It is very natural that there should be many surprising things in the gospel, for it is beyond measure remarkable that there should be a gospel at all. As soon as I begin thinking of it I exclaim with Bunyan, “O world of wonders, I can say no less”; and I invite you all to join with the multitude in saying with the text, “We never saw it on this fashion.” When man had sinned God might instantly have destroyed our rebel race, or he might have permitted it to exist as the fallen angels do, in a state of enmity to all goodness, and in consequent misery. But he who passed the angels by took up the seed of Abraham and looked upon man-that insignificant item in the ranks of creatureship-and determined that man should experience salvation, and show forth his divine grace. It was a wonderful thing, to begin with, that there should be a gospel for men; and when we remember that the gospel involved the gift of the only-begotten Son of God, when we remember that it was necessary that God, the invisible Spirit, should be veiled in human flesh, that the Son of God should become the son of Mary, should be subject to pain and weakness, poverty and shame-when we remember all this, we may expect to find great wonders clustering round such a stupendous fact.

Beholding God in human flesh, miracles no longer strike us as being at all marvellous, for the incarnation of God outmiracles miracle. But we must further remember that in order to bring the gospel to us it was needful that God should in our nature offer atonement for human sin. Think of it! The holy God making atonement for sin! When the angels first heard of it they must have been lost in astonishment, for they “never saw it on this fashion.” Shall the offended die for the offender? Shall the judge bear the chastisement of the criminal? Shall God take upon himself the transgression of his creature? Yet so it has been, and Jesus Christ has borne, that we might never bear, the consequences of sin-nay, sin itself. “For the transgression of my people was he stricken.” Jesus was made a curse for us, as it is written, “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” Now, a commonplace result could not be imagined as growing out of a gospel sent to rebellious men, and a gospel involving the incarnation and the death of the Son of God. Everything in God’s creation is made to scale. There is a balance between the dewdrop on the rose and the most majestic of yonder orbs that adorn the brow of night. Law regulates everything, from a single drop of water to the ocean itself. Everything is proportionate, and therefore we are persuaded that in an economy in which we start with an incarnate God and an infinite atonement there must be something very striking; and we ought to be prepared frequently to exclaim, “We never saw it on this fashion.” Commonplaces are foreign to the gospel; we have entered the land of wonders, when we behold the love of God in Christ Jesus. Romance is out-romanced in the gospel. Whatever marvels men are able to imagine, the facts of God’s amazing grace are more extraordinary than anything imagination has ever conceived.

I desire at this time to say two or three things to those who are not familiar with the gospel. Some have dropped in here to whom the gospel, as we believe it, is quite a new thing. I want to say to them, first, do not disbelieve it because it strikes you as being something very strange. In the second place, remember that in the gospel there must be amazing and surprising things; and we shall try to set them out before you, hoping that so far from your disbelieving them, faith may be wrought in your soul as you hear them. And, thirdly, if any of these strange things should have happened to you, and you should have to say, “We never saw it on this fashion,” then glorify God and give new honours to his name.

First, then, do not disbelieve the gospel because it surprises you. Remember, in the first place, that nothing stands so much in the way of real knowledge as prejudice. Our race might have known a great deal more of scientific fact if it had not been so largely occupied and captivated with scientific supposition. Take up books upon most sciences, and you will find that the main part of the material is an answer to divers theories that have been set up in ages gone by, or originated in modern times. Theories are the nuisances of science; the rubbish which must be swept away that the precious facts may be laid bare. If you go to the study of a subject, saying to yourself, “This is how the matter must shape itself,” having beforehand made up your mind what the facts ought to be, you will have put in your own way a difficulty more severe than the subject itself could place there. Prejudice is the stumbling-block of advance. To believe that we know before we do know is to prevent our really making discoveries and coming to right knowledge. When an observer first discovered that there were spots on the sun he reported it, but he was called before his father confessor and upbraided for having reported anything of the kind. The Jesuit father said that he had read Aristotle through several times, and he had found no mention in Aristotle of any spots in the sun, and therefore there could be no such things; and when the offender replied that he had seen these spots through glasses, the father told him that he must not believe his eyes: he must believe him, because it was certain, to begin with, that if Aristotle had not indicated the spots, spots there could not be, and he must not believe it. Now, there are some who come to hear the gospel in that spirit. They have a notion of what the gospel ought to be-a pretty firm and strong cast-iron creed of their own manufacturing, or an hereditary one which they have received with the old family chest of drawers; and they are therefore unprepared candidly to hear and learn, neither do they turn to Scripture to discover the mind of the Spirit of God, but to find some colour for their prejudices. It is easy to show a man a thing if he will open his eyes, but if he shuts his eyes, and resolves not to see, the task is difficult. You may light a candle pretty readily, but you cannot do so if it has an extinguisher over it; and there are persons who have extinguished their souls and covered them over with prejudices. They act as judges of what the gospel ought to be; and so, if there is anything said that does not suit their preconceived notions, straightway they are offended. This is very absurd, and in a matter in which our souls are concerned it is something worse than ridiculous: it is dangerous to the highest degree. We ought to come to the preaching of the word praying: “Lord, teach thou me: blessed Spirit guide me into all truth. Let me see a doctrine to be in thy word and I will accept it, though it should shock all my prejudices. Though it should seem to me to be a totally new thing, yet, if clearly it be the word of God, I am willing to receive it and to rejoice in it.” God give us such a spirit, so that when we have to say in the words of the text, “We never saw it on this fashion,” yet still our prejudices may not prevent our accepting the truth.

