C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting: and his truth endureth to all generations.”-Psalm 100:3, 4, 5.

Brethren, it is a trick of Satan to call off our minds from the most important and vital matters by the suggestion of trivial considerations. When the best blessings are asking for our acceptance he will bring the most trifling things into our minds; he will fill our eyes with dust to prevent our looking to the brazen serpent for healing. From the preaching of Jesus he endeavoured to distract human attention by debates upon the tithing of mint and anise and cummin, the making broad of the borders of one’s garments, the wearing of phylacteries, the straining out of gnats, and I know not what beside. He followed this method at Jacob’s Well. When our Lord spoke to the woman about living water, and the salvation of her soul, the evil spirit prompted her to ask concerning Gerizim and Zion: “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem men ought to worship.” With this same art Satan worketh still. It should be our business, not being ignorant of the devices of the enemy, to be more than a match for him, by breaking away from all vain janglings and trivial questions to the foundation truths, the corner-stones of faith, the realities of life everlasting, the vitalities of godliness; and these lie all Godward and Christward, away from the shadow land of ceremonials, and the cloud wrack of vain speculations, over there to the eternal rock and everlasting hills whose golden tops are, to the eye of faith, bright with the blessed daybreak. Let us get away there this morning from the vanities of earth, and may the breath of the Spirit speed us towards the realities of heaven, that to things essential we may give the attention which is essential to them.

For what were we created, my brethren? I know no better answer than that of the Assembly’s catechism, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.” There is a vast amount both of theology and philosophy in that simple answer, which our old divines have put into the mouth of a child. Had man remained what God made him, it would have been his very element to glorify his God; to do the will of God would have been as natural to us as to breathe, if we had not fallen from original perfection. Creatures which abide as God created them obey his will, I was about to say unconsciously; but where there is consciousness there is added a supreme delight which makes their consciousness and willinghood the highest boons. Look at yonder ponderous orbs; they are not stubborn with the so-called vis inertiæ, but joyfully roll along in their predestined courses because God commands them to keep their settled track. See yonder watching stars: they close not their bright eyes, but smile upon us from age to age; those sentinels of heaven quench not their lamps, but shine right on day without night because God has said “Let there be light,” and from them light must come.

We hear of no rebellion in the spheres, no revolt against the law which holds them to their celestial courses. Orion breaks not his bands, the Pleiades cease not their sweet influences. These orbs, mighty as they are, are as subservient to God as the plastic clay to the hand of the potter. And where there is intelligence, as long as the intelligence remains as God made it, there is no revolt against his will. You mighty angel “whose staff might make a mast for some tall admiral,” counts it his honour to fly like a flash of light at the bidding of the Eternal. It is no demeaning of his dignity, it is no diminution of his pleasure, to do the commandment of the Most High, hearkening unto the voice of his word. Were we to-day what we should be, it would be our element to love, to serve, to adore our God, and we should not need ministers to stir us to our pleasurable duty or remind us of Jehovah’s claims. Even the august language of our text would not be needed to bid us worship and bow down, and know that Jehovah is God, who has made us, and not we ourselves, for we should bear this truth in every particle of our being. As things are, however, we need recalling to duty and urging to obedience, and this morning, with the help of God’s good Spirit, we will submit our hearts to such a call.

First we will consider the claims of God, on what are they grounded? “Know ye that the Lord, he is God; it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving.” The claims of God are grounded, first of all, upon his Godhead “Know ye that Jehovah, he is God.” As Matthew Henry has very properly said, ignorance is not the mother of devotion, though it be the mother of superstition. True knowledge is the mother and the nurse of piety. Really to know the deity of God, to get some idea of what is meant by saying that he is God, is to have the very strongest argument forced upon one’s soul for obedience and worship. The Godhead gave authority to the first law that was ever promulgated when God forbade man to touch the fruit of a certain tree. Why might not Adam pluck the fruit? Simply and only because God forbade it. Had God permitted, it had been lawful, God’s prohibition made it sin to eat thereof. God gave no reason for saying to Adam, “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” His commandment, seeing he was God, was the supremest reason, and to have questioned his right, to make the law would have been in itself flat rebellion. God was to be obeyed simply because he was God. It was a case in which to have introduced an argument would have supposed unwillingness on man’s part to obey. Adam could not want more than to know that such and such was the will of his God. This same truth of Godhead is the authoritative basis of the moral law of ten commands. From Sinai no claim for obedience was set up but this, “I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” In that word, “god,” is comprehended the highest, the most weighty, the most righteous reasons for man’s yielding up his entire nature to the divine service. Because the Lord is God therefore should we serve him with gladness, and come before his presence with singing.

It was upon this point that God tested Pharaoh, and Pharaoh may be regarded as a sort of representative of all the enemies of the Lord. “Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go.” There was no reason given, no argument, but simply this, “Thus saith the Lord;” to which Pharaoh, fully appreciating the ground upon which God was acting, answered, “Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice?” So they stood foot to foot in fair battle, Jehovah saying, “Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my people go,” and Pharaoh replying, “I know not the Lord neither will I let Israel go.” You know how that battle ended. That song of Israel at the Red Sea when the Lord of hosts triumphed gloriously, was a prophecy of the victory which will surely come unto God in all conflicts with his creatures, in which his eternal power and Godhead are assailed.

The argument derived from the Godhead has not only been used with haughty rebels, but also with questioners and debaters. Observe how Paul speaks. He has entered upon the thorny subject of predestination, a matter which none of us will ever comprehend, a matter wherein it is better for us to believe than to reason, and he is met with this, “If all things happen as God decrees why doth he yet find fault, for who hath resisted his will?” to which the apostle gives no reply but this, “Nay, but O man, who art thou that repliest against God?” Against God there can be no answer. If he wills it, so let it be. It is right, it is good because he so decrees. Is he God? Submit. If there were no other argument, or reason, let Godhead convince you.

Good men have been argued with in the same way for their profit. That is the core and pith of the Book of Job. There is Job in conflict with his three friends, who are arguing that he must be a wicked man or else God would not so sorely smite him; to which reasoning he replies that he will hold fast his integrity, and will not let it go. Then comes Elihu, and he has much to say that is wise, but he cannot settle the matter. At last comes God into the controversy, and what is the Lord’s argument? Does he proceed to justify himself in what he has done with Job, to give Job reasons for covering him with boils and blains, and excuse himself for having taken a perfect and upright man and laid him prostrate on a dunghill? No, but instead thereof he unveils a portion of his Godhead, and reveals his power in some such language as this: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof? Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high? Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him?” Thus the Lord displayed the greatness of his power, while Job sat cowering down, and cried out, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Ah, men and women, if ye did but know what God is, and who he is, if but some flashes of his divine omnipotence, or any other of his glorious attributes, were let loose upon you, you would perceive that he has the fullest claims upon your allegiance, and that you ought to live for his glory. Imagine that at this instant midnight darkness should settle over us, out of which should burst forth a thunderclap making each stone in this building to tremble, while down every one of yonder columns lurid lightning should begin to stream; imagine that the earth beneath us rocked and reeled after the manner of the city of Lisbon, or Aleppo in years gone by; conceive that peal on peal again of that terrible thunder should be heard; why there is not one of us but would long to be the servant of that terrible God, and instinctively inquire what he would have us to do? Atheists, in times of tempest and storm, have found but little help in their philosophy; like Pharoah, they have been ready to cry, “Entreat the Lord for me.” But the reeling earth, or heaven on a blaze, what were these? The touch of his finger and glance of his eye would do far more. He touches the hills, and they smoke, but as for himself, who shall conceive of him? Let us adore his overwhelming majesty, and bow down before him, for the Lord he is God.

