C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Ammi-nadib.”-Solomon’s Song 6:12.

We cannot be quite sure at this date what these chariots of Ammi-nadib were to which the inspired poet here refers. Some suppose that he may have alluded to a person of that name, who was renowned, like Jehu of old, for his furious driving. Hence it might have been familiar at the time, and afterwards have become proverbial to speak in metaphor of the chariots of Ammi-nadib. The conjecture seems harmless, still it is only a conjecture, and cannot be verified. It is quite possible, however, that our translators may have retained as a proper name a conjunction of two words, which, taken separately, are capable of being interpreted. You remember the word “Ammi” as it occurs in the prophet Hosea. “Say unto your brethren, Ammi,” which signifies “ye are my people,” even as before he had said, “Call his name Lo-Ammi, for ye are not my people.” The one word Ammi, thus stands for “people,” and the other word, “Nadib,” means “willing,” so that the two united may be rendered “willing people”-“like the chariots of a willing people.” Or the words may be read, I think, more correctly, “The chariots of the princely people”-the princely chariots, the chariots of the prince. Some have understood them to mean the chariots of God, of the people that surround the Great Prince himself; that is to say, the chariots of the angels, according as we read, “The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels.” In this case, the figure would be a very striking one-“Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of the attendants upon the Great King. I was like the cherubim themselves, all aglow with consecrated fire.” In whatever way the critical point is deciphered, the practical solution appears to be this. The writer’s soul was quickened, because full of life, full of energy, full of might, full of spirit, and full of princely dignity too, and not only stimulated to a high degree, but also elevated, lifted up from dulness, indifference, and apathy-“Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Ammi-nadib.”

To whom does this text refer? Probably those of us who would never raise a doubt about the Song being a dialogue between Christ and the spouse-a matter we have no intention to canvass just now, as we take it for granted-might find no small difficulty in determining to which of the two sacred personages this speech belongs, whether it was to Solomon or to Shulamite (the masculine or the feminine variety of the same name)-the prince the husband, or the princess the spouse-whether, in a word, it was Christ or the church. There is very much to be said for its being Christ himself that is speaking. You will notice in this chapter that, from the fourth verse, he has been referring to his church. “Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners. Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me,” and so on. He is speaking of his church on to the tenth verse. “Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?” Then the eleventh verse proceeds, “I went down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished, and the pomegranates budded. Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Ammi-nadib.” May it not be the Lord himself who is speaking here? We may entertain the question for a moment without absolutely fixing upon this as its proper solution. If it refers to Christ, it means just this, that he had been for a while away from his people. They had grieved him, and he had hid his face from them. Out of very love and faithfulness he felt bound to chasten them, by hiding from them the brightness of his countenance. But he began to think tenderly of his people, his heart turned towards his church; and while he was thinking of her, he saw such beauties in her that his soul was melted with her charms. Oh, what an extraordinary thing that he should see loveliness in his poor imperfect church! But he saw such a loveliness about her, as her image rose up before his face that he said, “Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes.” “Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me.” And then, musing upon her still, and coming into her garden, and seeing the various graces like plants and flowers in their different stages of development, his heart began to grow warm again towards her and all that concerned her. It had never really been cold; it only seemed so in the deviation of his wonted manner, but, like Joseph before his brethren, he could not refrain any longer. When he saw some of his people budding with desires, others bursting into the realisation of those desires, when he saw some like ripe and mellow fruit upon the bough, ready for heaven, others just commencing the divine life, he was charmed to be in the garden of nuts; or ever he was aware, he found he must be with his people; he must return in the fulness of his love to his church. Not her beauties only, but the kindlings of his own soul began to stir him his free grace sought free scope; his infinite love became more than a match for the temporary prudence that had made him hide his face, and, swift as the chariots of Ammi-nadib, did he speed back to his people, to let them see him again, to let them enjoy fellowship again. There are other Scripture passages where the Saviour is spoken of as being like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether, or division, because he is so willing to come to his people, so willing to make matters up with them, and end the days wherein they mourn because the bridegroom is absent. When he has hidden his face for a while out of love for them, and out of desire to reveal to them their faults, I say again, he is so willing to blot out their faults once more, and to return to them again with mercies, that his return is compared for swiftness and irresistibleness to the motions of the chariots of Ammi-nadib.

It is a delightful thought that if communion between our souls and Jesus be suspended, it is not because he takes pleasure therein. His delights are with the sons of men. He a thousand times invites his chosen to abide in him, to continue in his love, and to remain in his company. In this Song he cries again and again, “Come with me, my spouse.” This should encourage us to seek to him for renewed love-tokens, however serious may have been our departures from him, and however dark our prospects under the hidings of his face. If he who is the aggrieved party is eager to be reconciled, the matter is easy, and we may at once rise to the blessed condition from which our sin has cast us down. Jesus longs to embrace us, his arms are opened wide; do not our hearts warm at the sight? Do we not at once rush to his bosom, and find a new heaven, in a fresh sense of his boundless love? Wherefore hesitate? What possible cause can there be for abiding in darkness? Lord, we fall upon thy bosom and our joy returns.

Not that I intend to adopt that view as the groundwork of our present reflections. It appears to me that without in the slightest degree wresting the passage, or deviating from an honest interpretation, we may understand that this is the language of the church concerning Christ. If so, Christ’s words conclude at the end of the tenth verse, and it is the church that speaks at the eleventh. There is not an instance in the whole Song, so far as I can remember, of the Prince himself speaking in the first person singular; either, therefore, this would be a solitary exception, or else, following the current plan, where the same pronoun is used, the church is speaking to Christ, and telling him of herself. “I went down into the garden of nuts, to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished and the pomegranates budded. Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Ammi-nadib.”

Taking the text, then, as referring to the church in particular, and more generally to the Lord’s people, there will be four observations which we would pointedly make and prayerfully meditate. May God bless us now in fulfilling this purpose!

Our first observation shall be this. What is most wanted in all religious exercises is the motion, the exercise of the soul. “Or ever I was aware, my soul made me”-or my soul became-“like the chariots of Ammi-nadib.” Soul-worship is the soul of worship, and if you take away the soul from the worship, you have killed the worship; it becomes dead and barren henceforth. Let us turn over that well-known thought. It may benefit us if we look at the many sides of it.

There are professors in this world who are perfectly content if they have gone through the mechanical part of public devotion. If they have occupied their seats, joined in the hymns and the prayers, and listened to the preaching, they go away quite content and easy. They would not like to be absent from the solemn assembly, and their conscience would prick them if they neglected the outward ordinances, but having gone through them, and complied with the wonted form, they are perfectly content with themselves, and think they have done that which is lawful and right, comely and excellent. Now, it is never so with the child of God. If his soul be awakened from the torpor of death, and his sensibilities quickened into the vigour of life, he will feel that, unless in the song he has really praised God in strains of gratitude with emotions of thankfulness, he has rather mocked his heavenly Father than acceptably adored him. He knows that prayer, if it is not the soul that speaks with God, is but the carcase of prayer, destitute alike of the sweet savour which can find acceptance with God, and of the sweet satisfaction that can bring refreshment to one’s own breast. When he hears the word preached, he longs to feel it penetrate his heart, even as the rain soaks into the soil; and if he cannot so receive the truth of the gospel when it breaks on his ear as the engrafted word that saves his soul, and so feed upon it as the bread of life which nourishes his soul, he goes away sad at heart, deploring that, while others were feasting at the banquet, he was there without appetite, and had not the pleasure or the profit which they derived. Beloved, in our public services we ought to account nothing truly and rightly done which is not done with the heart. That is one reason why in this Tabernacle we have tried to lay aside everything of outward show or external form, which might distract the thoughts or disturb the simplicity of waiting on the Lord. As far as I can, I try to avoid the use of all symbols, except the two which Scripture has ordained, lest the symbol should tempt you to rest satisfied with itself, as I believe it generally does, and so prevent your reaching the Lord with your heart. We try to lay aside everything that would at all touch your senses in the worship, anything which appeals to the ear in the way of sweet music, anything of the æsthetic that would appeal to the eye. If you do not worship God with your souls, I hope you will get tired of our fellowship. Yet, be it confessed, I painfully feel that it is almost as easy not to worship God with the bald plainness of Quakerism as it is not to worship God with the studied pomp of Ritualism. In any form, or without any form of worship, the amount of real devotion must be measured by the quantity of soul that is in it, provided the quality be pure, sincere, guileless. If the soul be there, in the full exercise of its powers and passions, knowing what is revealed and feeling what is inspired, I believe God is gracious to pity and forgive a thousand mistakes in outward fashion and skill of execution. The preacher’s modulation may be faulty, and the people’s singing may be ill-timed to barbarous tunes, without peril of the unpardonable sin. But if the soul be lacking, though ye should have essayed to worship according to the pattern given in the Mount, and have never had a word uttered or a sound made but such as in itself would be accredited by men and acceptable with God had it been quickened by the Spirit, yet without that divine Spirit which alone can give force and fervour to the human soul, it is all null and void. I think every genuine Christian knows it is so, and feels it is so. He says, “My heart crieth out for God, for the living God,” nor can he be satisfied unless he does find God, and draws near before him.

As in public worship, it is precisely the same in our own private and personal transactions with the Most High. The religious worldling will say a prayer when he wakes in the morning, and perhaps, unless he is out late, or too sleepy at home, he will have a bit of prayer at night again, in the way of the repetition of some collect, or something which he has learnt by rote. And very likely he has family prayer too. It is not so much a custom as it was, but there are some who think they cannot go through the day unless they have what they call “Prayers.” But mark how the Christian prizes private prayers above everything that has to do with the ordering of his daily habits. And see how he esteems family prayer to be a necessity of every Christian household! At the same time he is not content because he prays for a few minutes unless he draws near to the Lord; he is not satisfied because he gathered his children together, and read the Scriptures and prayed with them, if, on adding up the sum total of the day, he is compelled to say,” It was heartless worship. When I awoke it was heartless worship, when I gathered my children and my servants it was the same, and it was sleepy, heartless worship when I knelt by my bed-side and professed to seek the Lord at nightfall.” If it is heartless it is unacceptable; God cannot receive it. If we have not thrown our heart into it, depend upon it God will never take it to his heart and be pleased with it. Only that prayer which comes from our heart can get to God’s heart; if we pray only from the lips, or from the throat, and not low down from the very bowels of our nature, we shall never reach the bowels of our Father who is in heaven. Oh, that we may be more and more scrupulous and watchful in these things! In the diary of Oliver Heywood, one of the ejected ministers, he often says, “God helped me in prayer in my chamber and in the family.” And once he writes thus-“In my chamber this morning I met with more than ordinary incomings of grace and outgoings of heart to God.” I am afraid we may get satisfied with ourselves, especially if we are regular in private Scripture reading, private prayer, family prayer, and public prayer, while instead of being satisfied with these exercises we ought to be weeping over them and deploring the formal and heartless manner in which we are prone to discharge them. Be it always recollected that we do not pray at all, unless the soul is drawn out in pleading and beseeching the Lord. Si nil curarem, nil orarem, said Melanchthon, “Were I without cares, I should be without prayers.” Now, perhaps you may know a friend of yours who thinks himself a poet. He can make poetry at any time, all the year round. Just pull him by the sleeve, and he will make you very soon a verse or two at the spur of the moment to show the readiness of his wit and the versatility of his talent. Yet I dare say you think that he is about as far off from being a poet as a sparrow is from being an eagle. You know if he were a poet he would not be able to command the glow of imagination at one time, and at another time he would hardly be able to control it. He would sometimes have a divine afflatus upon him, as some call it, and then noble thoughts in appropriate words would flow from his pen. Otherwise he would be just as dull and insipid as ordinary mortals. He would tell you indignantly that he could not write verses to order like those who scribble rhyme to advertise a tailor’s wares. Without the inspiration comes upon me, he would say, I cannot compose a line. In like manner a man cannot always pray, and the man who pretends he can doth only utter jargon. He never prays at all, as the other never makes poetry at all. Prayer is a divine art. It is a thing which needs the inspiration not of the muses, but of the Spirit of God himself, and it is when the Spirit comes upon us with divine force, and makes our soul like the chariots of Ammi-nadib that we can pray; and at other times when that Spirit is not with us, we cannot pray as we did before. Every living child of God knows this. We must measure our prayers by the state of soul that we were in.

Take another illustration from the painter. One person who thinks himself a painter can paint any day you like anything you ask him-a mountain, a river, a horse, an insect, or a flower-it is all the same to him. He takes a brush and soon produces something, which ordinary people might think to be a picture; but send that daub of his to the Royal Academy, and they will tell you that it may do for a tea-tray, but not for the walls of a gallery. But the man that can paint, how does he mix his colours? The great painter will tell you that he mixes his brains with his colours; and when he takes his brush and dips it into the paint, he lays it on with his soul. In a great picture, such as sometimes we have seen by a Titiens, or a Raphael, it is not the colour but the man’s heart that has got out on to the canvas. Somehow he has managed to drop his brush into his soul. That is real painting. And so it is with prayer. The humblest man that prays to God with his soul understands the fine art of prayer; but the man who chants a pompous liturgy, or repeats an extemporaneous effusion, has not prayed. He has dashed off what he thinks to be a picture, but it is not a picture, it is not a prayer. Had it been a prayer it would have had a palpable inspiration in its light and shade. A painting may consist of few lines, but you will see the painter’s hand in it; and a prayer may consist of only half a dozen words, but you can see the hand of God in it. The formality repels you in the one case; the vitality attracts you in the other.

So we will come back to the proposition with which we started. We can only pray according to the proportion in which our soul puts forth its force and feeling, and it is the same with praise. We have praised God up to the amount of soul that was in the sense as well as in the sound, be it with an organ or without an organ, with good music or with groanings that cannot be uttered. We may have praised God either way, but only if our soul has been in full swell. With every kind of religious exercise, the soul is the standard of the whole compass of worship.