Let us remember, dear friends, that many things which we know to to be true would not have been believed by our fathers if they had been revealed to them. I feel morally certain that there were many generations of Englishmen who, if they could have been informed that men would travel at forty or fifty miles an hour over the surface of the earth, drawn without horses by a steam engine, would have shaken their heads, and laughed such a prediction to scorn. Even a little time ago, if some one had prophesied that we should be able to speak across the Atlantic in a single instant, and speedily obtain a reply, by a cable that should be laid along the ocean’s bottom, we ourselves could not have conceived it to be possible. How could it be? And yet these things are common every-day facts with us now. Do let us, therefore, expect that when we come to deal with what is more wonderful than creation, and far more wonderful than any of the inventions of man, we should meet with things which will be hard to be believed. Let us willingly give up our heart and soul to receive the impress of the truth, and constantly exercise a simple faith in what God reveals.

It is well known that there are many things which are undoubted facts which certain classes of men find it hard to believe. Some time ago a missionary had told his black congregation that in the winter time the water in England became so hard that a man could walk upon it. Now, they believed a good deal that he had said, but they did not believe that, and they whispered to one another that the missionary was a great liar. One of them was brought over to England. He came over with the full conviction that it was a most ridiculous thing to suppose that any man could ever walk across a river. At last the frost came, the river was frozen over, and the missionary took his black friend down to it. The good man stood on the ice himself, but he could not persuade his convert to venture. “No,” he said, “he could not believe it.” “But you can see it, man!” said the other; “come along with you! Come here!” “No,” he said, “but I never saw it so. I have lived fifty years in my own country, and I never saw a man walk on a river before.” “But here I am doing it,” said the missionary, “come along with you!” and he seized his hand, and pulled so vigorously that at last the African tried the frozen water, and found that it did support his weight. Thus a statement proved to be none the less true because it was contrary to experience: the same rule holds good in the case of the gospel. Yet you must expect to find in it certain things which you could not have believed to be true; but if some of us have proved them to be facts, and are living in the daily enjoyment of them, do not stubbornly refuse to try them yourself. If we get you by the hand affectionately, and say, “Come on to this river of life; it will bear you; you can walk in safety here; we are doing so, and have done so for years”, do not act towards us as if we were deceivers, and do not put us off with the absurd argument that the gospel cannot be true because you have not hitherto tried it, and therefore have no experience of its power. Why, my dear friend, it may be true for all that, just as the ice was a matter of fact, though the friend from Africa had never seen it. He did find the ice a reality when he ventured upon it, and you will find Jesus Christ and the precious things of the gospel to be sure and firm and true, as we have found them to be, if you will only venture your soul upon them.