The second ground of the Lord’s claim is his creation of us. “It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.” We are every one of us the offspring of the divine power. This is a fact of which we are informed by revelation, but it is also one which every instinct of our nature agrees with. You never saw a child startled when it was told for the first time that God made it, for within that little mind there dwells an instinct which accepts the statement. The theory that we are not made, but are mere developments of materialism, wears upon its face all the marks of unsupported fiction. Certain statements are called axioms, because they are self-evident truths, but this is an axiom reversed, for it is a self-evident lie. To an unsophisticated mind its repetition is its refutation; indeed, whenever I hear people mention it they seem unable to suppress a laugh, and I do not wonder, for even nature itself forces them to despise what they pretend to believe. The atomic theory was originated, I have no doubt, either in Pandemonium or in Bedlam: it is worthy of either, but it is unworthy of any man who possesses either sanity or morality. No, we did not become what we are by chance or growth. God made us. This belief is the easiest escape from all difficulties, and besides, it is true, and everything in us tells us so. Now, since the Lord made us, he has a right to us. The property which God has in man is proved beyond dispute by our being his creatures. The potter has a right to make the vessel for what use he pleases, still he has not such absolute right over his clay as God has over us, for the potter does not make the clay; he makes the vessel from the clay, but the clay is there from the first. The Lord has in our case made the clay from which he has fashioned us, and therefore we are entirely at his disposal, and should serve him with all our hearts. Why, man, if you make anything, you expect to use it. If you make a tool for your trade you reckon upon employing it according to your pleasure; and if it would never bend to your will, or be useful to your purpose, you would speedily put it away. So is it with you, the Lord who made you, has a right to your service and obedience. Will you not acknowledge his claim? Consider what he has made us. No mean things are we! Who but God could make a man? Raphael takes the pencil in his hand, and with master touch creates upon yonder canvas the most wondrous forms; and the sculptor with his chisel and his hammer developes amazing beauty; but there is no life, thought, intellect, and if you speak there is neither voice nor answering. How different are you from the canvas and the marble, for in your bosom there is a mysterious principle, which makes you akin to the Deity, for your soul can know reason, believe, understand, and love. I had almost called the soul infinite, for God has made it capable of such wondrous things. Thus has he trusted us with high powers and faculties, and lifted us up to a high position; surely, then, it is ours to serve him with a loving loyalty.

I like to think that the Lord hath made us, and to yield myself to him on that ground, because while the grandeur of what he has made us calls us to homage, even the lowly side has its claim too, and a sweet one. Our powers are finite, and sometimes we are troubled about that fact, wishing we could do more for our Lord: but we need not fear when we remember that he hath made us, and therefore fixed the measure of our capacity. In Roger de Wendover’s “Flowers of History,” an ancient Saxon chronicle, we read of a Saxon king, who, riding through a forest, came upon a little church in which a priest was saying prayers, and this priest was lame and hump-backed; and therefore the rough Saxon king was ready to despise him, till he heard him chaunt these words, “It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.” The king blushed, and owned his fault. If, then, we are of small beauty or slender talent, let us not complain, but serve him who has made us what we are. If we are amazed at a truth which we cannot comprehend; if we find portions of God’s word to be beyond our depth, let us not complain, but remember that the Lord could have made us understand all things if he had chosen, and as he has not done so, “It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.” When any say to us, “Your religion is beyond you, the truths you believe you cannot comprehend,” we answer, “We are quite satisfied it should be so, for the Lord hath made us, and not we ourselves.” If he has made us capacious to a larger degree than our fellows, we will give him all the more honour; but if we be vessels of small capacity we will not wish to be other than our Maker would have us to be.

Dear brethren, I cannot conceive any higher claim upon our service than this, that God has created us, except that the same truth may be sung an octave higher. Common men may sing, “It is he that made us, and not we ourselves”; even the brute creation might join in that confession: but, O ye saints, yours is a loftier note, for you have been twice made, born again, created anew in Christ Jesus, and after a nobler fashion ye can sing, “It is he that made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” Creation has its claims, but election and redemption rise still higher; from those peculiarly favoured the Lord must have peculiar praise.

A third reason for living unto the Lord lies in his shepherding of us. “We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” God has not left us and gone away. He has not left us as the ostrich leaves her eggs, to be broken by the passer’s foot. He is watching over us at every hour; even as a shepherd guards his flock. Over us all he exercises an unceasing care, a watchful providence, and therefore we should return to him daily praise. It has been well said that some men represent God as having taken the universe like a watch, wound it up, and then put it under his pillow and gone to sleep: but it is not so. God’s finger is on every wheel of the world’s machinery; God’s power is that which puts force into the laws of the universe, they were a mere dead letter if he were not powerfully active evermore. Child of Adam, in thy cradle thou art not rocked by wild winds, but by the hand of love. Daughter of affliction, thou art not laid prostrate on you bed to be the victim of heartless laws, but there is One who makes all thy bed in thy sickness with his own kind and tender hand. God giveth us day by day our daily bread. God clotheth us; he gives breath for these heaving lungs, and blood for this beating heart; he keeps us in life, and if his power were withdrawn we should sink immediately into death. Now, therefore, because it is so, we are bound to give to our great Shepherd our daily service. Ye are the sheep of his hand; for you the hourly provision, for you the constant protection, for you the wise and judicious governance, for you the royal leadership through the desert to the pastures on the other side of Jordan, for you the power that chases away the wolf, for you the skill that finds out the pastures of the wilderness, for you those superior comforts which come from the redeeming angel’s presence, and flow from the very fact that he is yours. Therefore, render to the Lord your homage and your praise. Men, because ye are men, adore the God who keeps you living men; but saintly men, men renewed and fed out of the storehouse of divine grace, serve your God, I pray you, with all your heart, and soul, and strength, because you especially are the sheep of his pasture and the people of his hand.

A fourth reason for adoration and service is given in the last verse of our text, it is the divine character: “For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.” Here are three master motives for serving the Lord our God. Oh that all would feel their weight. First, he is good. Now, if I were to lift up a standard in this assembly this morning and say, “This banner represents the cause of everything that is just, right, true, kind, and benevolent, I should expect many a young heart to enlist beneath it; for when pretenders in all lands have talked of liberty and virtue choice spirits have been enchanted and rushed to death for the grand old cause. Now, God is good, just, right, true, kind, benevolent; in a word, God is love, and therefore who would not serve him? Who will refuse to be the servant of infinite perfection? Oh, were he not my God, but another man’s God, methinks I would steal away to him to be enlisted beneath the banner of such a God as he is. To keep the laws of God must always be incumbent upon us, because those laws are the very essence of right; none of them are arbitrary, all of them the requirements of unsullied holiness and unswerving justice. Indeed, commands of God are something more than merely right; they are good in the sense of kind. When God says, “Thou shalt not,” it is only like a mother forbidding her child to cut its fingers with an edged tool, or to eat poisonous berries. When God says, “Thou shalt,” it is practically a direction to us to be happy, or at least to do that thing which in due course leads to happiness. The laws of the Lord our God are right in all respects, and therefore I claim from every one of you the obedience of your heart to God.