We proceed to a second remark. Sometimes it happens that the heart is not in the best state for devotion. If religion be a matter of soul, it cannot always be attended to with equal pleasure and advantage. You can always grind a barrel-organ; it will invariably give you the same discordant noise, which people call music, but the human voice will not admit of being wound up in the same fashion, nor will it for the most part discharge the same monotonous functions. The great singer finds that his voice changes, and that he cannot always use it with the same freedom. If the voice is a delicate organ, how much more delicate is the soul! The soul, is continually the subject of changes. Ah, how often it changes because of its contact with the body! If we could be disembodied, oh, how we would praise God and pray to him! “The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak.” I sat among some brethren the other day who were devout, and I tried to be, but I had a splitting headache. I do not know whether you could pray under so grievous a disability; let me confess to you that I could not. At another time, not long ago, I was one of a solemn assembly, when various disturbances occurred in the room-somebody getting up, and others coming in late, as some of you do-and I could not get into a right frame as I ought to have done. Little things will affect little minds, and our minds, many of them, are little. In that case I could not pray, because my mind was being distracted and my attention was being taken away. Such distractions frequently happen, and bitterly they remind us of our infirmities. The apostles themselves fell to sleeping when they ought to have been praying; and under Paul’s preachings Eutychus went to sleep, and Paul never blamed him. He died as the result of it, but he got raised again from the dead, so I suppose there was no fault in him. We may sometimes, without any wilfulness on our part, as a necessary result of the weakness of our nature, or the stress of our toil and care, have brought ourselves into a condition in which we cannot feel like the chariots of Ammi-nadib, and it is no use for us to attempt it. The body does affect the soul materially; and a thousand outside agencies will tell upon our mental susceptibilities. I have known persons come into this Tabernacle who have, perhaps, been annoyed with somebody in their pew, or somebody outside. It ought not to be so, but it is so. A little fly buzzing about one’s face, as small a thing as that, will disturb one’s devotion, so that you cannot pray as you would and as you desire.

And then, alas, our sins are a much more serious hindrance to our devotion. A sense of guilt puts us into such a state that we cannot be bold in our faith and childlike in our confidence when we appear before God. Perhaps we have been angry. How can we come before the Lord calmly when our spirit has been just now tossed with tempest? Probably we have been seeking the world, and going after it with all our might. How can we suddenly pull up, and put all our strength into a vigorous seeking of the kingdom of God and his righteousness in a moment? It is possible, too, that there is a sick child at home, or a wife lying suffering, or serious losses and crosses about business and domestic affairs. Perhaps one has a very heavy heart to bring before the Lord. Now God’s grace can help us to overcome all these things, and can even make our souls like the chariots of Ammi-nadib. We do want grace for such emergencies. The soul, in its different phases and states, has need of help from the sanctuary to which it repairs. “Well,” perhaps one here will say, “I always do what I think right every Sunday in much the same manner. I always pray the same, and I don’t know but what I can always sing God’s praises the same.” Yes, let me answer our good friend, I have on doubt of your thorough sameness, or of your habitual self-content. If you were to ask one of the statues in St. Paul’s Cathedral how it felt, I have no doubt it would say that it always felt the same, because it never had any feeling. Appeal to anything destitute of life, you will find that it has no change. But where there is life, and that which is intensely delicate-spiritual life, and where it is placed in circumstances so hostile to it as the circumstances which surround us here, you will find that not only the revolutions of the seasons, but the variations of the temperature, affect it. And every man who has this life in him experiences such changes. We have read of those who have no changes, and therefore they fear not God. The fact that a believer cannot at all times draw nigh to God as his spirit would desire, becomes accordingly the key which interprets to him the grace and goodness whereby he sometimes gains access after a manner that surprises and delights his spirit.

This leads cheerfully up to our third observation, there are seasons when our heart is sweetly moved towards God. “Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Ammi-nadib.” Have ye not proved welcome opportunities when all your thoughts have been quickened, enlivened, and stimulated to activity in the highest degree about your highest interests? We have ceased to moan-

“Our souls, how heavily they go

To reach eternal joys;”

and we have been all wings, and could soar and mount aloft. Like David, we could have danced before the ark of God for very joy, and if any had said to us that we might ourselves fall by our enthusiasm while we seemed vile by our hilarity, we should have replied that we purposed to be viler still. All within us was awake; there was not a slumbering faculty. Our memory told us of the goodness of the Lord in days gone by; and our hopes were regaled by the mercy which we had not tasted yet, but which was made sure to us by promise, and brought near to us by faith. Our faith was active and bright of eye. Our love especially shed a clear light over all our prospects. Oh, we have had blessed times, when our soul has been light and rapid as the chariots of Ammi-nadib! And at such times we were conscious of great elevation. The chariots of Ammi-nadib were those of a prince. And oh, we were no more mean, and low, and beggarly, and grovelling, but we saw Christ, and were made kings and princes and priests with him. Then we longed to crown his head. Then we could have performed martyrs’ deeds. Then we were no cowards, we were afraid of no foes, we sat down at the feet of Jesus, and thought everything little compared with him; sufferings for his sake would have been a gain, and reproach would have been an honour. We had princely thoughts then, large, liberal, generous, capacious thoughts concerning Christ and his people, his cause, and his conquests: our souls were like the chariots of Ammi-nadib. At the same time they were full of power; for, when the chariots of Ammi-nadib went forth, who could stop them? Who could lay his hand upon the reins and turn the coursers as they went onward in their mighty tramping? Such was our spirit. We laughed at thoughts of death, and poured contempt upon the trials of life. We were “strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.” Oh, what splendid times we have had when God has been with us. Do you remember when you had them? I recollect, when newly converted, how full my spirit was of love and holy triumph, like the chariots of Ammi-nadib. Yours, no doubt, were much like mine. The love of your espousals was upon you. With what pleasing rapture you embraced your Lord and said, “I will never let him go.” Stronger is love than death or hell. You felt it to be so. You flamed and burned and glowed, and though in yourself you were like low brushwood, yet you were like the bush in the desert, that burned with fire because God was in your soul. Do you remember that? Well, now, since then, in private prayer sometimes, you have had gracious access, and meditation has been added to prayer, and the love of Christ has come in upon you like a great flood tide, and drowned everything in your soul except itself. There have been periods when a sense of the eternal, immutable, never-ending love of God, his electing sovereign favour, that, love of God, the love of God in giving his Son for you, have told upon your spirit with a mighty influence that has laid you prostrate for very joy, when you could not speak, because words were too poor to express the emotions of your soul. You had to feel the force of James Thomson’s hymn of the seasons: “Come, then, expressive silence, muse his praise,” for you could not speak it. You know it has been so with you sometimes, and has not it been so sometimes under the word, when you have been ready to stand up and clap your hands for joy? Have not I seen gratitude and exultation reflected on your faces sometimes when the Lord has been present in the preaching of the gospel, and the truth has come to you like marrow and fatness from the King’s own hands, till Dr. Watts has proved to be a faithful interpreter of the very scene and circumstance that ravished your heart-

“The King himself draws near,

And feasts his saints to-day;

Here we may sit, and see him here,

And love, and praise, and pray.”

Oh, yes! in God’s house you have known the days of heaven upon earth. Might I speak for the rest of you I should pronounce the choicest periods of fellowship those we have found at the Lord’s table. When the bread has been broken and the wine poured out down in the the Lecture Hall, he has been with us in the breaking of bread. If ever we have come near to Christ, surely it has been in that blessed communion. There are the windows of agate and the gates of carbuncle through which Christ comes to his people in the ordinances he has ordained. We will never slight them. We cannot. The Master puts such reality and fulness of joy into them. Apart from him they are idols; but with him, when he is there, when we have the real presence-not the superstitious presence some speak about, but the real presence which his own Spirit imparts, and our waiting souls participate,-ah, then we have said-

“No beams of cedar or of fir

Can with his courts on earth compare,

As myrrh new bleeding from the tree,

Such is a dying Christ to me.”

Not unfrequently too have I known that the Lord has appeared to his people and warmed their hearts when they have been working for him. Some idle, indolent, sluggish professors who have used the ordinances have not found benefit in the ordinances, because the Lord has intended to rebuke their sloth; but when they have got up and gone forth among the poor, when they have gone forth to visit the sick, the sorrowful, and the dying, they have heard such delightful expressions from the lips of holy, suffering men and women, or felt their hearts so kindled by a sight of divine compassion in the midst of desperate poverty and gracious pardon for grievous sin, that a quickening has come over them; and whereas they did not seem to care before whether souls were lost or saved, they have gone out into the world with zeal to win fresh trophies for the Messiah, their hearts being like the chariots of Ammi-nadib, through the benefits they have received from Christian service. A great many Christian people never will be happy, and never fully alive to the destinies that wait on their Redeemer, till they get something to do to give them an interest in those mighty issues. The rule of the Christian life is, “If any man will not work, neither shall he eat.” If you will not serve God as Christians, you shall not feed upon the sweet things of the kingdom to your own soul’s comfort. A little more service, and your soul would become like the chariots of Ammi-nadib. Beloved, there is no need that I should enlarge; I merely say this to bring up your grateful memories that you may thank God for what he has done, for remember whatever he has done in the past he he will do again in the future. When the Lord has come once to his people he says, “I will see you again, I will come to you again, and your hearts shall rejoice.” Of everything he has ever given you, he has got as much in store, and he is quite as able to give it to you now as he was before. You have never gone so high in joy but you may go higher yet; you have never drunk such draughts from the well of Bethlehem as left the well empty; you shall drink again of it. Do not say, “I had those sweet times when I was young, I shall never have them again.” You shall have precious times again. Get back to your first love, dear brother, dear sister; get forward to a higher love than ever you had, for God will help you. Say you, “I look back and think-

‘What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!

How sweet their memory still!

But they have left an aching void

The world can never fill.’ ”

Thank God for that ache. Bless God for the aching void. If your soul aches for God, he will be to your relief ere long. Whenever a soul puts up a flag of distress at the mast-head, he may be sure that Christ is on the look-out for just such a soul. He has thrown up the windows of heaven, and wherever he sees a soul that does what is right and longs to find joy and reconciliation with God, he will come to it, and before long it shall be better for you than even the chariots of Ammi-nadib, and more desirable.

Our last observation is this-sometimes the sweet seasons come to us when we do not expect them. “Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Ammi-nadib.” Some poor hearts do not reckon ever to have these joys again. They say, “No, no, they are all gone; the last leaf has blown from the tree; the last flower has faded in the garden. My summer is past. It is all over with me! “That is the bitter complaint and the hollow murmuring of unbelief. But the Lord for whom ye wait can suddenly appear, and while you are saying hard things of yourself he can refute them with the beams of his countenance. Even at this very moment you may stand like Hannah, a woman of sorrowful spirit, feeling as if you would be sent away empty; yea, and God’s servant himself may address you with rough words as Eli did her, and may even tell you that you are drunken, when it is deep grief that enfeebles your steps and chokes your voice; and all the while the Lord may have in store for you such a blessing as you have never dreamed of; and he may say to thee, “Go thy way, my daughter; I have heard thy petition, thy soul shall have its desire.” Or ever I was aware, while my unbelief led me to think such a thing impossible, thou hast made me like the chariots of Ammi-nadib.

“Or ever I was aware” as if it came upon me almost without my own consent. Glad enough I was when it did come, but it took me by surprise; it led me captive. Now, is not that the way that the Lord dealt with you when you were not aware of it, when you had no reason to expect him, when you found and felt yourself to be utterly lost, ruined, and undone? Did he not surprise you with his mercy, and prevent you with his lovingkindness? Again, you are minished and brought low through oppression, affliction, and sorrow. There is nothing that leads you to expect a season of joy; you are just as empty and unworthy as you can well be; you feel as if your heart were of stone, and you cannot stir it, and you are saying, “I only wish I could enjoy the freedom that my companions have, and keep the solemn feasts with their holy gladness: but alas for me! I am afraid I have got to be a mere mechanical Christian, without the lively instincts and lofty inspirations of spiritual worship.” Thus are you writing bitter things against yourself. Oh, beloved, the Lord is looking down upon you now as his son or daughter, as his own dear child, and is about to surprise you with his infinite love! Let me give you one text to put into your mouth and take home with you. The Lord has said, concerning every one of his people, “Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.” “Why, now, I am all covered over with spots and blemishes,” you say, “and no beauty;” but the Lord Jesus Christ has washed you with his blood, and covered you with his righteousness. Do you think he can see any imperfection in that? You are members of his body, united to him. In Christ you are without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. You are all spots in yourself, but he sees you as he intends to make you before he has done with you, and he can discern unspeakable beauties in you. “Oh,” say you, “does he think that? Surely then I see unspeakable beauties in him! His love to me opens my eyes to see how dear an one he must be. Is he enamoured of me? Has he given his whole heart to me? Did he prove his love to me by bleeding on the cross? Oh, then, I must love him, if he will but let me! Shall such a poor worm as I am love infinite perfection? Oh, yes, I must, since infinite perfection deigns to love me, and since the Sun of Righteousness in all his glory deigns to shine on my soul!” You are beginning to warm already, I see you are. Or ever you are aware, your soul is making you like the chariots of Ammi-nadib. And if you keep on with those holy contemplations, you will leave off all misgivings about your love to him, so deeply absorbed will you be in musing on his love to you. You will forget all the while about your sin, while you recollect the blood that has put that sin away, the perfect righteousness that has made you accepted in the Beloved, and the everlasting covenant which through grace has put your feet upon a rock, and saved your eyes from tears and your feet from falling. Engaged in such sweet soliloquies, or ever you are aware, your soul will make you like the chariots of Ammi-nadib. The Lord make it so!

God grant that surprising grace may come likewise even to sinners, and lead them to Jesus, and constrain them to look to Jesus. Then, while looking, faith will breathe in their spirit, so that they will sing-

“Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart,

Which wonders to feel its own hardness depart;

Dissolved by thy goodness, I fall to the ground,

And weep to the praise of the glory I’ve found.”

RUBBISH

A Sermon

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“There is much rubbish; so that we are not able to build the wall.”-Nehemiah, 4:10.

Remember that Jerusalem had been totally destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar; and what destruction by the Babylonians meant may be inferred from the vast heaps of the dust of powdered bricks and charred wood which have been discovered upon the sites of cities which were utterly razed to the ground by the fierce soldiery of the terrible king. The ruins are frequently so complete that even tradition has forgotten the name of the mound or heap which is the sole memorial to mark the sepulchre of a queenly city. The Babylonians made sure work when they did it, their ploughers made deep furrows, and their destroyers cried one to another, “Overturn, overturn, overturn, till not a stone shall abide in its place.” They reaped a nation with their swords as corn is cut down by the sickle, and they beat their cities till the ruins thereof were small as the dust of the summer threshing-floor. Do you wonder that on the site of Jerusalem there remained much rubbish? Many modern destroyers have done their desolating work most wonderfully, and I may venture to quote what I have seen of their doings as an example of the much rubbish with which the foundations of a ruined city are sure to be covered. I have stood upon the Palatine Mount in Rome, where formerly the palaces of the Cæsars raised themselves in more than imperial grandeur. But what an Alp of fragments! What a mountain of broken walls and columns, and stones peering upward like the natural rock of mother earth! Houses, convents, palaces, have been built upon the mass, and for many seasons trees have bloomed and fruited, and gardens have brought forth their harvests above the spot where once the imperial tyrant was wont to awe the nations with a nod. To restore the palaces of the Palatine, the first labour would be the unearthing of the foundations, and this would probably be as huge an undertaking as the rebuilding of the palaces themselves. A mountain must be carried away ere a stone can be laid. If you were able to visit the Forum at Rome, you would see, if you were there to-day, numbers of labourers with horses and carts continually at work taking away hundreds of thousands of tons of rubbish, which have covered up all that still remains of the ancient centre and heart of Rome; so that Jerusalem, I do not doubt, was one vast heap, made up of the débris of its houses, of the tower and armoury of David, of the palace of the king, and of the temple itself; and though now, at the period we are about to speak of, the temple had been rebuilt, and modern houses covered the site of the older Jerusalem, yet, when they came to the wall of the city, with the view of thoroughly restoring it, they found it a complete ruin, and such a ruin that the mass which covered it up it was difficult to dig through. They could not build the wall, because there was so much rubbish.