I merely mention these things to prepare your mind for the full conviction that the fact that a gospel statement seems new and astonishing ought not to create unbelief in the mind. My beloved friend, it may be that you exclaim, “I cannot hope that my sin can be forgiven. I cannot imagine that my heart can be changed. I cannot suppose it possible that, by one simple act of faith, I could be a saved man.” No; but do you not see that every man measures things according to his own standard? We measure other people’s corn, but we always do it with our own bushel. We even try to measure God by our own standard, and there is a text which very sweetly rebukes us for it,” My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” What I consider it right to expect from God may, very naturally, be a very different thing from what God may be prepared to give me. Perhaps I judge of his behaviour towards me by what I deserve, and if I do so, what can I look for? Or, perhaps, I judge of his mercy by my own, and considering whether I could forgive to seventy times seven-whether, if often provoked, I could still overlook the transgression; I find in my own heart no very great powers of forgiveness; and then I conclude that God is as hard, and as unwilling to forgive, as I am. But we must not so judge. Oh, sinners, you must not do so! If you are longing for a great salvation you must not sit down and begin to calculate the Godhead by inches, and measure out the merit of Christ by ells, and calculate whether he can do this, or can do that. A God-what is there that he cannot do? Did Jesus make an atonement boundless as his nature? Then what sin is there which that atonement cannot wash away? Judge not the Lord according to human judgment. Know thou, O man, that he is no streamlet, or lakelet, which thou canst measure, and whose capacity thou canst calculate: he is a sea without a bottom and without a shore, and all thy thoughts are drowned when thou dost attempt to measure him. Lift up your thoughts as high as ever you will, and think great things of God, and expect great things from God; and when you shall have enlarged your expectation, and your faith shall have grown to its very utmost, God is able to do exceeding abundantly above what you ask, or even think. “Canst thou by searching find out God?” Dost thou expect that thou canst exceed him, and desire more and hope for more than he is able to give? Oh, it cannot be. Consider this-that you are very liable to make a mistake as to what the gospel is, because your mode of estimating it must naturally be a false one, since you judge only from what you know, and what you are capable of, while God is infinitely above all that you know or can conceive.

Further, let me remind you, dear friend, you who are a stranger to the gospel, that, when we come to speak of it directly, you must not disbelieve it on account of its strangeness, for it is clear that many have made a mistake as to what the gospel is. The Jews who lived in our Saviour’s day heard the best preacher that ever preached, but they did not understand him. It was not from want of a lucid style, for “never man spake like this man”; but yet they mistook all that he said. They thought that they knew his meaning, but they did not. And even his own disciples and the apostles, until they were illuminated by the Spirit of God, mistook the meaning of their Master, and knew but little, after all his teaching. Should you feel at all astonished if you should have been mistaken, dear friend-you who have never found joy and peace in believing? Is it not possible that you may have been mistaken after all? The Jews heard the Saviour himself and yet did not understand the truth. Some of them were men of genius, and well instructed. There was one especially who was a ruler-a doctor among the Jews-who understood not these things; and when the Saviour said to him, “Ye must be born again,” he took it literally: he could not understand the mystic change which the Saviour meant to describe. Now, if Nicodemus did not know, and a great many like Nicodemus, may it not happen to be the case that you also have not found out the secret, and are at this moment without the possession of it? Possibly you may be a person of very considerable education, and of remarkable gifts and parts. My dear friend, if any people are liable to miss the true sense of the gospel it is such as you are. It is strange, you will say, that I should make such a remark, but the observation is founded upon fact. “Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty are chosen.” Not many of the learned of this world ever learn of Christ. He teaches babes, but leaves wise men to boast in their own folly. The magi of the east went round about to find the Saviour, even with a star to guide them they missed their way; but the humble shepherds from the plains of Bethlehem, without a star, went immediately to the place where Jesus was. Ah, it was a good and true remark of Augustine, when he said, “While the learned are fumbling to find the latch, the simple and poor have entered into the kingdom of heaven.” Simplicity of heart is more helpful to the understanding of the gospel than culture of mind. To be ready to be taught is a better faculty than to be able to teach, as far as the reception of the gospel is concerned. That degree in divinity may stand in your way for understanding divinity; and the very position that you have taken in the classical tripos may render it the more difficult for you to comprehend that which he the wayfaring man, though he be a fool, knows by heart. Since it is certainly so, I am not offering you any insult when I say perhaps, dear friend, you may hitherto have laboured under a mistake; and, therefore, if at any time the gospel should be spoken to you, it would well become you to give it a fair hearing, and not to reject it because it appears to be new.