Then it is added, “His mercy is everlasting.” Who would not serve one whose mercy endureth for ever? Observe, that he is always merciful. Never does a sinner come to him and find him devoid of pity. The Lord is merciful and gracious when we are children, he is equally so to us in middle life, and when we grow grey in years he is merciful still. We cannot wear out his patience nor exhaust his forgiving love. He has given us a Saviour who ever liveth to make intercession for transgressors. What a blessing is this. So long as we sin we have an advocate to plead for us! He has set up a mercy-seat for us for all times, and to it we may go as often as we will. He did not erect a mercy-seat on earth for a hundred years and then withdraw it, but, blessed be his name, we always have the right of access, and we have still a plea to urge, for Jesu’s blood has not lost its savour. There, too, is the Spirit of God always waiting to help us to pray, and whenever we wish to draw near to the mercy-seat he is ready to teach us what we should pray for as we ought, and even to utter for us groanings which we ourselves could not utter. Oh, who would not serve a God whose mercy is everlasting? Cruel is that heart which infinite gentleness does not persuade. If God be merciful, man should no more be rebellious.

It is added, “His truth endureth to all generations,” that is to say you will not find in God one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow. What he promises he will perform. Every word of his stands fast for ever, like himself, immutable. Trust him to-day, and you will not find him fail you, neither to-morrow, nor all the days of your life. The God of Abraham is our God to-day, and has not changed through the revolutions of years. The Saviour whom we trusted in our boyhood, is still the same, yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Blessed be his name. I think it was this attribute of God that had the greatest charm to my young heart, it seemed so sweet to rest my soul with an unchangeable God, so delightful to know, that if I did once enjoy his love he would never take it away from me, that if he was once reconciled to me by the death of his Son, I should for ever be his child and be dear to his heart. This gave my heart gladness and I hold forth this truth now as a sweet inducement to those present who have not trusted to the Lord that they should do so, for the Lord is good and his mercy is everlasting, and his truth endureth to all generations. Thus I have set before you the grounds of God’s claims; are they solid? Do you consent to them? Oh, that sovereign grace would constrain each of us to live alone for the glory of God. It is his most righteous due.

Now very briefly indeed, the claims of God-how have we regarded them? Answer for yourselves. Alas, some have paid no respect to these claims-in fact they have denied them, and have said in effect, “Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice?” Have I one such person here? I pray God to change his heart, for the gnat may much more wisely contend with the flame which has already burned its wings than you contend with your Maker? As surely as you live, God will vanquish you, and make you own his supremacy. If you will not obey him he will dash you in pieces like a potter’s vessel.

A far larger number of persons, however, ignore rather than oppose God’s claim. They have lived in this world now perhaps to middle age and never thought about God at all, though he has made them and kept them in being. That is the way that many a debtor has done with his debts. He has felt easy because he has not been dunned about them; but surely that is a doubtful honesty which rests in peace because the creditor does not happen to clamour. A truly honest man is dissatisfied till he has discharged his obligations, and every noble spirit will be discontented with itself because it has not paid its due to God. What if the Lord has used no severities, has sent no sheriff’s officers, of sickness or bereavement, shall we not all the more heartily enquire, “What shall I render unto the Lord?” Shall we rob God because he is merciful? Shall we make his goodness a reason for neglecting him? Can it be right that we should never render to the Most High according to the benefits received?

There are multitudes who in theory acknowledge all the claims of God, but as a matter of fact they deny them, or they evade them by a merely outward religiousness. They will not be honest, but they will go to church; they will not cleanse themselves from iniquity, but they will be baptised; to live a holy life is a matter they care not for, but they will take the sacrament; believe in Jesus, and yield themselves up to the love of God, they will not, but they have not the slightest objection to joining in a procession or going upon pilgrimage-thus giving God brass counters instead of gold, outward appearances instead of real obedience. The love of the heart and trust of the Spirit man refuses to his Maker, and so long as he does so all his offerings are vain.

Sorrowfully must we all confess also that where we have tried to honour the Lord, and have done so in a measure by his grace, yet we have failed of perfection; we have to confess that oftentimes the pressure of the body which is near, and of the things that are seen and tangible, has been greater upon us than the force of the things which cannot be seen, but are eternal. We have yielded to self too often, and have robbed the Lord. What shall we do in this case? Why, we have to bless our everlasting God and Father, that he has provided an atoning sacrifice for all our shortcomings, and that there is one, partaker of our nature who stands in the gap on our behalf, in whom we can be accepted, notwithstanding all our shortcomings and offences. Let us go to God in Christ Jesus. He bids us believe in Jesus, and assures us of pardon and salvation on the spot if we do so. The demands of God are met in the life and death of his only-begotten Son: faith lets us see that they were met for us, and that we are clear. Brethren, we have believed, yea, and we will believe, that Jesus died for us, and here comes our joy, that we are delivered from the wrath of God, notwithstanding that we have fallen short of his deserts. And now what follows? I feel concerning it just this, that now there are more bonds to bind me to the service of God than ever; he has forgiven me for his name’s sake, and washed me in the blood of his own Son, and I am his by firmer bonds than ever. No obligations are so forcible as those which arise out of free grace and dying love. Pardoned sin is no argument for the indulgence of future sin, but an abundant argument for future holiness in every heart that feels its power. O ye saints of God, transgression being blotted out ye will no more transgress; made his elect, you elect to serve him; being his adopted children you rejoice to do your Father’s will; and now henceforth and for ever you are the Lord’s.

This brings me to the concluding note of our discourse, which is this-the claims of God, when they are regarded, how do they influence men? Give me your hearts a few minutes. I am persuaded, brethren, that the noblest form of man that is to be found on the face of the earth is the man who serves God; that all other forms of manhood are faulty and imperfect in themselves, to a very high degree, and are also far inferior in force and beauty to that which is produced in men by consecration to the service of God. A man who is guided by the Holy Ghost to live for the Lord is a nobler being altogether than one moved by a less lofty aim.

Let me show you how healthy it is to serve God. The man who serves God, led by the Spirit of God so to do, is humble. Were he proud it were proof at once that he was not serving God; but the remembrance that God is his sovereign, and has made him, that in his hand is his breath, makes the good man feel that he is nothing but dust and ashes at his very best.

He cannot cry out with Nebuchadnezzar, “Behold this great Babylon which I have builded:” he is far more likely to crouch down where Nebuchadnezzar did after God had taught him better, and to say, “Now I extol and honour the King of heaven.” Serving God keeps man in his right place. It is a poise to him, without which he might be drifted to destruction, like the myriads of butterflies which I have seen far out at sea, condemned ere long to sink into the wave. At the same time, while it sobers a man it fills him with joy, and praise, and gratitude, thus giving him sail as well as ballast. A man who loves to serve God receives mercies at his hand with great thankfulness and joy, and is content with the will of God, and therefore is full of gratitude to him; and let me tell you there are no sweeter moments in a man’s life than those which are occupied with adoring gratitude.