Now, this, it seems to me, is intended, or at least may justifiably be used, for a type of the work which God’s people have to carry on in the name of Jesus, and in the power of his Spirit, in the world. We have to build the wall of the church for God, but we cannot build it, for there is so much rubbish in our way. This is true, first, of the building of the church, which is the Jerusalem of God; and this is equally true of the temple of God, which is to be built in each one of our hearts. Full often we feel discouraged. Though we hear the voice that saith, “But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God,” still we are apt to feel that we cannot build this wall, because there is so much rubbish.

I shall speak first, then, of the great work comprised in the building up of the church.

Now, this enterprise is the work of God. He alone can build the church. “When the Lord shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory,” and we may build as we may, but “except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.” Still, our full and firm conviction that it is God’s working does not at all interfere with the grand truth that he employs agents for the building up of his church in the world; that, in fact, he has commissioned us, his chosen servants, and sent us into the world, each one according to our ability and opportunity, to labour for him. We work because God works by us. We are hindered, however, in this service by the fact that there is much rubbish in the way. It always was so. When Paul began to build for God, and the apostles went forth as wise master-builders, there lay before them in towering heaps the old Jewish rubbish, hard to remove, heavy to bear away, and in quantity equal to a huge hill. The foundation was there; thank God we have not to lay that; that is laid in Christ Jesus, and firmly laid, and “other foundation can no man lay”; but the Jews, with their traditions, had overlaid the foundations; they had added to the word of God, they had put glosses upon it, they had taken away its real meaning, and put to it a meaning of their own. They had invented rites and ceremonies innumerable, and traditions of the fathers dark and mysterious, so that though a man should seek to find out the truth, he could not by reason of the abundance of the confused material and traditional superstition with which they had covered it up. The apostles had to begin their gospel labour amongst their fellow-countrymen in the midst of this much rubbish. No sooner did they begin to remove the worthless deposits than the lovers of tradition assailed them, raised a great dust, and became their violent persecutors, following them from city to city, scandalising them, and committing all manner of violence against them. You cannot remove ruins without arousing the owls and bats. The most rotten rubbish upon earth is sure to find some defender. By this rubbish many have gained their wealth, and they are full of wrath if any threaten to disturb it. The apostles soon found that they had fallen upon troublous times, yet by God’s help they cleared away that rubbish, and were enabled to build their wall, till the New Jerusalem became famous in the earth.

They encountered in the wider world of the Roman empire the rubbish of old paganism; and oh, what rubbish that was! He who is acquainted with the classic writers knows how polluted were the people of their times. Their satirists ascribe to them mirthfully vices which even with tears we would not dare to mention. The superstitions of the age were grovelling to a hideous degree; their very gods were monsters of crime, and their sacred rites orgies of lust and drunkenness. The priests had successfully endeavoured to make vice into a religion, and under the pretence of mysterious worship had devised means for pandering to the basest passions of the most corrupt human nature. It is no small mass of rubbish which the student of to-day sifts over as he makes researches into the Greek and Roman mythology. Men could not find out God, for gods many and lords many stood in the way. Neither could they believe in the simplicity of Jesus Christ, because their foolish heart was darkened. “God made man upright, but he hath found out many inventions;” and all these inventions helped to turn him from his uprightness, and to pervert his judgment. Yet those who went before us laboured on amidst that foul and noisome rubbish, and were so successful in their earnest excavations, that at this day no one thinks of worshipping Jupiter, or Saturn, or Venus, or Mercury; these demon-deities have gone to the limbo from whence they came. They have been smitten-smitten by the gospel, and they have withered like grass, so that no man boweth himself before them any more. The God of truth has come, and these bats and owls of the night have betaken themselves into obscurity and oblivion. This rubbish was cleared away, and the foundations were built upon by earnest men that went before us, though they had to lay each stone in martyr blood, and cement it with agonies and tears.

Moreover, remember that in those early days the church in her building had to encounter the very much rubbish of the various philosophies of mankind. There was a kind of “feeling after God” in the heathen mind; but this feeling after God was misdirected and proudly self-confident, and therefore it missed its way, and in the process of thought the more spiritual-minded amongst men (if I may venture to call men spiritual at all who were not renewed by grace) invented theories and imaginings, which they thought to be exceeding wise, but which in fact were folly itself dressed out in the robes of vainglory. These philosophies had a great following, and exercised so subtle and powerful an influence that they were felt even in the church itself. In the writings of the apostles Paul and John you continually meet with allusions to the great Gnostic philosophy which perverted so many Christians. Ever since that day human wisdom has been a greater curse to the church than anything else. The ignorance of Christians has never been so evil a thing, bad as it is, as the vain knowledge, the false wisdom, with which men have been puffed up in their fleshly minds. It is an ill day when men know too much to know Christ. It is a great misfortune when men are too manly to be converted and to become as little children, and sit at the feet of the great Teacher: yet there are many professors of religion who talk as if this was their condition, and as if they were proud of it. Even at this present time the outside philosophies of unchristian men infect the church, spoil her, injure her, dilute the wine of the kingdom, overturn the children’s milk, and to a great extent poison the bread of life. Sad that it should be so, but the rubbish of philosophy has always been in the way of the building up of the wall of the church of God, and the story of the apostolical age may serve as a great comfort to us in these evil times. As they were hindered so are we, but as they persevered and overcame even so will we, by our great Master’s aid.

After that lot of rubbish had been cleared away, the task was only begun, for soon after apostolic times, and the first zeal of Christians had gone, there came the old Roman rubbish, which in the end proved a worse hindrance than all which had preceded it. This Popish rubbish was found in layers-first one doctrinal error, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, till at this time the errors of the Church of Rome are as countless as the stars, as black as midnight, and as foul as hell. Her abominations reek in the nostrils of all good men. Her idolatries are the scorn of reason and the abhorrence of faith. The iniquities of her practice, and the enormities of her doctrine, almost surpass belief. Popery is as much the masterpiece of Satan as the gospel is the masterpiece of God. There can scarcely be imagined anything of devilish craftiness or Satanic wickedness which could be compared with her, she is unparalleled, the queen of iniquity. Behold upon her forehead the name, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. The church of Rome and her teachings are a vast mountain of rubbish covering the truth. For weary years good men could not get at the foundation because of this very much rubbish. Here and there a Wicliffe spied out the precious cornerstone, and leaped for joy because he could get his foot upon it, and say, “Jesus Christ himself, elect and precious, is the stone on which I build my hope.” Here and there a John Huss, or a Jerome of Prague, or a Savonarola, in the thick midnight, yet nevertheless found out the foundation, and wept their very hearts out because of the much rubbish which threatened to bury even them while they were seeking the foundation. A master excavator was Martin Luther; how grandly he laid bare the glorious foundation of justification by faith alone! An equally grand worker at this great enterprise was Master John Calvin, who laid open long stretches of the ancient foundations of the covenant of grace. Well was he supported by his brother of Zurich, Zwingle, and John Knox in Scotland, and others in this land. They cleared away for a while some of the rubbish, but there was such a mass of it that they had to throw it up in heaps on either side, and it is beginning to come crumbling down again on to the foundation, and to cover it up once more. A perfect reformation they could not work, and the remnant of the rubbish is now our plague and hindrance. Everywhere the much rubbish is being diligently cast upon the wall by the emissaries of the evil one, and we can scarcely get to the foundations to build thereon the gold and silver and precious stones which God commits to us with which to build up his own house. Alas, there is very, very much rubbish. I saw in Rome that the waggons which took away the earth from the Forum were marked “Regia Scava.” They belonged to the royal excavations; and I long to see royal excavators, employed by the King of Kings, get to work to excavate again the foundations of the wall of Jerusalem, and cart away some of the tremendous heaps of rubbish that still lie upon the walls. God grant we may see good and great work done in this direction before long.

But, beloved friends, if all this rabbinical, and pagan, and philosophical, and Romish rubbish were all gone, still the work would scarcely have begun, for there is yet very much rubbish of other kinds lying hereabout. There is much rubbish arising from the world, the flesh, and the devil, so that we are not able to build the wall. Look at human sin, how that impedes us! Oh, if there were no false systems of religion, if priest and scribe were silent, if false prophet and Antichrist were both out of the way, yet the sins of men are a vast and hideous mass of rotten rubbish, and our labours of love are hindered thereby. How hard it is to get at human ears, for the world has the first word, and often the last word, with the most of men. Eargate is choked with rubbish. How harder still it is to get at human hearts, for there Satan reigns as in his own palace, and takes care to erect huge barricades and earthworks of the rubbish of carnal lust and pride and unbelief. Men are wrapped up in indifference to eternal things, like mummies in their bands and gums. They give all their energy to the answering of the question “What shall we eat and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?” “Immortal as they are, they live only for mortality. Though their grandest destiny lies in eternity, yet all their efforts are bounded by the narrow space of time. Charm, O thou charmer, never so wisely, but this adder hath no ear for thee. This people, bent on its lusts, will still follow its own devices. Though Christ beckon with his pierced hand, yet turn they their back on him; and even he from Calvary cries:-

“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by,

Is it nothing to you that Jesus should die?”

He is despised and rejected of men; they see no form nor comeliness in him whose countenance contains within itself all celestial beauty. They cannot be got at by love or law, by tears or terrors, by prayers or preachings; they are so absorbed in earthly things. We cannot build the wall for their much rubbish. They are wedded to their sins; they cling to their idols; they will not even think upon their soul, and their God, and their Saviour; they choose their own delusions and reject their own mercies, and it seems as if everything in the world helped them this way, for the business of life, the care and the ease, the quiet and the noise, the tumult and the turmoil thereof alike ensnare them; all these things are transformed by their alienated hearts into a mass of rubbish. With one man it is the pursuit, the arduous pursuit of learning, with another an intense greed for gold, with a third ambition, with a fourth the lust of pleasure; but in each man the heap of rubbish prevents our getting at the heart. We cannot build the wall. Who among us has not often gone back to his God, and said, “Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” And this age of competition seems to make the thing worse than ever. Some are so poor that they tell us they cannot listen, for they have to work and toil like slaves for their bread merely to keep body and soul together; and as for those who are rich-O God, help the rich! Still is it true, and perhaps truer now than ever, that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God;” for the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches are a mass of rubbish, so that we cannot build the wall.

Oh, how sad is the retrospect of the pastor as he remembers the many in whom he could never reach the conscience, because of the intervening rubbish, and how mournful is the prospect that lies before him! Our only consolation is that, if we cannot build, there is One who can; and if the rubbish be so much that the strength of the bearers of burdens is decaying, yet there is a strength which is not decayed, there is an arm which is not weary, and can perform all that is needed.

I am afraid, dear brethren, that in the work of building up the church the rubbish does not lie all with the sinners, but there is much of it also with the saints. There is very much rubbish among professors, so that we cannot build the wall. I would be very patient with all men, for I need much patience toward myself, but there are far too many dear brethren in Christ who seem to me to spend all their time in diligently doing nothing. I have heard of a man who had, by dint of great patience and much skill, after many days of work, very splendidly carved the image of Cæsar on a cherry-stone. What a splendid result to have achieved! The exploit was duly reported and chronicled. But what of it? Truly, I have read books which seemed to me to be elaborately learned about nothing of any practical value, and to amount to about as much as a carving on a cherry-stone, and no more. What good was to come of it I am sure I could not tell. Brethren come out every now and then in the religious world so splendidly with some new fad and fancy of theirs, some grand discovery that they have made, some wonderful point of doctrine, some marvellous soul-stirring discovery, as it seems to be to them; and all the world is to stand still, and all the churches to be broken up, and I don’t know what, until they have exhibited this precious thing, which when you have carefully looked at it, turns out to be very like the mouse which was the famous product of the labour of the mountain. It comes to nothing more. There is very much rubbish about, brethren; and, therefore, for the present distress, if every Christian minister were to keep to preaching Christ and him crucified, and nothing else, I think he would do well; and if every Christian man were to just keep to the plain truths of Scripture, and have them worked into his own soul by the Holy Spirit, and then speak them out with power, and live for soul-winning, and care for nothing else, he would do well. But there is very much rubbish. A whole evening will be spent by brethren in discussing a question just about as valuable as the famous inquiry of the schoolmen, as to how many angels would be able to stand on the point of a single needle. After discussing it with some little temper, perhaps, and having prayed over it a good deal, too-though I wonder how they dare do so-the whole of it ends in a bag of wind or a bottle of smoke, and nothing else. Had that same time been spent in the visitation of the sick, and reclaiming the Arabs of our streets, the lifting up of the ruffianism and the blackguardism of London into something like decency, morality, and Christianity, it might have been much better. But there is very much rubbish, and I am very much afraid we all of us contribute to that rubbish heap a little. We have all some favourite notion, some conceit, some invention of our own, some addition to the Word, some subtraction from it, some impossible theory, some dogma or doctrine rather of our own inventing than of Bible teaching, and so there is very much rubbish, so that we cannot build the wall. Does not one feel inclined, full often, to say, “Oh, how I wish I could get at it-really get at it-get to doing something for God, and Christ, and the souls of men.” Just let the dust cart come and clear the way. These very excellent works upon futurity, and profound books upon nothing-yet, let them go, beautifully written as they are, and let us plunge into the middle of affairs, and say, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Now, two or three things here about this matter by way of comfort. And the first comfort to us is, Well, well, the foundation is laid, the foundation is laid; and in addition to the foundation there are goodly rows of precious stones builded up thereon. The Lord has not yet laid all the twelve bejewelled courses, but the instructed eye may see some of the lower bands of precious stones. Looking back in history I can see a foundation of martyrs built upon Christ, who with the apostles and confessors make up the lower foundations of jasper and sapphire and chalcedony; I can see the glitter of those rows of gems upon the wall already. Read in the book of Revelation and see how they are described. For the last eighteen hundred years, stone upon stone, without sound of hammer, they have been built, and the walls are rising still. Glory be to God, the gospel is a success; notwithstanding the sneer of Sanballat, and the cruel speech of Tobiah the Ammonite, the wall is being built, and the divine eye is upon it. It is God’s great piece of architecture, and he regards it with delight. Concerning it, it may be said, “I the Lord do keep it; I will keep it every moment; lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.” There is for this building the divine decree, “Thus saith the Lord, Behold the man whose name is The Branch, he shall build the temple of the Lord, even he shall build the temple of the Lord, and he shall bear the glory.” That decree is omnipotent; it is being fulfilled, and shall be fulfilled unto the end. I see at this moment the master mason upon the wall, and I read concerning him, “He shall not fail or be discouraged,” and I read yet again of him, “The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.” I see with him, moreover, a band of men whose hearts the Lord has touched, and these labour day and night, and cease not, neither will they cease till the walls of Jerusalem are finished. He is the great master builder, and we, each one of us, bearing both sword and trowel, as we are taught by him, must be wise builders under his direction. The work is going on, for it is in hands that never weary, and it is directed by a mind that never faints; by firm decrees, also, is it banded and builded and cemented, so that it cannot fail, or so much as a stone thereof be cast down.