One other remark, and I will go on to the next point, and it is this. The person I am now addressing, and I believe that there are such persons here, if he be the man I mean, must confess that the religion he now possesses has not done much for him. You think you know the gospel, but, say,-could you die upon what you know? Could you die now-now-happily and contentedly with the hope you have? If you could, I thank God and congratulate you. Has your hope which you possess comforted your heart? Do you feel and know assuredly that your sins are forgiven you? Do you lock upon God as your Father? Are you in the habit of speaking with him as a child speaks with his father, confiding in him, and telling all your cares and troubles to him? If it be so, my dear friend, I rejoice with you; but unless yours be the religion of Jesus Christ, I know you have not found such peace. There are many shapes of what is called “religion”; many, many shapes; but they amount to this: they put a man in a position in which he feels that he is about as good as other people, and as well to do in spiritual things as the average of others; and if he does his best, and acts up to his knowledge, and light, he will get better, no doubt; and, perhaps, when he comes to die, possibly by the assistance of a clergyman or a priest-perhaps by some remarkable experience that he may undergo in the use of sacraments-he may get into heaven. It is the general religion of mankind, that they are on a road which they have to follow, and by industriously and carefully pursuing it they will possibly save themselves by the gracious help of the Lord Jesus Christ; they generally tack that on, of course, to make their self-righteousness look a little more respectable. Now, I say deliberately, as in the sight of God, that such religion is not worth one solitary halfpenny. The religion of the Lord Jesus Christ gives a man a complete, full, free, irreversible pardon of all his sins at once, together with the changing of his nature, the implantation of a new life, and the putting of him into the family of God; and it gives to him these things so that he knows that he has them, and consciously enjoys them, and lives in the power and spirit of them, humbly serving the Lord who has done such great things for him. This is the religion of Christ, and this is what we are now going to speak of more fully, while we mention some few things which lead men to say, “We never saw it on this fashion.”

Our second point was to be that there are very singular and surprising things in the gospel. Let us mention some of them.

One is this-that the gospel should come to people whom it regards as incapable. In the narrative before us the wonder was that the Lord Jesus dealt with a crippled and paralysed person so far gone that he could not crawl into Christ’s presence, but had to be borne of four. See him! He is incapable and incurable. All that he can do is to lie on that bed on which the kindness of friends has placed him, and there he must remain: he can do nothing. Now, the gospel regards every man to whom it comes as unable to do anything good. It addresses you, not merely as paralysed, but it goes farther, and describes you as dead. The gospel speaks to the dead. I have often heard it said that the duty of the Christian minister is to arouse the activities of sinners. I believe the very reverse: he should rather labour to smite their self-trusting activities dead, and to make them know that all that they can do of themselves is worse than nothing. They can do nothing, for how can the dead move in their graves? How can the dead in sin accomplish their own quickening? The power which can save does not lie in the sinner: it lies in his God. And if any of you be unconverted, I do not come to tell you something which you are able to do, by the doing of which you can save yourselves, but I warn you that you are lost, ruined, and undone; you have power to stray like lost sheep, but if ever you come back your shepherd must bring you back, you will never come back of yourselves. You had power to destroy yourselves, and you have exercised that power; but now your help does not lie in you, it lies in your God. It is a strange thing that the gospel should represent a man to be in such a desperate condition, but it is a fact; and though it be astonishing, let it not be doubted.

An equally remarkable thing is that the gospel calls upon men to do what they cannot do, for Jesus Christ said to this paralyzed man, “I say unto thee, Arise, take up thy bed and walk.” He could not rise, could not take up his bed, and could not walk, and yet he was bidden to do it. And it is one of the strange things of the way of salvation that

“The gospel bids the dead revive;

Sinners obey the voice and live.

Dry bones are raised and clothed afresh,

And hearts of stone are turned to flesh.”

We have to say, in the name of Jesus, to the man with the withered arm-whose arm is so withered that we know he has no power in it, “Stretch out thy hand”; and we do say it in God’s name. Some of my brethren of a certain order of doctrine say, “It is ridiculous! If you admit that a man cannot do it, it is ridiculous to tell him to do it.” But we do not mind being ridiculous: we care little for the censure of human judgment. If God gives us a commission, that commission will prevent our suffering very seriously from the ridicule of other people. “Ezekiel, dost thou not see before thee that valley of dry bones?” “Yes,” says he, “I see them; they are very many and very dry. Lo! through many a summer the sun has scorched them, and through many a winter the fierce winds have dried them till they are as if they had passed through an oven.” “Prophet, what canst thou do with these bones? If God means to raise them to life they will be raised: therefore let thou them alone. What canst thou do?” Listen to to him as he makes solemn proclamation. “Thus saith the Lord, Ye dry bones live!” “Ridiculous, Ezekiel! they cannot live, why speak to them?” He knows they cannot live of themselves, but he also knows that his Master bids him tell them to live, and he does what his Master bids him. So, in the gospel, the minister is to bid men believe, and he is to say, “Repent ye, and believe the gospel.” For this reason alone do we say, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” The gospel bids you believe, albeit that you are dead in trespasses and sins. “I cannot understand it,” says somebody. No, and you never will till God reveals it to you; but, when the Lord comes and dwells with you, you will perfectly understand, and see how the exercise of faith on the part of the preacher of the gospel is a part of the divine operation by which dead souls are raised.