Nothing is more purging, or cleanses a man more from earthly grossness, and from all the defilement of selfishness, than to serve the ever-living and ever-blessed God, and to feel that there is one so much greater, so much better than one’s self, towards whom we aspire, for whom we live. Thus is a man at once humbled, cheered, and elevated.

The service of God is honourable as no other service is. There is a man who lives for himself; his great object is to get money. Look at him and consider him well! Is not the greed of wealth one of the most beggarly passions that can possess a human bosom? You ant, which labours for its commonwealth is to my mind up among the angels, compared with a man who sweats and toils and starves himself, merely for the sake of heaping up for himself a mass of yellow metal. Can I more highly commend the lover of pleasure? What is pleasure? As the world understands it, it is a hollow sham, a veneer of mirth, covering deep dissatisfaction. I often think when I hear worldlings laughing at such poor nonsense, that they pull each other’s sleeves and say, “Laugh. You ought to laugh.” I cannot see the mirth of their amusements, but they do. They struggle to seem happy, but what after all is it to have lived to be amused? To have spent all one’s powers in killing time! Is anything more contemptible?

How horrible it is when man lives for lust, and puts forth all his strength to indulge his passions! Brutes! beasts! Alas! I slander the beasts when I compare them to such men. The man who lives for God is a far nobler being. Why, in the very act of self-renunciation and of dedication to God the man has been lifted up from earth, and from all that holds him down to its dust and mire, and he has risen so much nearer to the cherubim, so much nearer, in fact, to the divine. This makes a man a man, for a man who serves is courageous, and too manly to be a slave. “Nay,” he says, “God bids me do such an act, and I will do it straight ahead; and though such and such a thing you bid me do, since God has not commanded me, your bidding is no law to me. My knee was made to bow before my God and not to you, and my mind to believe what God reveals and not what you choose to tell.” He is the free man whom the love of God makes free. What wonderful proofs we have had of this throughout history, for the men who have served God have been the most intrepid of mortals. Behold the burning fiery furnace, and the tyrant’s face almost as red as the furnace itself; he can hardly speak, he is choked with passion, because the three young men will not worship the brazen image: but look how cool they are as they say “The God whom we serve is able to deliver us, but if not, be it known unto thee that we will not bow down to the image which thou hast set up.” Here the true style of manhood. The love of God makes heroes.

Give a man a resolve to serve God and he is endowed with wondrous perseverance. Look at the apostles, and martyrs, and missionaries of the faith, how they have pressed on, despite a world in arms; when a nation has been apparently inaccessible they have found an entrance; when the first missionary has died another has been ready to follow in his footsteps. The first church, in her weakness, and poverty, and ignorance, struggled with philosophy and wealth, and all the power of heathen Rome, till at last the weak overcame the strong, and the foolish overthrew the wise. They that serve God cannot be conquered, from defeats they learn victory; if they have to wait they can wait, for they have linked themselves with the lifetime of the Eternal, and God is in no hurry, nor are they. If to secure a hearing for truth takes a generation, let it take a generation; if it takes fifty generations, let it take them, but the deed shall be done, and the truth shall be preached, and the idols shall be abolished, and God shall be adored. O Lord, thy service makes us akin to thee. Blessed are they that wear thy yoke! How strong they grow, how patient to endure, how firm to stand fast, how swift to run. They mount with wings as eagles when they learn to serve thee.

The man who is led by the Holy Ghost to serve God is incited thereby to a zeal, a fervour, and a self-sacrifice to which nothing else could bring him. If you are familiar with the lives of the pioneers of the cross, and especially with the deaths of the martyrs, you will have seen what grace can make of men. Are not their deeds sublime? Why, these men laughed at impossibilities, and scorned difficulties. They counted the rack and the torture mere every day things, and learned to smile in the face of death itself, because they served God. They never thought of running away, nor dreamed of retracting their testimony. Men said, “You are fools:” they were prepared to hear them say that, and reckoned it a fulfilment of prophecy. The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers took counsel together and said, “We will stamp you out.” They were prepared for that also, but they were not stamped out. They saw insuperable difficulties in their way to the eye of sense, but they did not care what the eye of sense saw, they used the eye of faith, and believing that they were engaged in the service of God they knew that God would be with them; they felt that all the forces of nature on earth, and all the angels in heaven, and all the attributes of deity, were on the side of the man who is doing God’s service, and therefore they went straight on. I have heard say that a mad man will often display the strength of ten men; and I know there is another side to that fact, for when a man becomes possessed with the divine Spirit, and is carried right away with it, there is no telling what force is in him, he will be ten men in one. Why, there are cases in which a nation of men seem to have been bound up into one single humanity, when the man has surrendered himself to the service of God. Look at Martin Luther! You cannot regard him as an ordinary man, you cannot help viewing him as a conglomeration of a whole tribe of men. He believes he has truth to proclaim, and in God’s name he preaches it, and if there are as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the tops of the houses it is nothing to Luther; and if the Elector of Saxony tells him that he will no longer shelter him, what will he do? Why he declares that he will shelter himself beneath the broad shield of the eternal God. When the Pope issues a Bull against him he burns the document. What cared he? He would have burned Rome itself for that matter. The man had courage enough for anything. Or take John Knox, all emaciated, weak, and ready to die, and yet so God-possessed, so inspired, that he is not preaching for a quarter-of-an-hour before you think he will dash the pulpit to shivers; he shakes the whole of Scotland, and is more dreaded by the Popish Queen than an army of ten thousand men, for God is in the man. Oh, get to feel “It is God’s will, and at all hazards I am going to do it, for God bids me.” Why, sir, you may as well try to stop the sun in its course as to stop a man who is mastered by that conviction. If ever this drivelling age of little men is to be lifted up into something like respectability, and, redeemed from the morass of falsehood in which it lies festering, we must breed a race of men who mean to serve God, come what may, and to make no reckoning but this: “Is this right? It shall be done. Is this wrong? Then it shall cease.” There must be no compromise, no talk about marring our usefulness and spoiling our position by being too exact. Usefulness and position! let them be marred and spoiled if truth comes in the way, for God is to be followed into the jungle, ay, and down the wild beasts’ throats, and into the jaws of hell, if he leads the way. God must be the guide, and if we follow God it shall be well with us. But if we do not, that which man thinks easiest is after all the hardest. He thinks it easiest to be as near right as you can, but to run no risks; he thinks it best to keep peace at home, to yield many points, and not be too puritanic and too precise, and so on. That is the easy way, and the way which God abhors, and the way which will end in a festering conscience at last, and in being shut out of heaven. But the way to serve God is to be washed in the blood of Jesus, and then to obey the Lord without reserve, and seek his honour only. This is the way to heaven, and when we reach those blissful seats we shall be all in tune with the perfected, for they serve the Lord day and night, and find it bliss to do so. This preparation and service on earth is absolutely essential to the enjoyment of heaven above. May God grant you then, by his Holy Spirit, to yield yourselves up to God, henceforth to serve him, and may we meet above. Amen.

Portion of Scripture Read before Sermon-Psalms 95, 96.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-187, 66 (Song I.), 195.

THE MASTER

A Sermon

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“She called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee.”-John 11:28.