And we have this to encourage us-that God never has left a work unfinished yet. He began the creation. ’Tis true it was not so difficult a task as this building up of his church, for in the creation, though there was nothing, there was nothing in the way, and he spake and all things came into existence. Here in the building of the church there are two works-destruction and creation, the removal of the old and the erection of the new; but, nevertheless, he who said, “Behold, I make all things new,” is quite equal to the task to which he has set himself; and as he did not leave the world half finished, did not make it a garden without a man to tenant it, nay, did not leave the man unfinished, but made the woman to be his helpmeet; so he will not leave the work of salvation, to which he has once put his hand, unfinished, but course upon course shall the jewels be laid; emerald shall follow chalcedony, the sardius shall be piled upon the sardonyx, the beryl upon the chrysolyte, and the chrysoprasus upon the topaz, till at length, in the appointed age, the last garnishings of jacinth and amethyst shall crown the wall, and they shall bring forth the top-stone with shoutings of “grace, grace unto it!” He did not pause when he made the world because he needed fresh strength, or wait and say that the undertaking was too much; but its story ran on gloriously through all those wonderful six evenings and mornings until the seventh day came, and the Lord rested from all his work. The six days are passing over us now with their evening gloom and morning brightness, the Lord is making the new world, and he is building up his church, slowly, as we think, but surely and in fit time and due order. Wait ye, and in patience possess your souls, for there shall yet come that Millennial Sabbath, in which again the sons of God shall shout for joy, and the angels shall sing, because the word of God is accomplished and his work is done.

Have courage, my brethren! Bear your burden in removing the rubbish. Use your sword and your trowel still, for the work is the Lord’s, and it shall be accomplished. If it were ours, woe worth the day in which it was laid upon such feeble shoulders; but since it is his we need not indulge a solitary trembling thought, but arise and be of good cheer.

Now I change the subject to ourselves awhile; and may God grant we may speak to profit for a few minutes upon that branch of our topic.

There is a building going on in us. It is the Spirit’s work to edify us; that is to say, to build us up in grace, and that building up is carried on by the grace of love. “Knowledge puffeth up, but love buildeth up.” We are each one of us called to be builders, builders in God’s strength, as I have said before, and let that not be forgotten; but, beloved, I am afraid most of us have to say, “There is much rubbish; so that we are not able to build the wall.” Do you not often feel that you cannot be built up in heavenly graces, because of the rubbish of your own corrupt nature? Oh, what a fall the fall was! What a total ruin did it make of our moral nature! Brethren, do you not discover-I do, almost every day-some fresh heap of rubbish which I hardly knew was there? Points in which we thought ourselves strong turn out to be our weaknesses. There was an infirmity from which we half indulged the thought that we were clear, and therefore we were rather severe upon others for having such an infirmity and sin; but at last it broke out in ourselves; it always had been in us, but it had not had the occasion and opportunity; at length the provocation came, and the hidden evil was revealed. Ah, brethren, much more of such rubbish remains in us. Oh, the rubbish of pride, of unbelief, of evil lustings, of anger, of despondency, of self-exaltation! Brethren, it is not worth while to stir it, it is such a foul heap! I have no desire to turn cinder-sifter to it, for there is never a jewel in it that will pay for the sifting; but there it is, and the building of grace does not advance as we could wish, because of the corruption which still abideth in us, notwithstanding all that some may say.

Then there is oftentimes in Christian people the old rubbish of legal thought, of legal acting, and legal fearing. In our old estate we were going to be saved by our own merits. That was our notion. Since our conversion, we doctrinally abhor the idea of any thought of human merit, but experimentally we indulge it. The legal spirit will come in, like an ill weed it springs up spontaneously in the garden from which grace uprooted it. Though we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free, yet the flesh often tries to put the old yoke of bondage upon us, so that if Paul were here he would say to us, “Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” Ishmael tries to domineer over Isaac; though driven out of the house, he shows his tyrant face at the window. We get the bondslave’s dread, ay, and sometimes entertain the bondslave’s hope, and think that we are to work for wages, instead of understanding that the gift of God is eternal life, while the only wages we could earn would be the wages of sin, which is death. Oh, the old legal tendency! How deep seated! How prone to revive! It will scarcely be conceived that sinners should at the same time be self-righteous and guilty; but yet it is so, that, abounding as we do in the tendency to sin, we equally abound in the tendency to fancy that in us, that is, in our flesh, there dwelleth some good thing. Hence arises another heap of rubbish.

And then old habits-what rubbish they are! You who have been before your conversion guilty of gross sin, do you not often find the recollection of those old times coming over you like a hideous dream? I know some who, when a hymn is given out, cannot help recollecting an old song which they used to sing, which is suggested to them by, perhaps, the holiest word in the psalm. Ay, and a text of Scripture has sometimes conjured up before their memory a sin which they wished with all their hearts had never occurred, and which they would give their eyes to forget. Yes, the old habits will struggle for mastery, and if we do not fall into them, as I pray God we never may, yet will they vex and trouble us, and herein also, the much rubbish prevents the building up of the wall of the divine life.

So is it with worldly associations. Do not you find that even the common associations of business into which you are obliged to enter do very much by way of heaping rubbish upon the wall of your spirit? You have to meet with ungodly men. You cannot command their tongues: you may rebuke their language when it becomes profane, but there is very much of talk which is not profane, and which we could not very well rebuke, but which, nevertheless, is not sweet with godliness, or savoury with grace, and it damages us. We wish sometimes that we were away altogether from worldly men. We cry, “Woe is me that I dwell in Mesech, and tabernacle in the tents of Kedar!” And so again as the result of our being in the world, there is very much rubbish.

And I will tell you another kind of rubbish that I think some brethren have quite enough of, if not too much, that is, the rubbishing idea that they have come to be somebody after all. Many acquire that notion if they are getting on in the world. If God prospers them, then they say, “Ah, now I really am a great one, and worthy of much honour. I am not now like my poorer brethren.” It is sad to see what fine airs certain prosperous professors give themselves; they forget the rock whence they were hewn, and lift up their horn on high, as if they were more than mortal. That is rubbish indeed.

But there are some others who have had choice seasons of fellowship with Christ, and they have been for a while free from temptation, and there has been no great upbreaking of the great deep of corruption within them; and therefore they say, “Ah, now I am getting on: I think, somehow, I am getting up to the higher life. I should not wonder that I should be perfect one of these days.” Rubbish, brother! It is all rubbish, every bit of it, it is not worthy harbouring for an instant. It may be very glittering rubbish, it looks amazingly like gold, but “all is not gold that glitters.” Any notion of our own attainments which could lead us for a moment to speak of what we are with any degree of complacency is only rubbish. For my own part, I desire constantly to stand at the foot of the cross, with no other testimony concerning myself than this-

“I the chief of sinners am,

But Jesus died for me.”

Personal holiness is to be sought for with all our hearts, and it can only be obtained by faith in Jesus Christ-by simple faith in him. He gives us power to overcome sin through his precious blood; but, depend upon it, the moment we conclude that we have overcome, and can say what Paul could not say-that he had attained and was already perfect-we are in an evil case. Our pride has overpowered our judgment, and we are fools. If any one here is in a condition in which he is able to open his mouth wide in his own praise, I would advise him to fetch a big dust-cart, or rather all the dust-carts in the parish, and take that boasting, every shovelful of it, away; for it is of no use to him, and it will very soon make such a dust as to fly in the eyes and ears of his Christian brethren. Build the wall we cannot while there is so much of this proud rubbish. “In me, that is in my flesh, there dwelleth no good thing.” Low down at the cross-foot, in the dust, be still our place; for we are in ourselves nothing, less than nothing, emptiness, vanity, death. That is our place. Christ is made of God unto you “wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption;” in him be all your glorying, and in him alone, for if not so, the rubbish will cover up the foundation.

Now, I will suppose that some of you are mourning to-night-some of God’s people-because of all this rubbish. I want to say to you this.

First, dear brethren, thank God that you have the foundation surely laid. Are you sure of that? I pray you rest not till you are certain of it.

“I know that safe with him remains,

Protected by his power,

What I’ve committed to his hands,

Till the decisive hour.”

“I know whom I have believed.” None but Jesus, none but Jesus. There rests our souls’ only hope, upon his precious blood and righteousness; every other hope we heartily abhor. Well, the foundation is laid. Blessed be God for that! When a man is brought to rest alone in Jesus, then there is laid for him in Zion a sure foundation-stone, and to that he is cemented by sovereign grace.

Now, let us thank God again that the building up of his temple in us is his own work. He began it. He digged out and made clear to us our own emptiness. He cast out our self-righteousness, and he laid Christ where our self had once been. The Lord did that, and he has done everything else which has been done in us that has been worth the doing. I cannot, I am sure no brother here can, look upon any step he has ever taken as a real advance in divine life, which was taken in any strength but in the strength of God. Whatever we have done of ourselves had been much better undone, for all that nature spins will have to be unravelled sooner or later. “Salvation is of the Lord.” Jonah learned that in the whale’s belly. It was worth while getting into the whale’s belly to learn. We want to know it through and through. Salvation is of the Lord alone, and unto him must be all the praise. And there is our comfort. It is his work to save us; we are not our own saviours, Christ is the Saviour. It is the Spirit’s work to make us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. It is the Bridegroom, not the bride, that is to make the bride fit for her husband. So says the Scripture. “Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” It is he that presents the bride to himself, and he that makes her fit to be presented. Blessed be God, the work is in sure and competent hands.

And therefore, finally, let us by divine grace work on in faith, with diligence. In faith, I say, believing that our work of faith and labour of love are not in vain in the Lord, believing that prayer is not a vain exercise, that drawing near to God in communion is not a vain thing, that trusting in the Lord is no idle dream, but that surely he will complete what he has begun. But let us add to faith the most earnest endeavours; let us diligently strive to get away this rubbish. Whatever bad habit obstructs our edification, God help us to conquer it. Whatever sin there is about us, may the blood of Jesus enable us to subdue it. Let us press forward, dear brethren and sisters, never content, never satisfied, till we wake up in his likeness; and, as we have not all his likeness yet, not satisfied with ourselves, let us press forward, looking to that which is before us, and forgetting that which is behind. Faith and diligence, by God’s good grace, shall give us to be built up on our most holy faith, not with wood and hay and stubble, but with gold and silver and precious stones, which will abide the fire.

Look that ye be built on the foundation. That is the last and yet the first question, Are you on the foundation? Some build very rapidly, but they are not on the foundation. Yes, you have a fine character and you make a noble profession, but is the palatial structure based on the rocky foundation, or on the sand? Our little children at the seaside will build very fine castles with their wooden spades, but the next tide sweeps all away, because it is sand built on sand. I am afraid the religion of multitudes is just that-sand built on sand. Is that your religion, dear hearer? Does it consist of church-goings, or chapel-goings, and prayer-meetings, and sacrament-takings, and all that? Well, then, it is sand built on sand. But if you are a poor and needy sinner, and you have rested your soul on Jesus, and then, renewed in heart by his Spirit, have been zealous for good works, then is it no longer sand built on sand, but the work of the Spirit of God upon the one foundation which God laid from all eternity, in the person and the work of his only-begotten Son.

The Lord bless you, every one of you, for Jesu’s sake! Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Nehemiah 4.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-623, 641, 665.

This sermon I have revised at Mentone after an attack of severe pain, front which I am recovering by God’s good hand. I beg, in my great feebleness, to ask the prayers of my friends that I may return to my beloved sphere of labour free from the disease which is my constant cross, and that every personal trial may work, in me for the good of others, by rendering my ministry more deeply experimental. From this delicious retreat I desire Christian love to all the people of God, of whom I am both the servant and friend.

c. h. spurgeon.

SHILOH

A Sermon

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“Until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.”-Genesis 49:10.