Another and more remarkable thing is this-that while the gospel comes to men incapable and dead, and bids them do what they cannot of themselves do, they actually do it: there is the marvel. In the name of Jesus we say to the paralyzed man, “Take up thy bed and walk,” and he does take up his bed and walk; for with the word faithfully spoken, in confidence in God, there comes the eternal power into the man who had no power of his own; and God’s elect, called out by the preaching of the gospel, hear the message from heaven, and the power comes with it at the time they hear the message, so that they obey it, and live. Dead as they were, they live. Oh, marvellous operation this-that, out of this congregation, while I say “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” there will be some who will believe and be saved. Those who will believe have no more power, naturally, to believe, than others have; they are by nature all in an equal state of death; but to God’s own chosen the Word comes with power, attended by the Holy Spirit, and they do believe, and live.

Here are three singular things. It is a strange thing to have to tell you good church people and chapel people, who have always done everything so well, that unless you are converted you are dead in trespasses and sins, and all your good works are so many graveclothes in which your corpse is wrapped up, and nothing better; and it is strange that we should be bound to call upon you to believe in Jesus when we have already told you that you have no spiritual life; and it is remarkable that we should be commended to warn you that you are living in great sin if you do not believe in Jesus. More singular still, you may judge it to be, that we are confident that the telling you these things, plainly and honestly in the name of God, will be blest by the Spirit of God, and will lead you to believe and to trust in Jesus. It seems strange, but so it is.

More remarkable still to the crowd, no doubt, was this-that this paralyzed man was healed at once. If ever a cure of paralysis is wrought at any time-and it is very rarely that such a thing occurs-I do not think that it is ever cured in an instant. This man is unable to stir hand or foot; but Jesus says, “Take up thy bed and walk,” and he rises as if he had never been paralysed. Every ligature is in its place; every muscle is ready for action in a moment. You would have thought it would take a month or two, and a good deal of rubbing and friction to bring the man’s blood into healthy action, to get him round, and warm him into life again; but it did not: he only heard that strange voice which told him to do what he could not do, and he did do what he could not do by a power that went with that message, and he rose up and was healed at once. And here is the marvel of the gospel. A sinner hears the gospel, and all the sins of his whole life are upon him, but he believes that gospel and all his sins are gone in a moment, and he is as clean before the throne of God as if never a sin had defiled him. He was, up to the time of his reception of the gospel, an enemy to God by wicked works; but he accepts the testimony of God concerning his Son Jesus, and he rests in Jesus, and his heart becomes as the heart of a little child. In a moment the stone is taken away, and the fleshy heart is given, He becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus. The darkness disappears as the primeval darkness fled before the fiat which said, “Let there be light.” ’Tis done-done in a moment.

You will not comprehend this, I am sure, till you experience it. Oh how I bless God that years ago when I heard the message of God-“Look unto me and be ye saved all ye ends of the earth,” I was enabled to look and live. I pined and longed for salvation, and laboured hard and prayed hard to get it; but I never got one inch the farther. But the message came-“Look!”-how could I look? My eyes were sightless; but I did look, for the power to look came with the command to look, and the moment I looked I was as conscious that I was forgiven as I am conscious of my existence. There was life to me in a look at the Crucified One. Pardon, sure, certain, and sealed home to my conscience, was given to me in the selfsame moment when I looked to Jesus in the bloody sweat, Jesus on the cross, Jesus risen from the dead, and Jesus gone into the glory. A look at him, and it was all done. You had not thought of that, you say, and even now it startles you. You thought you would have to take the sacrament, and keep on attending a place of worship, and gradually work yourself up out of your paralysed condition. That is man’s way of salvation; but Christ’s way of salvation is an instantaneous change of heart, and an instantaneous forgiveness of sin.