I suppose by Martha’s whispering the word “the Master” in Mary’s ear that it was the common name by which the sisters spoke of our Lord to one another in his absence. Perhaps it was his usual name amongst all the disciples, for Jesus said, “Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.” It often happens that for persons whom we love we have some special title by which we speak of them familiarly when we are in the circle of those who join in our esteem of them. Instead of always using their official titles or their actual names, there is some one name which we have attached to them, which calls up happy associations, or reminds us of endearing traits in their character, and therefore it is very sweet in our mouths. So I suppose that most of the disciples called Jesus “The Master,” many of them coupling with it the word “Lord.” Mary, I should suppose, was peculiarly given to the use of the term, it was her, name for the Lord. I fancy that she called him “my Master,” only, of course, Martha could not say to her, “your Master is come,” for that would have been to cast suspicion on her own loyalty to Jesus, and perhaps she did not feel exactly in a frame of mind to say, “our Master,” remembering that he was master of so many more besides, and half hoping that he might be Master over Death himself. She therefore said, “The Master.” It was an emphatic title, “The Master is come.” Very remarkable is it that minds of a kindred spirit to Mary have always loved this title of “the Master,” and more especially that wondrous, sweet, mystic poet and dear lover of his Lord, George Herbert, who, whenever he heard the name of Jesus mentioned, would always say “my Master.” He has given us that quaint poem, called “The Odour,” which begins,

“How sweetly doth my Master sound, my Master.”

There must needs be something exceedingly precious about the title for a Mary and a Herbert thus to be enamoured of it above all others. Jesus has many names, all full of music; this must be choice indeed to be selected before them all as the title which his best beloved prefer to apply to him. There are many among us who are ourselves accustomed to speak of the Lord as the Master, and, though there are many other titles, such as “the Well-beloved,” “the Good Shepherd,” “the Friend,” “the Bridegroom,” “the Redeemer,” and “the Saviour,” yet we still cherish a very special affection for this one name, which gives forth to us “an oriental fragrancy,” with which “all day we do perfume our mind.”

You are aware that the word might just as well be translated the “Teacher,” the authoritative teacher, for that is the gist of its meaning. I am glad to pronounce it Master, because usage, and sweet association have enshrined the word, and also because we have still among us the custom of calling the Chief Teacher in a School or College the Master, but still, had our version given us “the Teacher is come” it would have been nearer the mark.

I shall speak a few words, first, upon the deep propriety of this title as applied to our Lord.

He is, indeed, the Master-the Teacher. What if I put the two together, and say the Master-Teacher? He has a peculiar fitness for this office. To be a master-teacher a man must have a masterly mind. Certainly all minds are not cast in the same mould, and are not possessed with the same vigour, depth, force, and quickness of action. Some mental organizations arc princely by their very formation; though they may belong to ploughboys, the imperial stamp is on them. These minds cannot be smothered by a peasant’s smock-frock, nor kept down by the load of poverty; master minds are recognised by an innate superiority, and force their way to the front. I say nothing of the moral qualities of Napoleon, but a mind so vast as his could not have been for ever hidden away among the soldiers in the ranks; he must become a captain and a conquerer. So, too, a Cromwell or a Washington must rise to be masters among men, because the calibre of their minds was masterly. Such men see a thing quickly; they hold it with a comprehensive grasp; and they have a way of infusing faith into others about it which, ere long, pushes them into a master’s position, with the common consent of all around them. You cannot have for a master-teacher a man with a little soul. He may insinuate himself into the chair of the teacher, but every one will see that he is out of place; and no one will delight to think of him as his master. Many painters there are, but there have been few Raphaels, or Michael Angelos, few who could found schools to perpetuate their names. Many songsters have there been, but few poets have founded schools of tuneful thought in which they have been the beloved choirmasters. Many philosophers have there been, but a Socrates or an Aristotle will not be found every day; for great teachers must have great minds, and these are rare among men. The teacher of all teachers, the master of all the teachers must needs be a grand, colossal spirit, head and shoulders above other men. Such a soul Mary saw in her Lord Jesus Christ, and such we see there also, and we therefore challenge for our Lord the name of “the Master.” There we have divinity itself, with its omniscience and infallibility, and at the same time a complete, full-orbed manhood, harmonious in all its qualities, a perfect equilibrium of excellence, in which there is no excess and no deficiency. You find in him a perfect mind, and that mind so human, as to be intensely manly, and sweetly womanly also. In Jesus there was all the tenderness and sympathy of woman, joined with the strength and courage of man. His love was feminine, but not effeminate; his heart was masculine, but not hard and stern. He was the complete man, unfallen manhood in its perfectness.

Our Lord was a man who impressed all who came near him, they either hated him intensely, or loved him fervently. Wherever he was, he was seen to be a prince among the sons of men. The devil recognised him, and tempted him beyond all others. He saw in him a foeman worthy of his steel, and took him into the wilderness to have a duel with him, hoping to defeat the race by vanquishing its manifest chief. Even scribes and Pharisees, who despised every one who made not broad the borders of his garment, could not despise this man; they could hate him, but their hate was the unconscious reverence which evil is forced to render to superlative goodness and greatness. Jesus could not be ignored and overlooked, he was a force in every place, a power wherever he might be. He is a master, yea, “the Master.” There is a grandeur about his whole human nature, so that he stands out above all other men, like some mighty Alpine peak, which overtops the minor hills, and casts its shadow all adown the vales.

But to make a master teacher a man must not only have a master mind, but he must have a master knowledge of that which he has to teach; and it is best if that be acquired by experience rather than by instruction. Such was the case with our Lord Jesus. He came to teach us the science of life, and in him was life; he experienced life in all its phases, and was tempted in all points like as we are, though without sin. The highest were not above him, the lowest he did not regard as beneath him, but he condescended to their infirmities and sorrows. There are no dreary glens of melancholy which his feet have not trodden, nor lofty peaks of joy which he has not scaled; wondrous was the joy as well as the sorrow of our Lord Jesus Christ. He leads his people through the wilderness, and, like Hobab of old, he knows where they should encamp in the wilderness, and understands all the way which they must traverse to reach the promised land. He was made “perfect through suffering.” He teaches us no truth as mere theory, but as matter of actual experiment on his own person. The remedy he gives to us he has tested. If there be bitterness for us, he has quaffed full bowls of it, and if there be sweetness in his cup he gives us of his joy; all things that have to do with this life and godliness, the whole science of salvation from the gates of hell up to the throne of God, he understands right well, by personal acquaintance therewith. There is not a single chapter of the book of revelation which he does not comprehend, nor a solitary page of the book of experience which he does not understand; and therefore he is fit to teach, having both a master mind and a master knowledge of that which he comes to inculcate.

Moreover, our great Master while here below had a masterly way of teaching, and this also is essential, for it is not every man of vast knowledge and great mind that can teach others. Aptness to teach is required. We know some whose utterances never seem to be in the tongue of ordinary men. If they have anything to say they say it in a jargon of their own, which they probably comprehend, and a few of their disciples, but it is Greek to commonplace people. Blessed is that teacher who teaches what he understands himself in a way which enables others to understand him. I like the style of old Cobbett when he said, “I not only speak so that men can understand me, but so that they cannot misunderstand me;” and such a teacher was Christ to his own disciples. When they sat at his feet he made truth so clear that wayfaring men, though fools, need not err therein. By homely parables and phrases which caught the ear, and won the heart, he brought down celestial truths to ordinary comprehensions, when the Spirit of God had once cleansed those comprehensions, and made them able to receive the truth. He taught, moreover, not only plainly, but lovingly. So gently did he open up things to his own disciples that it must have been a pleasure to be ignorant, in order to require to be taught, and a greater pleasure still to learn-to learn in such a way. The way in which he taught was as sweet as the truth he taught. Everybody that came into Christ’s school felt at home, felt pleased with their Master, and confident that if they could learn anywhere they must learn at his feet.