The dying patriarch was speaking of his own son Judah; but while speaking of Judah he had a special eye to our Lord, who sprang from the tribe of Judah. Everything therefore which he says of Judah, the type, he means with regard to our greater Judah, the antitype, our Lord Jesus Christ. You will remember how Jacob gathered his twelve sons around his bed, and, addressing them individually as representatives of the twelve tribes that bear their names, uttered divers predictions, and gave to each a special blessing. After first apostrophising Reuben and Simeon and Levi, he proceeds to salute Judah in words full of majesty:-“Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise.” A happy expression; for the word “Judah” signifies “praise.” The name was given to him by his mother as expressing her gratitude to God at his birth. It is now confirmed to him by his father, who discerns in it a presage of his character and his destiny. And verily this is true of Jesus. If the virgin mother hailed his advent, how much more do his grateful brethren laud his career! Do not his brethren recognise in him a leader and commander, a Saviour and a friend? Is it not here, on earth, our sweetest employment, and will it not be in heaven our highest delight to praise his name? The praise we bestow on men is mere flattery: the praise we receive from men is fulsome. But Jesus hath a peerless name, and his brethren derive from him priceless benefits. In Jesus are fulfilled the dreams of Joseph. The sun and the moon and the eleven stars all bow before him; all the sheaves make obeisance unto his sheaf. Let him be crowned with majesty who bowed his head to death is the common verdict of all the brotherhood of the house of God. “Thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies.” As one that gets his hand upon the neck of his prey, stops its breath and destroys it; or as one who seizes his enemy by the throat and flings him down to death. How true has this been of Jesus. He has laid his hand upon the neck of his enemies. When he came to the cross, fought foot to foot with the old Serpent, and there vanquished sin and death and hell for us, it was a terrible battle, but it ended in a splendid victory, of which we shall never cease to sing. Nor do we doubt but the hand of Jesus Christ is at this moment in the neck of his enemies. They may be very rebellious, and, for a time, they may seem to get the ascendancy; but he has got the upper hand of them, and as surely as truth and righteousness must flourish and prevail, as surely as Jehovah is the living God, the kingdom of Christ will yet break in pieces all the powers that resist it. “He shall break them as with a rod of iron: he shall dash them in pieces like potters’ vessels.” “Thy father’s children shall bow down before thee.” To the descendants of Judah in the persons of David and Solomon the whole nation did fealty. But worship of a higher order, homage of deeper significance, and adoration from a wider circle pertain to him, for whom our Father in heaven demands of all his faithful children love, honour, and obedience. “Judah is a lion’s whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up.” And how does this describe the Saviour-that “Lion of the tribe of Judah”-that strong and mighty Lion who entered into conflict with the lion of the pit and overcame him. From the prey he has gone up again, up into his glory, gone up beyond the stars, up to the right hand of the infinite majesty, there to sit in perpetual peaceful triumph. “He stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion.” The lion may have been an emblem that befitted the son of Jesse. The lion couchant might have been fitly chosen for his heraldic device, when the Lord had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies and of Saul. Yet with how much more propriety may this emblem be emblazoned on the arms of Prince Emmanuel! Did he not stoop down? Was ever such a stoop as his? Let him be crowned with majesty who bowed his head to death. It is for this that he deserves to conquer, because he was willing to submit to shame and death itself for the sake of his people. How glorious is it to think that he has gone up, seeing that he once came down! Who should deserve such honours but he who laid such honours aside for a while? “Who shall rouse him up?” A grand question. Who shall rouse up the Lion of the tribe of Judah? Who dare do it? Who can stand against him? He is a lamb, gentle and tender; “A bruised reed he will not break, and the smoking flax he will not quench;” but let him be provoked, then fiercer than a lion that roareth from the forest will he be upon his foes. So shall it come to pass on that tremendous day when he will ease him of his adversaries and shake himself clear of all his enemies. Remember ye not these terrible words of his:-“Beware, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver”? “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come.” The sovereignty remained with Judah. It did continue to be the royal tribe till the prophetic epoch. When other tribes lost their peculiar position and their positive distinctiveness, Judah still remained, and it survives in the common appellation of the Hebrew people to this day. The Israelites are more commonly called Jews than by any other name. Jesus, of the tribe of Judah, is the King of the Jews, even though they reject him. Over his head upon the cross was written the indelible truth in letters of Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” Yea, he is King of all faithful Jews and of all believing Gentiles at this hour, with a sovereignty wider than that of emperors-yea, as wide as the dwelling places of all mankind. He is “King of kings, and Lord of lords.” Of Shiloh it is the patriarch speaks when with the vision of a seer he describes the grand climax. Before the dim organs of his sight he saw all his twelve sons gathered to take leave of their dying sire. Before the beaming eyes of his faith he beheld the gathering of all their distant posterity, or peradventure of all the kindreds of the earth to greet with glad acclaim the everlasting King, of whose kingdom there shall be no end. “Unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” Thus simply and thus pointedly does Jacob refer to the Lord Jesus Christ by the name of Shiloh. Of that name and of that prophecy I shall try to speak.

First, let the title, “Shiloh,” and secondly the testimony, “To him shall the gathering of the people be,” engage our attention.

The title, “Shiloh.” What an old word it is! What an old world word! I should not wonder if it was one of Jacob’s own coining. A pet name is often the product of peculiar love. Tender affection takes this kindly turn. Those whom we fondly regard we familiarly call by some other name than chance has bequeathed or choice bestowed. Not content with the names that others understand or use, there is often a new mode of recognition between two who love each other, as much as to say, “You are to me what you are to none upon earth beside me.” Even God gives to his people new names; and I do not wonder if they give to him new names. Well may believers have each a favourite name for Jesus. Which name of your Lord do you love the best? If the question were passed round, perhaps some would say-and the majority might-“Jesus: the name divinely sweet.” Another would say,

“Sweeter sounds than music knows

Charm me in Emmanuel’s name.”

“That is the choice name.” Others it may be might put in a claim for pre-eminence to the title of “The Well-beloved,” which always seems to me to have a great charm about it; and if George Herbert were here, you know he would say, “How sweetly doth ‘My Master’ sound!” “My Master.” That was the name he loved to call his Lord by. Well, Jacob’s name for Jesus was “Shiloh;” and it is so long ago since he called him Shiloh that I do not wonder that we have almost forgotten the meaning of it. He knew it had a wealth of meaning as it came from his lips, and the meaning is there still; but the well is deep; and those that have studied the learned languages have found this to be a word of such rare and singular occurrence, that it is difficult, with any positive certainty, to define it. Not that they cannot find a meaning, but that it is possible to find so many meanings of it. Not that it is not rich enough, but that there is an embarrassment of riches. It may be interpreted in so many different ways. I will give you, one by one, some of the meanings that have been proposed. There is something to be said for each one. Though I shall not trouble you with the names of the learned authors who stand up for each particular translation, as that would be useless, I will take care to put last the one which I conceive to be the best, has the most authority, and will probably commend itself to you as the most acceptable.

Some maintain that the word “Shiloh” signifies “sent.” Like that word you have in the New Testament, “He said to him, go to the pool of Siloam, which is, by interpretation, Sent.” You observe the likeness between the words Siloam and Shiloh. They think that the words have the same meaning; in which case Shiloh here would mean the same as Messiah-the sent one-and would indicate that Jesus Christ was the messenger, the sent one of God, and came to us, not at his own instance, and at his own will, but commissioned by the Most High, authorised and anointed to that end. Here let us stop a minute. We rejoice to know that, whatever this title means, it is quite certain that Jesus Christ was sent. It is a very precious thing to know that we have a Saviour; but often and often it has cheered my heart to think that this dear Saviour who came to save me did not come as an amateur, unauthorised from the courts of heaven, but he came with the credentials of the Eternal Father, so that, whatever he has done, we may be sure he has done it in the name of God. Jehovah will never repudiate that which Jesus has accomplished. Him hath God set forth to be a propitiation; he is a mediator of God’s own sending. He is our Substitute; but he is a Substitute of God’s own finding. “I have laid help upon one that is mighty.” So saith the oracle, and who shall gainsay it? “The Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all.” It is the Lord that has done it. An ambassador who had no credentials from the court he represented would be but a dubious boon to the people; but when as a plenipotentiary, with full authority from his sovereign, he comes with terms of peace, he might well be received without hesitation or demur. Sinner, have you received the Saviour Jesus? You profess to acknowledge the God who sent him, but know that in turning from the Emissary you are spurning the Sovereign. If you deny Jesus you defy God himself; yea, you make God a liar, because you have not believed his testimony concerning his Son. Beloved, do you welcome Jesus Christ as being sent to you personally? When you have laboured under a sense of sin, burdened to the very ground with trouble of conscience, was Jesus ever sent to you to say, “Look unto me and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth”? Was he ever sent to lead you to look? Did you look unto him, and were you lightened? Oh, then, you will for ever bless his name, the name of the Most High, who sent such an one that he might lift you up out of your miseries, bring the bondaged one out of the dungeon, and set the captive free. Dwell, sweetly dwell, upon this meaning of the word Shiloh. If it means “sent,” there is great sweetness in it.

Others have referred it to a word, the root of which signifies the Son. Upon such a hypothesis the name would be strictly appropriate to our Lord. He is the “Son of God;” he is the “Son of Man;” he was the “Son of Judah;” he was the “Son of David:” “Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given.” Let us linger for a while upon this gloss-“Until Shiloh,” “Until the Son shall come.” Be the annotation right or wrong, Jesus is the Son of God. He that hath come to save us is divine. No angel could bear the stupendous burden of redemption. Sooner might angels create than redeem, but they can do neither the one nor the other; they can only sing the high praises of him who is able to do both. Who but God himself could snatch a sinner from hell? God has done it. He that died upon the cross was none other than he that made the world. Trust the divine Saviour? O sinner! if thou hast had any doubts about the sufficiency of Jesus Christ to save, cast them all aside; for, if he be the Son of the Highest, and “God over all, blessed for ever,” they that rest in him shall never be confounded. The Son of God is he, but he is also the Son of Man, and this is an equal joy to us. Jesus Christ is “bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh,” a man like ourselves. Though he is now in heaven, think not that he is transformed into a spirit there, or that he hath discarded our nature, or disowned our flesh and blood. Oh, no. After he was risen from the dead he appeared to his disciples, and eat with them; he partook of a fish and of honeycomb, to show that he was not spirit but flesh, and he said, “Handle me, and see, a spirit hath not flesh and bone: as ye see me have.” In that very body of his he has gone up into his glory, and to-day, at the right hand, there sits he-a man clothed in a body like our own. Oh, beloved! let not terror affright us, or misgivings keep us back from a high priest that can be touched with a feeling of our infirmities, a dear Saviour who is not ashamed to call us brethren. “This man receiveth sinners.” Oh, sinners! may ye be willing to be received by him. Let us bless him as the Son-the Son of God, the Son of Man.

A third meaning has been given to the word “Shiloh” which rather paraphrases than translates it. The passage, according to certain critics, would run something like this:-“Until he come to whom it belongs, to whom it is, for whom it is reserved;” or, as Ezekiel puts it, “Overturn, until he shall come whose right it is, and thou wilt give it him.” It may mean, then, “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah until he shall come whose that sceptre is.” This meaning is supported by many learned authorities, and has its intrinsic value. The sceptre belongs to Christ. All sceptres belong to him. He will come by-and-by and verify his title to them. Have you not seen the picture that represents Nelson on board a French man-of-war, receiving the swords of the various captains he has conquered, while there stands an old tar at his side putting all these swords underneath his arm as they are brought up. I have often pictured to myself our great Commander, the only King by divine right, coming back to this our earth, and gathering up the sceptres of the kings in sheaves, and putting them on one side, and collecting their crowns; for he alone shall reign King of kings and Lord of lords. When the last and greatest of all monarchs shall come a second time, “without a sin-offering unto salvation”-oh, the glory of his triumph! He has a right to reign. If ever there was a king by nature, and by birth, it is the Son of David; if ever there was one who would be elected to the monarchy by the suffrages of all his subjects, it is Jesus Christ. How often do we sing-

“Bring forth the royal diadem,

And crown him Lord of all;”

and we cannot repeat it too often. Our hearts and lips ought to be always saying, “Crown him; crown him; crowns become the victor’s brow.” His is the right to reign. Dear souls, acknowledge that right. If you never have acknowledged it, acknowledge it now. “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and ye perish from the way, while his wrath is kindled but a little.” You that do love him, and have made him your King, oh, kiss his feet again! Let him have your highest homage, your purest love, your perpetual service. Was ever such a King as thou art, O Jesus! “the chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely”? Let him be crowned with majesty for ever and ever. To him the royalty belongs, for him it is reserved.

The interpretation, however, which has the most support, and which I think has the fairest claim to be accorded correct, is that which derives the word “Shiloh” from the same root as the word “Salem.” This makes it signify peace. “Until the peace, or the peace-bearer, or the peace-giver,” or, if you like it better, “the rest, or the rest-maker-shall come.” Select the word you prefer, it will sufficiently represent the sense. “Until the peace-bringer come, until the rest-maker come.” His advent bounds the patriarch’s expectation and his desire. Oh, beloved, what a vein of soul-charming reflection this opens! Do you know what rest means? Such “peace, peace,” such perfect peace as he hath whose soul is stayed; because he trusteth, as the prophet Isaiah hath it. Have you ever said to yourself, “There is nothing I desire-nothing that I wish for; I am satisfied-perfectly content; I am without a fear, without a dread”? “No,” say you, “I never reached that elysium. You may be worth millions of money without ever coming to that pass. All the gold in the world will never fill a man’s heart; and you may have broad acres across which a swift horse could hardly rush in a day, but you will not have enough. All the land in the world cannot fill a heart. You may have all the beauty, rank, honour, and fame that ever can come to a human being, and yet say, “Ah me! I am wretched still.” But full many who have found Jesus have been able to say, “It is enough: I need no more.” Believing in Jesus, and learning to yield up everything to his will, living to his glory, and loving him supremely, we do enjoy peace with God-a “peace that passeth all understanding,” which “keeps our heart and mind” by Jesus Christ. Are we adopted into the family of God?-we are sure that he never did cast a child out of the family that was once received into it. Are we made members of the body of Christ? There is no fear of dismemberment; that which is perfected and compacted together cannot be mangled or torn asunder. Our good hope through grace is not precarious. Well may we sing with the seraphic Toplady-

“Yes, I to the end shall endure,

As sure as the earnest is given;

More happy, but not more secure,

Are the glorified spirits in heaven.”