Another thing which they had never seen after that fashion was that the man was healed without any ceremony: for the proper way to heal a paralysed person would have been to fetch the priest down, and to bring water and oil, or to shed the blood of a bullock, and offer it, and then to go through no end of ceremonies, and by degrees, through the mysterious power of ceremonies, at last the man might be cleansed. But here was no one single ceremony. It was just this: “Take up thy bed and walk.” The man, though he cannot take up his bed and walk, yet believes that he who told him to do it will give him power to do it, and he does take up his bed and walk: there is the whole of it in a nutshell. He believes, and acts on that belief; and he is restored. And that is the whole plan of salvation. You believe the gospel, and act upon the truth of it, and you are saved-saved the moment you accept the witness of God concerning his Son Jesus Christ. But is there not baptism? Yes, for the saved: but no baptism in order to salvation. When you are saved-when you are a believer in Jesus-then the instructive ordinances of God’s house become useful to you; but God forbid that we should ever look to baptism as a means of salvation. God forbid that we should even look to the Lord’s Supper for that purpose. May we be preserved from anything approximating to trust in rites and forms. When you are saved, then the ordinances of the house into which you have come-the ordinances of the family of which you are a member-belong to you; but they do not belong to you, and can render to you no service whatever, until you are a saved man. Salvation from death in sin has nothing to do with ceremonies. Believe and live is the sole gospel precept.

Another remarkable thing was that this man was perfectly restored-not merely restored in a moment, but perfectly so. A partial restoration would not have been one-tenth so memorable. I have known dear friends partially paralysed who, after some time, in the good providence of God, have somewhat recovered; but a twist of the mouth, a weakness in the eye, or a feebleness of the hand has remained as a proof that the paralysis had been there. But this man was perfectly whole, and at once. The glory of salvation is that whosoever believeth in the Lord Jesus is completely pardoned. It is not some of his sin that is put away, but all of it. I rejoice to look upon it as dear Kent does when he sings:-

“Here’s pardon for transgressions past,

It matters not how black their cast;

And, O my soul, with wonder view,

For sins to come here’s pardon too.”

We are plunged into the fountain of redeeming blood and cleansed from every fear of ever being found guilty before the living God. We are accepted in the beloved through the righteousness of Jesus Christ, justified once for all and for ever before the Father’s face! Christ said, “It is finished,” and finished it is. And, oh, what a bliss is this-one of the things that may well stagger those who have never heard it before; but let them not reject it because it staggers them, but the rather let them say,-“This wonderful system which saves and saves completely, in an instant, simply by looking out of self to Christ, is a system worthy of divine wisdom, for it magnifies the grace of God, and meets man’s deep necessities.”

One other thing, no doubt, astonished them about this man-that his cure was done evidently. There was no deception about it, for he rolled up the mattress that he had lain upon, put it upon his back, and walked away with it and went home to his house. There was no doubt about his being perfectly restored, for he was carrying a burden on his back. And here is the glory of it-that when a man believes in Jesus Christ there is no doubt about his conversion: you see it in his actions. They tell me that a child is born again in baptism. Very well, let me have a look at the child: is there any difference in him? Some of you, perhaps, have had children that were born again in the sacramental fashion. Mine were not: I cannot, therefore, speak from experience. I wonder whether yours have turned out any better than mine-whether, indeed, the watery regeneration made any difference in them. I am persuaded you could not pretend to having seen any result. It is a kind of regeneration that does not show itself in the life, and indeed, produces no result; for these precious regenerate babies, and regenerate boys and girls, are just the same as the unregenerate boys and girls: there is not a pin to choose between them. Send them to the same school, and I will undertake very often to show you that some of those that never were baptismally regenerated are better than those who were; for probably they have had Christian parents who had taken more pains to instruct them than those superstitious parents who merely relied upon the outward ceremony. Now, that regeneration which produces no effect is nothing-less than nothing. It would be like saying, “That man is saved from the paralysis.” “Well, but he lies on the bed.” “Yes, he lies on the bed the same as he did before; but,” you say, “he is-he is delivered from the paralysis.” “But how do you know?” “Well, of course, it may not be an actual cure, but it is a virtual cure, because he has undergone a ceremony, and therefore it must be so; you are to believe it.” This is fine talk; but when the man rose and rolled his bed up, and carried it on his back, that was a deal more convincing. Now, when God’s providence brings into this house a man who has been a drunkard, and he hears the gospel of Jesus Christ, and believes in Jesus, and turns his cups bottom upwards and becomes a sober man, there is something in that. If a man comes here who is proud, haughty, a hater of the gospel altogether, a man who can swear, and who has no regard for the Sabbath day, and he believes in Jesus, and becomes at home as gentle as a lamb, so that his wife hardly knows that he is the same man, and on the Sabbath he delights to go to the house of God, there is something to be seen in that, is there not?-something real and tangible. Here is a man that would cheat you, as soon as look at you, in his business; but the grace of God comes to him, and he becomes scrupulously honest. Here is a man that used to associate with the lowest of the low, and the gospel of Jesus Christ is received by him, and he seeks godly companions, and he loves only those whose talk is sweet and clean and holy. Why, you can see it; you can see it. And this is the kind of salvation we want in these days, a salvation that can be seen,-which makes the paralysed sinner roll up his bed and carry it away-makes him a conqueror over depraved habits-delivers him from the thraldom of his sins, and shows itself in the outer life to all who care to look upon him. Yes, brethren, this is what the gospel has done for us; and if I address any here to-night who have looked upon religion as a kind of salve that they were to use while they continued in their sins, I want them to see what a very different thing it is. Christ has come to save you from your sins: not to keep you in the fire and prevent your burning, but to pluck you like a brand out of the burning. He has come to make you new creatures, and this he can do at this very moment, while you are sitting in your pews. If, while you hear the sound, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,” there be found in you a willing mind, given you of his grace, so that you do trust him, you shall be saved as surely as Christ lives.