The Master gave, in connection with his teaching, a measure of the Holy Spirit-not the full measure, for that was reserved until he had ascended up on high, and the Spirit should baptise the church; but he gave to each of his people a measure of the Spirit of God, by which truths were not taught to their ears only but to their hearts also. Ah, my brethren, we are not such teachers as Christ; for, when we have done our best, we can only reach the ear. We cannot give the Holy Spirit, but he can; and when the Spirit this day comes from Christ, and takes of his things and reveals them unto us, then we see yet more of our Lord’s masterly modes of teaching, and learn what a Master Jesus is, who writes his lessons, not on the black board, but on the fleshy tablets of the heart; who gives us school-books, nay, is himself the book; who sets us lessons, yea, is himself the lesson; who performs before us that which he would have us do, so that when we know him we know what he has to teach, and when we imitate him we have followed the precepts which he gives. Our Lord’s way of embodying his instruction in himself is a right royal one, and none can rival him in it. Do not children learn infinitely more by example than ever they do by precept? And this is how our Master teaches us. “Never man spake like this man” is a grand Christian proverb; but it might be eclipsed by another: “Never man acted like this man”; for this man’s deeds and words tally with each other, the deeds embody and enforce the words, give them life, and help us to understand them. He is a prophet like unto Moses, because he is mighty both in word and in deed, and so he is of prophets and teachers the Master.

Here is a master mind, a master experience, and a master mode of teaching: well is he called “the Master.”

Withal, dear friends, there was, over and above this-if I have not comprehended it in what I have already said-a master influence which Jesus, as a teacher, had over those who came within his range. They did not merely see, but feel; they did not only know, but love; they did not merely prize the lesson, but they worshipped the teacher. What a master was this Christ, whose very self became the power by which sin was checked, and ultimately cast out, and by which virtue was implanted, and the new life commenced, nourished, and brought to perfection. To have one to teach you who is very dear to you is to make lessons easy. No child learns better than from a mother qualified to teach, who knows how to make her lessons sweet, by crystallising them in the sugar of her own affection. Then it is pleasure, as well as duty, to learn. But no mother ever won her child’s heart (and there have been tender and affectionate mothers, too) so thoroughly as Jesus won the heart of Mary; or, I may say, as Jesus has won your heart and mine, if you feel as my heart feels to my Lord. From him we want no reasonings to prove what he says, he is himself instead of reason and of argument. His love is the logic which proves everything to us. With him we hold no debate, what he has done for us has answered every question we could raise. If he tells us what we do not understand, we believe it. We ask if we may understand it, and if he tells us “No,” we stay where we are, and believe the mystery. We love him so that we are as glad not to know as to know, if such should be his will; we believe his silence to be as eloquent as his speech, and that which he conceals to be as kindly intended as that which he reveals. Because we love him he exercises such an influence over us that, straightway, we prize his teaching and receive it; and the more we know him, and the more his inexpressibly delightful influence dominates our nature, the more completely we yield up imagination, thought, reason, everything, to him. Men may call us fools for it, but we have learned at Jesus’ feet that “the world by wisdom knew not God,” and that except we be converted, and become as little children, we shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven, and therefore we are not confounded when the world thinks us childish and credulous. The world is growing more manly and more foolish, and we are growing more childlike and more wise. We reckon that to grow downward into our Lord Jesus is the surest and truest growth; and when we shall have grown clean down to nothing, and lower still, till we are less than nothing, then we shall be full grown in the school of Jesus, and shall take a high degree in true learning, knowing the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.

We may well call him Master who has a masterly mind, a masterly experience, and a masterly way of teaching; and, moreover, wields a masterly influence over his pupils, so that they are for ever bound heart and soul to him, and count him to be himself his own highest lesson, as well as the chief of all instructors.

Having proved that our beloved Lord is fairly entitled to the name, let me add that he is by office the sole and alone Master of the church.

There is in the Christian church no authority for a doctrine but Christ’s word. The inspired book which he has left us, charging us never to diminish a letter or add a syllable, that is our code imperial, our authorised creed, our settled standard of belief. I hear a great deal said of sundry “Bodies of divinity,” but my own impression is that there never was but one body of divinity, and there never will be but one, and that is Jesus Christ in whom “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” To the true church her body of divinity is Christ. Some churches refer to other standards, but we know no standard of theology but our Master. “I, if I be lifted up,” saith he, “will draw all men unto me;” we feel no drawings towards any other master. He is the standard,-“Unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” We are not of those who will go no further than Martin Luther. Blessed be God for Martin Luther! God forbid that we should say a word in depreciation of him. But were we baptised unto Martin Luther? I trow not. Some can never budge an inch beyond John Calvin, whom I reverence first of all merely mortal men; but still John Calvin is not our master, but only a more advanced pupil in the school of Christ. He teaches, and, as far as he teaches as Christ taught, he is authoritative, but where Calvin goes apart from Jesus he is no more to be followed than Voltaire himself. There be brethren whose one reference for everything is to the utterances of John Wesley. “What would Mr. Wesley have said?” is a weighty question with them. We think it a small matter what he would have said, or what he did say for the guidance of Christians, now so many years after his departure; far better is it to enquire what Jesus says in his word. One of the grandest of men that ever lived was Wesley, but he is no master of ours. We were not baptised in the name of John Wesley, or John Calvin, or Martin Luther. “One is our Master, even Christ.” And now the parliament of our country is about to set apart a learned judge to decide what is right in a so-called church of Christ, and he is to say, “This garment you may wear, and that you shall not; hitherto your ritual shall go but no further.” In his person the House of Commons is to be recognised as the creator and lord and master of the Church of England, to whom he will say, “Do this,” and she will do it, or “Refrain,” and she will stay her hand. She must crouch and bend, and take her meat like any dog from the hand that patronises her, and her collar, made of what brass or leather Cæsar chooseth to ordain, shall bear this motto, “His servants ye are whom ye obey.” Why, the poorest minister in the most despised of our churches, whose poverty is thought to make him contemptible, but whose poverty is his glory if he bears it for Christ’s sake, would scorn to have any spiritual act of his church submitted to the judgment of the state, and would sooner die than be dictated to in the matter of divine worship. What has the church to do with the state? Our Master and Lord has set up a kingdom which owns no other King but himself; and we cannot bow, and will not bow, before decrees of Parliament and lords and kings in spiritual things. Christ’s church has but one head, and that is Christ, and the doctrines which the church has to teach cannot be tested by a Court of Arches, or a bench of bishops, or a synod of ministers, or a presbytery, or a conference. The Lord Jesus Christ has taught us this and that: if his teaching be contradicted, the contradiction is treason against his crown. Though the whole church were assembled, and that church the true one, if it should contradict the teaching of Christ, its decrees ought to be no more to a Christian than the whistling of the wind upon the mountain wilds, for Christ is Master, and none but Christ. Though an apostle or an angel from heaven preach any other doctrine than that of our Lord, let him be accursed I would God that all Christians stood up for this. Then would

“Sects and names and parties fall,

And Jesus Christ be all in all.”