Here is rest! Man may well take his rest when he has nothing to do, when it is all done for him. And that is the gospel. The world’s way of salvation is “Do,” God’s way of salvation is, “It is all done for you; accept and believe.” The world, that says “Do,” never does anything, while the gospel which tells us “It is all done,” imparts such joy and peace within that we spring to our feet ready and willing to do and dare ought for him who gave himself up for us. While active and passive obedience spring out of the doctrine of grace, nothing but pride and self-righteousness can come out of the religion which prates of merit and prescribes duties to be done in order that you may be saved. All that ever will be saved were saved on Calvary’s bloody tree. Jesus said, “It is finished.” Here his humiliation reached its climax; he humbled himself even unto death. It was finished. Those for whom he died were there and then redeemed. The ransom price paid for them exempted them from the penalty of their transgressions, exonerated them from legal responsibilities, and extinguished for them the fiery threat of perdition. He had suffered in their stead, and they could not be called upon to suffer for themselves. He had offered a righteousness to God on their behalf, and they were accepted because of that righteousness. Do you say, “I wish I were one of those people”? Dost thou believe in Jesus? Then thou art one of them. Dost thou trust Jesus? Then thou art saved. The moment a sinner believes and trusts in his crucified Lord, he is pardoned at once; he receives salvation in full through Christ’s blood. Do but rest thy soul on Jesus, and it is done, and peace will enter thy soul-oh, such a deep and blessed peace, the like of which is not to be found out of heaven! for Jesus is the great peace-giver and peacemaker: he is our peace. God grant us to know him and to understand this aspect of his mediatorial character. Believe me, my hearers, I feel in my soul, as I look round upon you, the utmost longing for you all. Oh, that you did know my Lord and the peace he gives. It is years ago-three and twenty years or more-since I went to him. I could not believe it possible that he would receive me. I felt myself too great a sinner. How should there be mercy for me? But I heard a sermon from the text, “Look unto me and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth!” I never understood it before, but when I came to understand that all I had to do was to look, oh, what a revelation it was to me! No feelings, no workings, no doings, no purchase-money demanded as a qualification. Christ on the cross was evidently set forth crucified before my eyes. I did but look, and I was saved; saved the moment I looked. When I turned to the Scriptures I found that was just what the Scriptures said, “He that believeth in him is not condemned.” I did believe it, I did trust it, I did simply rest there. Neither shall I ever forget the rush of joyous feeling that went through my spirit, the cessation of long years of melancholy, bordering on despair, and the coming out into a clear light, which I thank God I have never lost, for, with all the troubles of this material life, I would not change places with any man that breathes, no, nor with the angels before God’s throne. The station and the privilege of angels will not bear comparison with the eternal dignities reserved for the saints. For an angel no redeemer ever died, and no angel will be able to sing, “Worthy is he that hath washed me in his blood!” Oh, to be superlatively indebted to the infinite love of Jesus, to be a cleansed sinner, and to be put among the children, is so enchanting that it is enough to make one say, “Ah! not even an angel would I envy, nor with one of those celestial ministers would I change my happy lot.” I wish you could all sympathise in this. Would that you all had fellowship with us in this grace wherein we stand. Many of you have, thank God. Some of you have not. What do you poor people do without a Saviour? I cannot make out why you who have got so little in this life do not look out for the promise of a better inheritance. And what do you poor rich people do without a Saviour? I pity you most of all, for your lives are generally passed in a very senseless and insipid fashion. With nothing but a round of visits to pay, and a few elegant trifles to attend to, like butterflies you flit from flower to flower. A poor man’s time is taken up with hard labour; but you often ask yourselves, and consult one another how best you can spend the hours and kill the time that hangs heavily on your hands. If you cannot think upon Christ, if you cannot fall back upon the covenant of grace, if you cannot look up to the eternal God, and say, “My Father, thou art mine, and with thee shall I dwell for ever,” I pity you, whether you be rich or poor. God grant you to have and to enjoy the fulness of treasure that is in Jesus Christ; then you can say:-

“I would not change my blest estate

With all that earth calls good or great;

And while my faith can keep her hold,

I envy not the sinner’s gold.”

Trusting, then, dear friends, that your faith has identified the Shiloh of Jacob’s vision, let us occupy the few minutes that remain to us in considering the testimony which the patriarch here bears. “Unto him shall the gathering of the people be.”

“Unto him,” as the Hebrew runs, “shall the gatherings of the peoples be.” So wide the circumference that converges in this glorious centre. It comprehends all the peoples of the Gentiles as well as Jews. Of course it includes the favoured nation, but it also takes in the isles afar off; yea, all of us, my brethren. “Unto him shall the gatherings of the peoples be.” What joy this announcement should give us! Do you realise it, that around Jesus Christ, around his cross, which is the great uplifted standard, the people shall gather? Just open your eyes and look. If you can see, and your eyes have been touched with eye-salve, you may perceive the power of attraction by which this magnificent issue is already in progress. Over yonder in America a poor sinner is seeking eternal life. If he is seeking aright, he is being gathered to Christ. Or, look at home in your own country. Perhaps, to-night, in many thousands of places that are open for divine worship, the like magnetic influence is at work. I only wish I could hope that there was some one in every assembly that was looking for eternal life. If it be so, they are all looking to Jesus Christ. Cast your eye now to India, or France, or Prussia, or over to Australia, in whatever direction you will; every soul that is in earnest seeking life is seeking it through Jesus Christ. I see them coming; he is the centre, and they are all drawing near to him. Every soul that is saved is drawn to Jesus; none are saved without him. The people gather to him as their only hope, and all succour else has failed. They do not fly to him until they have tried every other hope. Nobody ever comes to Christ until he cannot go anywhere else. The sinner comes to him by stress of weather-driven in sometimes, as ships are into harbours of refuge, because they cannot keep pace with it outside the bar. It is when the sinner is in difficulties that he is driven to Jesus Christ; and every soul that really is looking for eternal life in the right place is looking to Jesus and gathering to Jesus; and I see little silver threads going out from Christ, the centre, from all over the world, drawing men to himself. I hope there is one of these threads drawing you. Oh! yield to the gentle pressure! Follow it; for there is your only hope.

Look again, and you will see that all over the world those that are saved are gathering to Jesus, rallying round him, and accepting him as their leader, instructor, and king. The Jews said, “We have no king but Cæsar;” the Christians say, “We have no king but Jesus.” I mean no spiritual lord, no teacher, no leader, except Jesus Christ himself. “Unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” His people out of all nations shall come and take his easy yoke and wear it, and find rest unto their souls. And now, at this moment, my eyes can see myriads all over the world who are coming nearer and nearer to Jesus, with instant eager cry, saying, “Draw us, Lord, draw us nearer to thyself; make us more like thyself; help us to live more to thy glory.” Is there one of these golden threads drawing you? Then run if you are drawn, and seek to love your Lord and serve him better than ever you have done, for “unto him shall the gathering of the people be.”

Be assured of this; Christ is the only centre of true unity to his people. There is a society, I believe, for the promotion of the unity of Christendom. I am afraid it does not do much good, or cement much fellowship. The unity of Christendom! That will all depend upon what is the key-stone of the arch you are going to build. If you expect there will be a unity of the Greek Church, and the Latin Church, and the Anglican Church, I can only say that were all three united the union of Christians would be as far off as ever. In the midst of that professed Christendom, but distinct from it, there is an inner Christendom, a secret, sacred brotherhood of real Christians that knows little about these great secular churches. The true Christendom consists of all that worship God in the spirit, not having confidence in the flesh. The true church consists of all that believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and are quickened by the Holy Ghost, the only unity that society could ever get would be a confederation ecclesiastical, to be dominated over by some lordly priest or other. No desirable thing certainly. Christ is the centre of the church, and true unity will be found in him. “Unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” Were I to give you a book to read about Jesus Christ, full of love to him, and when you had read it were I to ask you who wrote it, I warrant you would not guess rightly what denomination the man belonged to. Perhaps you will say, “Well, there is a flavour in it of Roman Catholicism now and then; but really it is so good a book I cannot think a Roman Catholic could have written it.” “Or,” you will say, “it has a little of the Plymouth Brother here and there, and that is not a sweet flavour; but still, it is so good I hardly think he could have written it.” By-and-by you will say, “I do not know at all; I am at a loss.” Often and often after reading books which have a savour of Christ in them. I have felt a love to the author, though I may have found out, perhaps, that he was an ecclesiastical opponent of mine. I do not care; I love him if he loves my Master, be he who he may, wherever he comes from. When we are down on our knees praying for the kingdom of Christ, or standing up to sing Messiah’s praise, it is wonderful how like we are to each other. Mr. Wesley did not like Toplady, and Mr. Toplady did not like Wesley, called him “an old fox,” and said that he would pluck him, and have him “tarred and feathered;” but take up any hymn book you like, and you will find, side by side, Charles Wesley’s “Jesus, Lover of my Soul,” and Toplady’s “Rock of Ages, cleft for me;” and which is the better hymn of the two I am sure I do not know, they are so much alike. So were these men, after all, two blessed souls, for all their mistakes and all their misunderstandings of one another. When you get to the cross you get together. “Unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” When you come to talk of him and what he did-his life and death, his atoning sacrifice, his glorious conquest of all our foes-then are you agreed.

Oh, brethren, we must therefore strive vigorously, and try incessantly, to lift Christ up. We want to see, during this year, a great gathering of souls. Well, we shall see it if we lift Christ up. Here is a lot of steel filings among a heap of ashes. How can I separate them? There are a great many ways of trying to do it. Bring a magnet in; put a magnet into the heap; see how it draws the steel filings away. In this congregation there is a great number of individuals, but who among them are God’s elect I do not nor can I know; but let me preach Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ will draw his own. “My sheep hear my voice; I know them and they follow me; and I give unto them eternal life.” Preach Christ; that is the magnet; he will draw his own to himself. And, dear friends, if we want to see conversions in this beyond all past years there must be more preaching, more constant preaching of Christ; Christ must be in every sermon, and he must be top and bottom too of all the theology that is preached-“Jesus Christ and him crucified,” and nothing else. I am bound to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified, for I do not know anything else to preach. My simplicity is my safeguard. I have often felt to be of Paul’s mind: “I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Some are wise to interpret prophecies; I am not: enough for me to know about the cross. Some are able to split a hair, they can a hair divide betwixt the north and the north-west side. I am no logician. If, knowing the terrors of the Lord, I can persuade men to fly to Christ, and escape from the wrath to come, I shall fulfil my mission to my heart’s delight. Consider this, all of you. Let each of us go back to the first principles of the gospel, and bring out, again and again, the old, old story of sinners lost and a Saviour come to redeem, of guilt sinking a man to hell like a millstone, and the Saviour taking all that guilt away. If you preach the blood, the precious blood of Jesus, you set forth the great soul-saving gospel, and you do honour to him unto whom “shall the gathering of the people be.”

And, brethren, by the climax of destiny that is opened up, let the conduct of our daily life be disciplined. Let us aim to gather more and more to Jesus ourselves. We cannot get too near to him. Be it ours to strive to get closer than ever we have been. Even if a cross should be necessary to raise us, let us not be afraid of the cross, so long as it brings us nearer to Jesus. You are happiest, healthiest, and holiest when you are nearest to Christ. To him shall the continual “gathering of the people be.”

And oh! let us pray, also, that this gathering may go on both among saints and sinners-that saints may gather nearer to Jesus, and that sinners may gather savingly to him. The text says, “To him shall the gathering of the people be.” It is a faithful saying, and we do believe it. Not death nor hell can keep back the Lord’s elect from coming to Christ. Come they must and shall; for the divine decree shall be accomplished, and each one for whom Jesus specially shed his blood shall be saved infallibly, saved beyond all risk; but it is ours to pray for it. Oh, Lord Jesus, it is said, “Unto thee shall the gathering of the people be.” Make it so. The gathering shall be wrought by thyself. “He shall gather the lambs in his arms;” it is his to gather the strayed sheep; he gathereth together the outcasts. Surely he is the great gatherer. Well may they be gathered to him when he himself gathers them. Ask him to gather your children. Ask him to gather your dear beloved ones under your house-roof, your servants, your neighbours. Ask him to gather them. Ask him to gather this great city. Oh, what a city it has grown to be! Would God that Jesus had it! It would be a glorious koh-i-noor in the state jewels of Christ if he could call London his own. The biggest of cities-would God it were the holiest. Oh, that it were wholly Christ’s from one end to the other. They used to say, in Cromwell’s day, that if you walked down Cheapside at a certain hour, you would have heard the voice of family prayer and praise at every house in the whole street, both morning and evening. I trow it is not so in any street in London now. We have gone back since the grand old Puritanic times. But we will repair to the throne again by God’s good grace, and yet shall there be a salt in this city, for the city shall be seasoned through and through with the power of the gospel of Jesus. Only to your knees! to your knees! to your knees! if you would have it so. You should get this fulfilled among your fellow citizens, if you would get it first vouchsafed to you as a boon of your God. Tell him he has said, “Unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” Hold him to his word, plead with him that he cannot break it, and we shall live to see the day yet. “To him shall the gathering of the people be.”

Oh, my dear hearers! as I draw these reflections to a close one thought passes over my mind to which I must give expression. You will all of you either be gathered to Christ to be saved, or else you will have to be gathered by-and-by for another purpose. There shall ring out upon the midnight air a trumpet call that shall be loud enough to be heard east and west, and south and north; it shall startle all the sleepers, and more than that, it shall arouse the dead; at its sound the sepulchre shall vomit forth its prey, and they that are rocked in slumber beneath the waves of ocean shall hear that trumpet call and rise, the whole mass of Adam’s family, the myriads of all our race. Oh, what an assembly will that be! The motley throng within these walls is but as a grain of sand, compared with the sea-shore, to the multitudes that will then be congregated. Gather ye! gather ye! ye that have been dead these six thousand years. Gather ye! gather ye! ye that were drowned in Noah’s flood. Gather ye! gather ye! all ye hosts of Egypt, and ye myriads of Chaldea, and of Babylon, of Persia, and of Greece. Gather ye! ye legions of Rome! ye myriads of the middle ages! ye countless millions of China and of swarthy Hindostan, and you of the world across the sea! Gather ye! gather ye! men of every skin and every tongue! For ye must gather, and there in the midst of you all shall be the cloud sailing through the air, and on it the great white throne of him whose spotless justice is mirrored in it. There will you stand, and if you have not looked at Christ on the cross, you will have to look at the Christ upon the throne; and if ye have never trusted him, ye will then have to tremble at him. Hark, how the trumpet sounds! How that clarion rings out again and again and again! And lo! all are there. And now he comes, whose pomp is beyond conception, and the books are opened. As they are opened, page after page, he reads the story of each man’s life, and he has come to yours, and he reads the page that chronicles this fleeting hour. On such a night, gathered with this great congregation, you were bidden to believe in Jesus, and bow down before the great Peace-giver; you refused, and sealed your doom for ever. Shall it be so? Oh! shall it be so? God grant it may not be so. May there be another book opened, which is the Book of Life, and in that book may your name stand recorded as one who humbly trusted in the finished work of Jesus, and therefore was accepted in the Beloved, and found mercy on that day. The Lord grant it to every one of you. I may not ever again speak to some of you as long as I live. This then I do say to you while your ears are open and attentive to my voice, Lay hold on eternal life; put your trust in Jesus. And if, beloved, any of you to whom I am so familiar, to whom I speak so often, if you should depart from the world while I am absent, or if I should never return, but find a grave in some distant land, I charge you, meet me on the other side of Jordan; I charge you, meet me at my Master’s right hand; I charge you, cling to the atoning sacrifice by faith; and we will meet together where he sits and reigns-our best beloved-the Judah, the Jesus, whom all his brethren shall praise-the Shiloh, the Prince of peace, for whose glorious advent all his saints look, and to whom they shall be gathered in fulness of joy for ever and for ever. Amen and amen.

THE SIEVE

A Sermon

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”-Matthew 7:21.

