the fishes in his hands and break them, and as he breaks them they multiply till all those thousands are fed out of one basket full of barley loaves and small fishes:-he will feed thy soul with heavenly bread to the full. His greatness will reveal itself in supplying thy great necessities, and blessing thee greatly. Thou wilt see it so, if thou wilt consider Jesus.

“Till God in human flesh I see

My thoughts no comfort find;

The holy, just, and sacred three,

Are terrors to my mind.

But if Immanuel’s face appears,

My hope, my joy begins,

His name forbids my slavish fears,

His grace forgives my sins.”

So I have used the remedy thus far. I dare say I shall be a little tedious-the doctor is always tedious when he has many wounds to bind up.

It may be that some soul here is saying, “You have not touched my difficulty yet. I am troubled about sin, and I am troubled about God, but still my greatest anxiety is this-I know that if I could believe, my sins would be pardoned, but I am perplexed with unbelief, and I am sore distressed because of the hardness of my heart, which will not let me repent.” Come, then, soul, and “consider him.”

First, thou sayest, “I have little or no faith;” then “consider him.” Did Jesus ever stipulate for great faith before he healed a soul? What trembling faith he accepted in the days of his flesh! The poor leper said, “Lord if thou wilt thou canst make me clean.” You can get as far as that, cannot you? And Jesus Christ said, “I will, be thou clean.” A poor woman came into the crowd, and was afraid to face the Master, but she crept behind him and touched the hem of his garment, and stole a cure, for she said, “If I may but touch the hem of his garment I shall be made whole,” and Jesus did not rebuke her, but he said, “Thy faith hath made thee whole, go in peace.” So Jesus Christ loves little faith, therefore thou, poor Much-afraid, and thou, Despondency, “consider him,” and his gentleness towards the timid and trembling, and let thy fears be gone.

But thou sayest, “Ah, I am afraid, I have no faith at all.” Then, beloved, “consider him,” and among other matters consider well how he deserves thy faith. Tell me, what did Jesus ever do that thou shouldst doubt him? He says he will save thee if thou will trust him. Point to one promise he has broken. I challenge thee, yea, I challenge all the world to point to one word that ever fell from his lips and was not fulfilled. That dear and precious Saviour is truth itself. I feel I can trust him, and whenever I do not trust him it is because I have not considered him. The sight of him makes me feel that I would rush into his arms. What, not trust him who “bears the earth’s huge pillars up?” I must trust him! Son of God and Son of Man, I see both thy strength and thy tenderness, and I must rely upon thee. I pray the man who feels that he cannot believe, to consider Christ Jesus. Think of him in the garden; think of him on the cross. Will not his death suffice? Think of him as rising from the dead and pleading before the eternal throne.

“Venture on him, venture wholly,

Let no other trust intrude,