He is the sole teacher and the sole legislator. A church has a right to execute Christ’s laws, but she has no right to make a law. The ministers of Christ are bound to carry out the rules of Christ, and when they so do, what is bound on earth is bound in heaven; but if they have acted upon any rules but those of this book their laws are only worthy of contempt; be they what they may, they bind no Christian heart. The yoke Christ puts on us it shall be our joy to wear, but the yoke which prelates would thrust upon us it shall be our glory to trample on. “If the Son make you free, you shall be free indeed.” “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”

“The Master.” That is the name Christ should receive throughout the whole church, and he should be regarded always, and on all occasions, and in reference to all spiritual subjects, as the last Court of Appeal, whose inspired word is

“The judge that ends the strife

Where wit and reason fail.”

Thus much upon the propriety of the title.

But now, secondly, let us consider the peculiar recognition which Mary gave to Christ as the Master.

How did she give that recognition? She became his pupil: she sat right reverently at his feet. Beloved, if he be our Master, let us do the same. Let us take every word of Jesus, weigh it, read it, mark it, learn it, feed on it and inwardly digest it. I am afraid we do not read our Bibles as we should, or attach such importance as we ought to every shade of expression which our Master uses. I should like to see a picture of Mary sitting at the Master’s feet. Great artists have painted the Virgin Mary so often that they might take a change, and sketch this Mary looking up with a deep, fixed gaze, drinking all in, and treasuring all up; sometimes startled by a new thought and a fresh doctrine, and then enquiringly waiting till her face beams with unspeakable delight as new light floods her heart. Her attentive discipleship proved how truly Jesus was her Master.

Then, mark, she was not only his disciple, but she was a disciple of nobody else. I do not know whether Gamaliel was in fashion then, but she did not sit at his feet. I dare say there was some Rabbi Ben Simon, or other famous doctor of the period, but Mary never spent an hour with him, for every moment she could set apart was joyously spent at the feet of a far dearer Rabbi, I wonder whether she was a little deaf, and so sat close to the teacher for fear of losing a word! Perhaps she feared she might be slow of heart, and so she got as near the preacher as others do who have a little deafness in their ears; any now her favourite place was close at his feet. That shows us, since we are always dull of hearing in our souls, that it is good to get very close to Jesus when we are hearing him, and commune while we listen. She did not change from him to some one else for variety’s sake. No, the Master, her Master, her only Master, was the Nazarene, whom others despised, but whom she called her Lord.

She was a willing scholar, for “Mary hath chosen the good part,” said Jesus. Nobody sent her to sit at Jesu’s feet. Jesus drew her, and she could not help coming, but she loved to be there. She was a willing and delighted listener. Never was she so happy as when she had her choice, that choice being always to learn of him. Children at school always learn well if they want to learn. If they are driven to school they learn but little comparatively, but when they want to go, and when they love the teacher, it is quick learning with them; and happy is the teacher who has a class that has chosen him to teach them. Mary could well call him “the Master,” for she rendered him her sole attention, her loving and delighted attention. And, mark you, in choosing Christ for Master, she perseveringly stuck to him. Her choice was not taken away from her, and she did not give it up. Martha looked very cross one day. How was she to see to the roast meat and the boiled at once? How could she be expected to prepare the table, and to look to the fire in the kitchen too? Why could not Mary come? And she scowled, I do not doubt. But it did not signify. Mary sat there still. Perhaps she did not even notice Martha’s face; I think she did not, for the saints do not notice other countenances when Christ’s beauty is to be seen: there is something so absorbing about him; he takes you all into himself, and bears you right away, drawing not only all men, but all of men to himself, when he does draw; and so she sat there still, and listened on. Those children will learn who stick to their books, who come not sometimes to study, but are always learning. So Mary recognised the Lord Jesus Christ’s master-teachership by giving to him that persevering attention which such a Master-teacher had a right to claim.

She went humbly to him; for while she sat at his feet for nearness, she sat there, too, out of deep humiliation of spirit. She felt it her highest honour to be sitting in the lowest place, for lowly was her mind. They shall learn most of Christ who think least of themselves. When a place at his feet seems to be too good for us, or at any rate we are more than content with it, then will his speech distil as the rain and drop as the dew, and we shall be as the tender herbs that drink in sweet refreshment, and our souls shall grow.

Blessed wert thou, O Mary! And blessed is each one of you, if you can call Christ your Master and prove it as she did. You shall have the good part which shall not be taken away from you.

Now I come to my third point, which is this-the special sweetness of the name to us. I have shown why it was peculiarly recognised by Mary, and now I would show that it has a peculiar sweetness for us also. “The Master or “My Master,” or “My Teacher.”

I love that name in my own soul, because it is as a teacher that Jesus Christ is my Saviour. The best illustration I can give you is that of one of those poor little boys in the street, an “Arab,” without father and mother, or with parents worse than none; the poor child is covered with filth and rags, he is well known to the policemen, and has seen the inside of many a gaol; but a teacher of a ragged school has laid hold of him, and instructs him, and he is now washed and clothed, and happy. Now, that poor boy does not know the sweetness of “my father” or “my mother”; he does not recognise anything in those titles. Perhaps he never knew them, or only knew such a form of them as to disgust him. But with what a zest does he say, “My teacher!” These little children say, “My teacher” with quite as much affection as others speak of their mother. Where there has been a great moral change wrought by the influence of a teacher, the name “my teacher” has great sweetness in it. Now hear ye the parable of the ragged boy and his teacher! I was that ragged child. Truly, I did not think myself ragged, for I was foolish enough to think my rags were fine garments, and that my filth was my beauty. I knew not what I was. My teacher saw me, he knew how foul I was and how ragged I was, and he taught me to see myself, and also to believe that he could wash me whiter than the snow. Yea, he went further and actually washed me till I was clean before the Lord. My teacher showed me a wardrobe of snow-white linen garments, and clothed me in them. My teacher has taught me a thousand things, and wrought innumerable good works upon me; I owe my salvation wholly to my teacher, my master, my Lord. Cannot you say the same? I know you can if you are indeed disciples of Jesus. “My teacher” means to you “my Saviour,” for he saved you by teaching you your disease and your remedy, teaching you how wrong you were, and making you right by his teaching. The word master or teacher has to us a delightful meaning, for it is by his teaching that we are saved.

Let me tell you how as a preacher I love that name “my Master.” I like to feel that what I said to those people on Sunday was not mine. I preached my Master, and I preached what my Master told me. Some find fault with the doctrine; I do not mind that, because it was none of mine, it was my Master’s. If I were a servant, and went to the front door with a message, and the gentleman to whom I took it did not like the message, I should say, “Do not be vexed with me, sir. I have told you my master’s message to the best of my ability, and I am not responsible for it. It is my master’s word, not mine.” When there are no souls converted it is dreary work, and one’s heart is heavy, but it is sweet to go and tell your Master; and when souls are converted, and your heart is glad, it is a happy and a healthy thing to give all the glory to your Master. It must be an awkward thing to be an ambassador from the English court in some far-off land where there is no telegraph, and where the ambassador has to act on his own responsibility. He must feel it a serious burden. But, blessed be God, between every true minister and his Master there is a telegraphic communication; he need never do anything on his own account. He may imitate the disciples of John, who, when they had taken up the Baptist’s mangled body, went and told Jesus. That is the thing to do. There are difficulties in all churches, troubles in all families, and cares in all businesses, but it is good to have a Master to whom you can go as a servant, feeling, “He has the responsibility of the whole concern-not I; I have only to do what he bids me.” If we once step beyond our Lord’s commands the responsibility rests On us, and our trouble begins, but if we follow our Lord we cannot go astray.