In reading this chapter one is led to feel that it is not, after all an easy thing to be a sincere Christian. The way is hard, the road is narrow. Who will may represent the way to heaven as being easy; our Saviour does not so speak of it. “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way, and few there be that find it.” “Many are called and few chosen.” The difficulty of being right is increased by the fact that there are men in the world whose trade it is to make counterfeits. There were, and there are, many false prophets. Our Saviour has spoken about them in this chapter, and given us a way of testing them; but they are carrying on their trade still as successfully as ever. Now, since there are traitors abroad whose business it is to deceive, we ought to be doubly vigilant and constantly upon our watch-tower, lest we be misled by them. I charge you, examine every statement you hear from Christian pulpits and platforms; I charge you, sift and try every religious book by the great standard of the word of God. Believe none of us if we speak contrary to this word-yea, believe not an angel from heaven if he preach any other gospel than that which is contained in inspired Scripture. “To the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no truth in them.” God grant us grace to escape from false prophets! We shall not do so if we are careless and off our guard, for the sheep-skin garment so effectually covers the wolf, the broad phylactery so decorates the hypocrite, that thousands are deceived by the outward appearance, and do not discover the cheat. Crafty are the wiles of the enemy, and many foolish ones are still ignorant of his devices. Tutored by the experience of ages, seducers and evil men not only wax worse and worse, but they grow more and more cunning. If it were possible, they would deceive even the very elect. Happy shall they be, who, being elect, are kept by the mighty power of God unto salvation, so that they are not carried away with any error.

In addition to the fact that there are false teachers, so is it certain that there are false professors. There never was a time in the church of God in which all were Christians who professed to be so. Surely the golden age of the church must have been when the Master himself was in it, and had selected twelve choice spirits to be nearest to his person, and to act, as it were, the prime ministers of his kingdom; yet there was a devil amongst the twelve, a devil in the church of which Jesus was pastor. Judas, the treasurer of the apostles, was also a son of perdition. When Paul and the apostles kept watch over the elect church, surely that must have been a happy time; and when persecution raged all around, and acted like a great winnowing fan to drive away the chaff, one would have expected to find that the threshing-floor contained only clean grain; but it was not so, the heap upon the threshing-floor of the church was even then a mingled mass of corn and chaff. Some turned aside from love of the world, and others were deluded into grievous error, while there were others who remained in the church to discredit it by their impurity, and to bring chastisements upon it by their sin. We shall never see a perfect church till we see the Lord face to face in heaven. Above you clouds is the place for perfection; but here, alas, nothing is undefiled; and even in the purest churches we find deceivers and deceived. Among you over whom it is my calling to preside, I know that there are false professors, lovers of the world rather than lovers of God; and though I cannot remove you, any more than the servants of the householder could uproot the tares from the wheat, yet I sigh over you, and you are my daily cross and burden. Oh, that God would convert you, and make you true to your professions, or else remove you from the church which you so greatly grieve and weaken.

But now, if in the church of God there are those who are deceivers and deceived, the question comes to each one of us, “May not we also be mistaken? Is it not possible that we, though making a profession of religion, may, after all, be insincere or deluded in that profession, and fail to be what we think we are?” Therefore let us put ourselves at this time into the attitude of self-examination, and whatever is spoken, let it come home to us personally. May we try ourselves whether we be right or no, not flinching from any pointed truth; but anxiously desiring to be tried and tested before the Lord himself.

The text I would bring before you by noticing, first, that it contains a very commendable expression, “Lord, Lord;” but, secondly, it was used by gross hypocrites; and then, thirdly, we shall show wherein these hypocrites failed-what it was that they lacked which rendered it impossible that they should enter into the kingdom.

First, then, the text contains a very commendable speech. We may be sure the speech was a good one, or the hypocrites would not have used it as a cloak for their hypocrisy. Men do not use dubious expressions when they want to appear exceedingly devout. They take care, however bad their deeds may be, to make their words at any rate sound well. Therefore the persons spoken of in the text said to Jesus, “Lord, Lord.” It is a fitting mode of speech for each one of us to use.

And first, dear friends, we ought to say to Jesus, “Lord, Lord,” in reference to his divinity. How can we be saved if we do not? Jesus Christ of Nazareth is to us Lord and God. We do not hesitate to use the language of Thomas when he put his finger into the print of the nails, and to say to him, “My Lord and my God.” Let others say of him what they will, and make him to be a mere man, or a prophet, or a delegated God, such talk is nothing to the point with us; we believe him to be very God of very God, and worship him this day as he is enthroned in the highest heavens, believing him to be worthy of the adoration which is due to God alone. I do not wonder that those who believe our Lord Jesus Christ to be a mere man say severe things of us; nor must they wonder if we deliver ourselves of very strong utterances with regard to them. If we are wrong, we are idolaters, for we worship a person who is only a man; if we are right, much of their teaching is blasphemous, for they deny the deity of the Christ of God. There is a great gulf between us, and it is only common honesty to admit it. To conceal the fact in order to be thought liberal would be a mean artifice, unworthy of an honest man. The question in debate is a vital one, and there can be no halting place between one view or the other. Compromise must always be impossible where the truth is essential and fundamental. There are some points in which we may agree to differ, but these are points in which there can be no mutual concessions or tonings down of statement. Christ Jesus is either God or he is not, and if he be God, as we believe he is, then those who reject his deity cannot be true believers in him, and, therefore, must miss the benefits which he promises to those who receive him. I cannot conceive any man to be right in religion if he be not right in reference to the person of the Redeemer. “You cannot be right in the rest unless you think rightly of him.” If you will not have him to be your God, neither will he save you. Let his abundant miracles, his divine teaching, his unique character, and his resurrection convince you that “the Word was God,” and is in all respects equally divine with the Father and the Spirit.

The expression before us is commendable under another aspect, one in which very likely it was used by these hypocrites. We use it towards Christ to denote that we own him to be our Master; he is “Lord, Lord” to us. In the true church of Christ there are no lords but this one Lord. “One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.” “Lord Bishop” is an expression suitable for Babylon or Rome, but not for the new Jerusalem. I challenge the whole world to find any apostolic title of the kind, or anything approaching to it in the days of the apostles. It is as contrary to Christianity as hell is contrary to heaven. As servants of one common Master, we stand upon an equality. Did he not say, “The rulers of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, but it shall not be so among you.” Christ is Lord to us, and none else in the church of God. And the church takes care, when she is in a right state, that there shall never be any legislator for her except Christ. He is her law-maker, and not Parliaments or kings. Jesus walks in the midst of the churches, among his golden candlesticks, to observe and prescribe her order; he tolerates no other lawgiver or ruler in spiritual things. We know no Rabbi but Christ. Doctrine comes from his lips and from his word, but from no councils and no teachers or divines. As to the rules of the church, if they are not the rules of Jesus, given by the authority of his Spirit, they are no rules for us. As for human traditions, prescriptions, and ordinances in reference to religion, rend them to pieces and toss them to the winds. Christ is Lord, and every Christian’s heart echoes to the words when I say, in the name of his people, “Jesus, son of Mary, Son of God, thou art to us Lord, Lord. Thy mother’s sons bow down before thee and do thee homage. Thou more than Joseph, all our sheaves do obeisance to thy sheaf, and the sun and moon and eleven stars of Israel’s household bow before thee-thou who wast separate from thy brethren for thy brethren’s sake.” Unto Jesus, who was once nailed to the tree, be honour throughout all ages. He is Lord, Lord, in that sense.

And, beloved, as he is thus beyond all controversy Lord divinely and Lord as legislator, it is right that this should be spoken. It was a brave thing for the Covenanters of Scotland to be ready to die for the headship of Christ in his church, and I trust there are thousands still alive who would as gladly relinquish life itself to preserve the crown-right of our exalted Lord. It would be well worth any man’s while to lay down his life to defend the deity of Christ, which doctrine cannot be taken away without removing the very foundations of the faith; and if the foundations be moved, what can the righteous do? Bear your testimony, then, ye followers of the Lamb, and be not afraid to own his name. Though hypocrites have said it, you need not blush to say it; for it is most true that Jesus is both Lord and God. Say “Lord, Lord” with unfaltering tongue. Say it daily by your actions. Have respect unto your Master, and let others see that you respect him. Do this good action because Christ bids you; refuse to do that evil thing because Christ forbids you. Move in that line, because he leads the way; refuse that other line, because you see not his footprints there. Let all men see that you practically say, “Lord, Lord,” whenever you think of Jesus. This is the very spirit of Christianity-to do what Christ bids us, and to honour him in heart and lip and life evermore. I wish that some Christians were a little more outspoken in their acknowledgment of their great Lord and Master; and I commend these hypocrites, if I can commend them at all, that they wisely choose a fit and godly speech, though, alas! they dishonoured the good speech, by using it so foully, when they said “Lord, Lord.”

And now, secondly, there were hypocrites who used this excellent mode of speech. What sort of people were they who said “Lord, Lord,” and yet the Master says of them, that not every one of them shall enter into the kingdom of heaven? Well, I think he refers to a considerable number of people, and I will seek them out. I wonder whether I shall find any in this congregation. Help me, my brethren, by your own self-examination to discover these people.

There can be no doubt our Lord referred, in the first place, to a certain class of superficial externalists, who said “Lord, Lord,” and there their religion ended. Such persons still exist all around us. They are superficial in nature, and in general character. They say good things, but they never feel what they say. Their pious expressions come from as low as the throat, but never from the abysses of the heart. They are of the stony ground order, and have no depth of earth; the hard, barren rock is barely concealed by a sprinkling of soil. They may accurately be styled externalists, for they have the notion that when they have attended to the outside of godliness the whole matter is fully discharged. For instance, if they sing with their voice, they conclude that they have praised God, and that when the hymn is all uttered to melodious notes worship has been presented to God, even though the heart has never praised him at all. When they bow the head and close their eyes in public prayer, they consider they are doing something very right and proper, though very likely they are thinking of their farm, their garden, their children, or their home, casting up their accounts, and wondering how they will find trade and the money-market on Monday when they get to their shops. The externalists are satisfied with the shell of religion whether life remains therein or no; they have a form of godliness, but they are strangers to its power. If they read a chapter every day, they feel very self-complacent, and think they are searchers of the word, though they have never entered into the inner sense, but merely allowed the eye to run over the verses and lines. If they never get an answer to prayer, they feel quite satisfied because they have duly said their prayers. Like boys who give runaway knocks, they have no expectation of an answer. They merely give God the husks, and they think he never looks to see if there is a kernel there. They give him the outward sign, and imagine that he is satisfied, though the thing meant is absent. Oh, how large a proportion of our fellow-creatures seem to be content when they have rendered an outward obedience to religious requirements! They are content to have made clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but the washing of the inside, the new heart, the truth in the inward parts, the giving of the heart’s love to Jesus, does not seem to be worthy of their attention; and if we talk of it, they are weary of it, and think we are Puritanical, and imagine that we mean to judge them after a too lofty standard. We are too severe with them, they say; but oh! beloved, it is not so. Does not every thoughtful man see that without the heart religion must be vain? What can there be in mere external forms? Put it to yourselves-what can there be? What do you think yourselves of your children if you see them doing what you bid them, but doing so because they must, but not from an obedient spirit, or because they love you? What would you think of them if they had no trust in you, no confidence in their father’s love and in their mother’s care, but just went about the house mechanically doing what you bade them, and no more? You would feel you wanted your children’s love, you must have their hearts. And God, our Father, thinks the same of us, and if we do not love him, whatever we may do we cannot be acceptable with him. Perhaps you have attended regularly at the church or meeting-house almost ever since you were born, and it is possible that you have gone through all the rites and ceremonies of the community to which you belong; I am not about to condemn you for so doing if you are a Churchman, or if you are a Methodist, or if you are a Presbyterian, any more than I will if you are a Baptist, only I will put the whole together and say, “God abhors the sacrifice where the heart is not found, and if you have brought him nothing but these externals the verdict of truth concerning your religion is just this-‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’ ” If you say “Lord, Lord,” you must yield a hearty obedience to Jesus, and make your inner nature to be the temple of his Holy Spirit, or else your hypocrisy will condemn you at the last great day, as one who dared to insult the God of truth with a false profession.

Another class of persons who say “Lord, Lord,” and yet are not saved, are those who regard religion as a very excellent thing for quieting their conscience, but who do not look upon it as a practical influence which is to affect their lives and to influence their conduct. I have known persons who certainly would not be easy if they had not gone through their morning and evening prayers, and yet they were bad husbands and quarrelsome neighbours. They could falsify an account, and put down an article twice to a customer without a very great disturbance of their self-satisfaction, but they would not like to have been away from the house of God on the Sabbath, or to have heard an unsound discourse. Either of these things would have touched their conscience, though it was callous on the point of unfair dealing. They could lie, could lie handsomely, but they would not swear, or sing a song; they drew the line somewhere, and compounded for a thousand sins of dishonesty by avoiding certain other vices; thus being left to cheat themselves as a righteous punishment for cheating others. Oh, the deceits and cheats which men play upon themselves! they are their own most easy dupes. A mere matter of religious form will outweigh the most important matters of virtue, when the judgment is perverted by folly. We have heard of the Catholic in Spain who had a very serious sin to confess to his priest. He had been a brigand, and had murdered hundreds, but the sin that lay upon his conscience was not murder. He had perpetrated a thousand robberies, but the sin that troubled him was not theft. Once upon a time, upon a Friday, a drop of blood spurted from a man he had killed, and it had fallen on his lips, so that he had tasted flesh on a Friday, and that had troubled him. His conscience, which, like Achilles, was invulnerable everywhere else, could yet be wounded at the heel. Though we might smile, the same eccentric fact might be declared concerning many beside the brigand. Their eye sees motes and overlooks beams, their judgment strains out gnats and flies, and yet it swallows camels and elephants. They leap one hour and limp another. They are very nice on points of ritual, and equally lax as to common honesty; the thing really worth having-love to God, and love to man-they fling behind their backs, and fancy they shall be saved because they have complimented God by a hypocritical pretence of worship, and have deceived men by sanctimonious pretensions. As though, if I cheated a man every day I could make up for it by taking my hat off in the streets to him. They bow to the Almighty and rebel against him. Do they fancy he is to be cozened by them? Do they dream that he is gratified by their sounding words and empty declarations? Whatever they may imagine, it is not so. Many say “Lord, Lord,” to quiet their conscience, but enter the kingdom of heaven they never can.

Now, of this class of hypocrites there are many, and there is one I have met with-an old acquaintance of mine-he may be here now. He is a gentleman who is exceedingly orthodox; I would have you know that he possesses the imperial and infallible standard of orthodoxy. I believe there is a legal pound and a legal yard, kept somewhere in London, to which all measures must conform. This gentleman has got the legal standard of theology in his own possession. He knows exactly what a preacher ought to say upon a text, and it is one of his great delights to sit down and listen to a sermon and say, “A part of that was right, but it was not all so. It was yea and nay; the preacher gave a pail of good milk and then tipped it over at the close; he was not sound on such a point, and such a point.” This gentleman can divide a hair betwixt the west and north-west side with extreme accuracy, and never can be wrong under any circumstances. He has infallibility. The truth was born when he was born, and will expire when he expires, he is a paragon of accuracy as to his beliefs, only unfortunately he is not quite so accurate in the daily conduct of his business; he may be sound in his creed, but he is cracked in his manners. His wife never told me so, but I think if she did speak out her mind she would complain that she has the most crabbed, ill-tempered husband that ever woman was plagued with. His children don’t go to the place of worship where the father goes, because he does not know whether they are elect, and does not trouble himself whether they are so or not, for if they are to be saved they will be saved in God’s own time, and it does not matter whether they go to a place of worship or not. Neither would they like to accompany their father, for they have come to the very natural conclusion that whatever religion their father believes in, they would like to believe the very opposite, for they would like to follow a religion which would make them different from what he is. He is known in the place where he lives as being a man who will walk ten miles to hear some favourite divine, but would not stir a finger to reclaim the sinner or instruct the ignorant; and he is known for another thing, that, with the exception of his divinity, you cannot believe a word he says. Oh, may God deliver us from these men. There are such to be found in most of our villages. They set themselves up for judges in God’s heritage, and yet they know not what it is to have their nature renewed: in fact, if you were to preach a sermon to them upon, “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord,” they would try to pump the meaning out of it, and put another sense upon it instead; they would say that practical godliness is legality, and that the children of God are not to be talked to in that fashion. They imagine that they may live as they like, and yet be the dear people of God. Beloved, may God save us from this spirit of Antinomianism! for of all the devils that have ever come up from hell, I believe it is one of the most brazen-faced and deceitful, and has done more damage among professors than almost any other. They say, “Lord, Lord,” but they shall not enter into the kingdom.

We have also met with others who say, “Lord, Lord,” but not in sincerity. They are very busy professors, always ready to do anything, and they are not happy unless they have something to do. I blame them not for being busy: I would to God that the sincere people were half as busy; but I detect in them this vice: they are fondest of doing that which will be most seen; they prefer to serve God in those places where the most honour will be gained. To speak in public is infinitely preferable to them to the visitation of a poor sick woman. To work or to give where the deed will be blazoned abroad is after their minds. To take the chair at a public meeting, and receive a vote of thanks, is delightful to them; but to go into a back street and look after the poor, or plod on in the Sunday School in some inferior class, is not according to their taste. It may seem harsh, but it is nevertheless true that many are serving themselves under the pretence of serving Christ, they labour to advance the cause in order that they may be themselves advanced; and they push themselves forward in the church this way and that way for the glory of place and position, that everybody may say, “What a good man that is, and how much influence he has, and how well he serves his Master!” Beloved, if you and I do anything nominally for God, and at the bottom we are doing it for the sake of praise, it is not for God; we are doing it for ourselves. I do not say there is anybody here of that sort, but I would like your conscience to ask you, as my conscience is asking me, “Do I really serve the Lord, or do I work in the church in order that I may be considered to be an industrious, praiseworthy minister, seeking the good of my fellow-men?” I charge you before God, shun the desire of human praise and never let it pollute your motives. May the Holy Ghost purify you from so base a motive. The praise of God-to have it said by him, “Well done, good and faithful servant”-that you should seek; but honour from men, avoid it as you would a viper. Shake it off into the fire, if ever you find the desire of it clinging to your soul, else it may be your unhappy lot to find at last that saying, “Lord, Lord,” will not secure you an entrance into the kingdom.

In all churches I fear there are some of another class of hypocrites, who say “Lord, Lord,” for the sake of what they can get by it. John Bunyan speaks of Mr. Byends, who had many motives for going on pilgrimage besides going to the Celestial City. He came from the town of Fairspeech, and there he had a large circle of interesting relatives. Mr. Smoothtongue, Mr. Doublemind, and Mr. Facing-both-ways, who made all his money as a waterman, by looking one way and pulling the other. Many of his race still survive in all circles, gentlemen who hold with the hare and run with the hounds, especially running with the hounds if the hare is likely to be caught. They believe that if gain is not godliness, godliness may be made helpful to gain. These gentlemen flourish in all quarters of town and country. One of them set up in a village, and the first question he asked before he opened his shop was, “Which is the most respectable congregation in the neighbourhood,” his object being to go there, that he might not only get good, but dispose of his goods as well. We meet with persons in another rank in life whose object in attending a place is that they may get into a respectable circle, and have wealthy friends, and have their hand upon the door-handle of society. Swimming with the stream is their delight, and they prefer that stream in which there are the most gold fish. Others who are poorer have a keen eye to the loaves and fishes, and those churches are best where the loaves are not made with barley, as they used to be, but with white flour, and are not mere penny loaves, but good substantial quarterns. They are pleased also if the fishes are larger than those we read of in the New Testament. One of these loathsome hypocrites came to Rowland Hill, and was soon detected by that shrewd divine. “Well,” he said, “and so you profess to have been converted?” “Yes,” said the old lady, “I was converted under your blessed ministry.” “And where have you attended since that time?” “Sir, I have always attended your blessed ministry.” “And I hope you have been comforted and built up?” “Yes, I have, very much, under your blessed ministry.” “I suppose you know some of the rich people who attend with us.” “Yes, I have been kindly noticed by many who sit under your blessed ministry.” Mr. Hill then said, “I suppose you have heard that we have some blessed almshouses?” “Yes,” she said, “she had, and she hoped she might have the blessed privilege of dwelling in one of them.” Alas, alas! the blessed almshouses and the other blessed charities, which indeed are blessed if given from pure motives, have often been perverted to most accursed ends, and “Lord, Lord,” has been said with importunity by some whose sole object for saying it was that they might gain pence thereby. In whatever station of life you may be, I beseech you, scorn this meanness. Many a member of Parliament is as mean as any man in this respect. He pretends to be zealous for religion in order to gain a seat in the House. Everywhere there is too much of making religion a stalking-horse by which lower ends may be reached. If you wish to be rich and opulent, go and get a ladder from anywhere except from Calvary; put not the cross to so mean a use. If you take the wounds and blood of Jesus and the Saviour’s precious name, and conjure by them, what can come upon you but an angry blast from Almighty God? How can he bear such hypocrisy? And yet many will say “Lord, Lord,” for this reason, and will never enter into the kingdom.

Well, the list is sorrowfully long, but I must mention one or two others. One is the Sunday Christian. I dare say he is here now. He is an excellent Christian on the Sabbath. As soon as the sun shines upon the earth on the first day of the week, all his religion is awake, but, alas, he is a very queer Christian on a Monday, and a remarkably bad Christian on Saturday nights. Many people keep their piety folded up and put away with their best clothes, and they only give it an airing on the Sabbath. Their Bible is to be seen under their arm on Sunday, but on a Monday, where is that Bible? Well, not at the man’s right hand, as a perpetual companion. Where are the precepts of Scripture? Are they in the shop? Are they in the house? Alas, the golden rule has been left in church to lie dusty in the pews until next Sunday. Religion is not wanted by some people on a week-day, it might be inconvenient. Many there be who sing psalms of praise to God but confine their praises to the congregation; as to praising him in their heart at home, it never occurs to them. Their whole religion lies inside the meeting-house walls, or comes up at certain times and seasons during the day, when the family is called in to prayer. May God save us from intermittent religion! May he grant us grace to be always what we should wish to be if we were about to die. May religion never be to us a coat or a cloak to be taken off, but may it be intermingled with the warp and woof of our nature, so that we do not so much talk religion as breathe and live it. I desire to eat and drink and sleep eternal life, as an old divine used to say. May that be ours. Good John Newton used to say of his Calvinism, that he did not preach it in masses of dry doctrine like pieces of lump sugar, but that it was stirred up in all his preaching, like sugar dissolved in our tea. Oh, that some of those people who keep lumps of religion for Sundays would sweeten their lives and tempers with it, till men could see that their ordinary every-day actions were full of the grace of God, and that they were actuated at all times by the love of the Most High God save us from being Sunday Christians!

I will not continue the list, as our time is almost fled. There are many more varieties of vain professors, even as of unclean beasts there are many kinds. May we not be among them!

Where did these people fail? That is the last point. The Saviour said that they did not his sayings. “He that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven,” says he, “shall enter the kingdom.” What is the will, then, of his Father in heaven? We are expressly told that this is the will of him that sent Christ, that whosoever seeth the Son and believeth on him should not perish. It is a part, then, of the will of God, which we must do if we would be saved, that we believe on Jesus Christ. Dear hearer, hast thou believed in Jesus? If not, thy sacraments, thy church-goings, thy chapel-goings, thy prayers and hymns, all go for nothing. If thou dost not trust in Jesus, thou hast not even the foundation stone of salvation; thou art lot; and may God have mercy upon thee!

It is a part of God’s will, moreover, that where there is faith there should be obedience to God, conformity to the divine precepts. In fact, true faith in Jesus always brings this. There never was a man that believed in Jesus yet but what he sought to do the will of Jesus. Now it is a part of the will of Jesus that all those who are his should love one another. Hypocrites do not love one another; though they are always talking about the want of love there is in the church. Listen to them! They are always denouncing other people, and this is no mark of love to the brethren. They have a keen eye for the imperfections of others, but they have no love to those they censure. We must love the brethren, or we lack the plainest and most needful evidence of salvation, “for we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.”

The true child of God, also, adds to his faith, love, and faith begets in him all the graces and virtues which adorn renewed manhood and bring glory to God. Alas! I have known some high professors, not commonly truthful, who would talk about communion with Christ and sweet enjoyments of divine love, and yet they seemed to miscalculate the multiplication table, and did not know how many pounds went to a hundredweight. How dwells the love of God in a man who is a thief? How can it be that he is a servant of a just and holy God, when he is unjust in his dealings toward his fellow-men? It will not do, sir. You may prate as long as you will, but you are no Christian unless the rule of integrity is the rule of your life.

Ay, and there are some who are unchaste, and yet dare to talk about being Christians. My eye might at this moment glance upon some who make this Tabernacle their place of pretended worship, and profess to hear the words we speak with pleasure, who are a disgrace to Christianity all the time. Let them get home to their knees and pray God to give them manliness enough at least to be damned honestly, and not to go down to perdition wearing the name of Christian when Christians they are not. If I served Satan, and loved the pleasures of sin, I would do so out-and-out like a man; but to sneak into the church of God, and to live unchastely-I have no words sufficiently strong with which to denounce such detestable meanness.

Alas, I must add that there are some professed Christians who are not sober. If a man is not temperate in meats and drinks how dare he talk about the power of prayer? How dare he come to the prayer-meeting and open his mouth there? Do you suppose that Christ has any communion with Bacchus, that he will strike hands across the ale house bar, and call him a friend who staggers out of the door of the gin palace to go and listen to a sermon? “Is that ever done?” says one. Done? Ay, let some here confess that they have done it this very day! How dare they say, “Lord, Lord,” and yet drain the drunkard’s bowl in secret? O sirs, I don’t want to put any of these cases in such a way that you should be vexed and angry, and say, “He is personal;” but if you did say so I should not apologise, but should tell you that so long as you are personal in your offence to Christ I shall be personal in my rebukes. If you are personally insulting to the Saviour, you must expect the Saviour’s servant to be personal in upbraiding you.

Once more, I fear there are in these days a large number of professors who never exercise real private prayer. The Saviour says he will say to them, “I never knew you;” now he would have known them if they had been accustomed to converse with him in private prayer. Had they communed with him in earnest supplications, the Lord Jesus could not then have said, “I never knew you,” for they would each one have replied, “Not know me, Lord! I have wept before thee in secret, when no other eye saw me but thine. I brought thee habitually my daily cares, and cast my burden upon thee. Dost not thou know me? I have spoken to thee face to face, as a man speaketh with his friend. I know thee, O my Lord, by joyous experience of thy goodness, and therefore I am sure thou knowest me. Thine answers to my prayers and thy gifts of grace have been so constant that I am sure thou knowest me. Who is there on earth thou dost know if thou dost not know me?” Happy is the man who can speak thus; but alas, many are quite unable to make such a reply. I fear there are some professors now before me who do not pray. You were baptised, and yet you do not pray. You have joined the church, and yet you restrain prayer. You dare come to the communion table, although for a long time you have lived without prayer, for I cannot call that prayer which you slobber over in the way you do with your morning prayer when you are in a hurry, and your evening prayer, when you are almost asleep. God bless you, beloved, and save you from sham praying and make you to have truth in your inward parts, and cause you to be sincere before the living God.

Now, I know what will happen. Some dear trembling heart will say, “I always thought I was a hypocrite; now I know I am. I have always been fretting and troubling about that.” It generally falls out contrary to our desire, those who are not hypocrites think they are, while real hypocrites throw off our warnings as an ironclad man-of-war casts off the shots of an ordinary gun. I try to make caps to fit heads which deserve to be covered, but the people whose heads they will fit never put them on; and others for whom they were never intended at all-dear, loving, tender-hearted believers, always watchful and careful-are the very ones who will put them on their own heads, and cry “Yes, I fear I am the hypocrite.” Ah, dear soul, do not write bitter things against yourself, because, if you will consider the matter, you will soon see that you are no hypocrite. Would you do anything to grieve Christ? Do you not, above all things, desire to trust him? Do you know anybody to trust in but Jesus? Are you not depending upon him? And though you could not say you would die for him, yet I believe, if it came to the point, that your trembling faith would still keep alive, when that of some of the boastful ones, who, in their own esteem, are almost perfect, would give way, and end in apostasy.

To each one I would say, if thou believest in the Lord Jesus Christ with all thy heart, thou art no hypocrite; and if any one of you has been a hypocrite, and has to plead guilty to many things I have mentioned, come to the foot of the cross and say, “Jesus, Master, I the chief of sinners am, have mercy upon me now. Look on me, and let my sins pass away. Look on me, and let all cunning, and hypocrisy be driven far from me. Give me a new heart and a right spirit, and from this day make me thy child, and I will glorify thee, both on earth and in heaven, for ever and ever.”

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Matthew 7.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-643, 640, 637.

Beloved Friends,-This is the last sermon to be issued in my absence. I hope to present you next week with a discourse preached on my return. I have been very ill during my absence in foreign lands; but I hope the result will be that on recommencing my work I shall be both physically and mentally all the more fitted for it, and I pray that to these blessings spiritual energy may be added by the abiding power of the Holy Ghost. It is a period of revival: may the Lord revive his work in each of us. I entreat the prayers of my readers and of my beloved flock. Grace, mercy, and peace be with you all. Amen.

Mentone, Feb. 12, 1874.

C. H. SPURGEON.