And is not this a sweet name to quote when you are troubled, dear friends? Perhaps some of you are in trouble now. How it removes fear when you find out that he who sent the trouble is the Teacher who teaches you by the trouble-the Master who has a right to use what form of teaching he likes. In our schools much is learned from the black board, and in Christ’s school much is learned from affliction. You have heard the story often, but I venture to repeat it again, of the gardener who had preserved with great care a very choice rose; and one morning when he went into the garden it was gone, and he scolded his fellow servants, and felt very grieved, till some one said, “I saw the master coming through the garden this morning, and I believe he took the rose.” “Oh, then,” said he, “if the master took it, I am content.” Have you lost a dear child, or a wife, or a friend? It was he that took your flower. It belonged to him. Would you wish to keep what Jesus wants? We are asked to pray sometimes for the lives of good people, and I think we may, but I have not always exercised faith while pleading, because it seemed to me that Christ pulled one way and I pulled the other. I said, “Father, let them be here,” and Jesus said, “Father, I will that they be with me where I am;” and one could not pull very hard then. Only feel that Christ is drawing the other way, and you give up directly. You say, “Let the Master have it. The servant cannot oppose the Master.” It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth him good. I was dumb with silence; I opened not my mouth because thou didst it. Our Master learned that lesson himself which he teaches to us. That is a very striking expression, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes; even so Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.” It pleased God to pass by the wise and prudent, and therefore it pleased Christ that it should be so. It is well to have our hearts like that poor shepherd to whom a gentleman said, “I wish you a good day.” Said he, “I never knew a bad day.” “How is that, my friend?” “The days are such as God chooses to make them, and therefore they are all good.” “Well,” said the other, “but some days please you more than others?” “No,” said he, “what pleases God pleases me.” “Well, but have you not a choice?” said the other. “Yes, I have a choice, and that is, I choose that God should choose for me.” “But have you not a choice whether you would live or die?” “No,” said he, “for if I am here Christ will be with me, and if I am in heaven I shall be with him.” “But suppose you had to choose?” “I would ask God to choose for me,” said he. Oh, sweet simplicity which leaves everything with God; this is calling Jesus, Master, to perfection:

“Pleased with all the Lord provides,

Weaned from all the world besides.”

Once again, dear friends, is it not sweet to us to call Jesus Master, because in so doing we take a position easy to reach, and yet most delightful. To call him bridegroom-what an honour is it to be so near akin to the Son of God! Friend is a familiar and honourable title; to call him Master, however, is often easier, and it is quite as sweet, for his service, if we take no higher place, is pure delight to us. If our hearts are right, to do the Lord’s bidding is as much as we can ask for. Though we are sons now and not slaves, and therefore our service is of a different character from what it ever was before, yet service is delight. What will heaven be but perpetual service? Here we labour to enter into rest; there they enter into rest while they labour. Their rest is the perfect obedience of their fully sanctified spirits. Are you not panting for it? Will it not be one of your greatest joys in heaven to feel that you are his servants? The glorified ones are called his servants in heaven. “His servants shall serve him, and they shall see his face, and his name shall be in their foreheads.” Rid us of sin, and we should be in heaven now; earth would be heaven to us.

I want you, dear brethren in Christ, to go away rolling this sweet word under your tongue-“My Master,” “My Master.” You will never hear better music than that-“My Master,” “My Master.” Go and live as servants should live. Mind you make him truly your Master, for he says, “If I be a Master where is my honour?” Speak well of him, for servants should speak well of a good Master, and no servant ever had so dear a Master as he is.

But there are some of you who cannot say this. I wish you could. Jesus is not your Master. Who is, then? You have a master somewhere, for “his servants you are whom ye obey.” Now, if you obey the lusts of the flesh, your master is your flesh, and the wages will be corruption; for that is what flesh comes to, corruption, and nothing better. Or your master is the devil, and his wages must be death. Run away from such a master. Mostly when servants leave their masters they are bound to give notice, but here is a case in which no notice should ever be given. When the prodigal son ran away from feeding the swine he never stopped to give notice that he was going to leave the pigs, but started off directly, and I recommend every sinner to run by the grace of God straight away from his sins. Stopping to give notice is the ruin of many. They mean to be sober, but they must treat their good resolution to another glass or two; they intend to think about divine things, but they must go to the theatre once more; they would fain serve Christ, but to-morrow, not to-night. If I had such a master as you have-you who live in sin-I would up and away at once, by the grace of God, and say, “I will have Christ for my Lord.” Look at your black master. Look at his cunning eyes! Can you not see that he is a flatterer? He means your ruin. He will destroy you as he has destroyed myriads already. That horrid leer of sin, that painted face, consider them and abhor them. Serve not a master who, though he gives you fair promises, labours for your destruction? Up and away, ye slaves of sin! Eternal Spirit, come and break their chains! Sweet star of liberty, guide them to the free country, and let them find in Jesus Christ their liberty! My Master rejoices to receive runaways. His door is open to vagrants and vagabonds, to the scum of the earth, and the off-scouring of all things, to men that are dissatisfied with themselves, to wretches who have no joy of their lives, and are ready to lie down and die. “This man receiveth sinners.” He is like David, who went into Adullam, and every man that was in debt and discontented came to him, and he became a captain over them. As Romulus and Remus gathered the first population of new Rome by harbouring escaped slaves and robbers, whom they trained into citizens and made to be brave soldiers, so my Master has laid the foundation of the new Jerusalem, and he looks for his citizens-ay, the noblest of them, over yonder there, where sin and Satan hold them captive; and he bids us sound out the silver trumpet, and tell the slaves of sin that if they flee to him he will never give them up to their old master, but he will emancipate them, make them citizens of his great city, sharers of his bounties, partakers in his triumphs; and they shall be his in the day when he makes up his jewels. I recollect preaching in this strain once, and an old sea captain told me after the sermon that he had served under the black flag for fifty years, and by the grace of God he would tear the old rag down, and run up the blood red cross at the mast-head. I recommended him not merely to change his flag, but to see that the vessel was repaired, but he wisely replied that repairing would be of no use to such an old water-logged hulk, and he had better scuttle the old ship, and have a new one. I reckon that is the best thing to do, to be dead indeed unto sin, and made alive in Christ Jesus; for you may do what you will with the old wreck of fallen nature, you will never keep it afloat. The old man must be crucified with Christ, it must be dead, and buried, and sunk fifty thousand fathoms deep, never to be heard of again. In the new vessel which Jesus launches in the day of our regeneration, with the blessed flag of atoning blood above us, we will sail to heaven convoyed by irresistible grace, giving God the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-John 11.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-797, 769, 768.