These are strange things, but do not reject them because they are strange. They are things worthy of a God.

So, lastly, if you have ever found out any of these things, and had to say, “We never saw it on this fashion,” then go and glorify God. Magnify him from your inmost soul.

If salvation were by works, and we could fight our own way to heaven by our own merits, I for one, when I got up there, would throw up my cap and say, “Well done! I have deserved something, and I have got it;” but since salvation is by grace from first to last, and not of man, neither by man, nor of the will of the flesh, nor by blood or birth-since the Lord begins and carries on and ends-let us give him all the glory. And if ever he gives us, as he will give us, a crown of life that fadeth not away, we will go and cast it at his feet, and say, “Not unto us, not unto us; but unto thy name be praise for ever and ever.” Let us live in this spirit, dear friends. The man who believes in the doctrines of grace, and yet thinks much of himself, is highly inconsistent. A man who believes salvation to be all of grace, and yet does not glorify God continually, acts contrary to his own convictions. “Oh, magnify the Lord with me: let us exalt his name together.” He took us up out of the horrible pit, and out of the miry clay; and he set our feet upon a rock and established our goings. He put a new song into our mouths, even praise for evermore. Praise be unto him, for he hath done it, and he shall be extolled.

Oh, you cannot praise him, you who do not know this salvation, and I do not exhort you to attempt to do so; but, first of all, may you know this salvation for yourselves. You can know it. Blessed be God, I trust that some of you will know it this very night by ceasing from yourselves, giving up all dependence upon anything you can do or be or feel, and by dropping into the arms of Jesus, resting in his finished work, and confiding in him. He will-he must save you if you trust him, and then you shall give him praise. God bless you, dear friends, for Christ’s sake.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Mark 2

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-202, 232.

“God With Us”

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, December 26th, 1875, by

C. H. Spurgeon,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“They shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.”-Matthew 1:23.

Those words, “being interpreted,” salute my ear with much sweetness. Why should the word “Emmanuel” in the Hebrew, be interpreted at all? Was it not to show that it has reference to us Gentiles, and therefore it must needs be interpreted into one of the chief languages of the then existing Gentile world, namely, the Greek. This “being interpreted” at Christ’s birth, and the three languages employed in the inscription upon the cross at his death, show that he is not the Saviour of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. As I walked along the quay at Marseilles, and marked the ships of all nations gathered in the port, I was very much interested by the inscriptions upon the shops and stores. The announcements of refreshments or of goods to be had within were not only printed in the French language, but in English, in Italian, in German, in Greek, sometimes in Russian and Swedish. Upon the shops of the sail-makers, the boat-builders, the ironmongers, or the dealers in ship stores, you read a polyglot announcement, setting forth the information to men of many lands. This was a clear indication that persons of all nations were invited to come and purchase, that they were expected to come, and that provision was made for their peculiar wants. “Being interpreted” must mean that different nations are addressed. We have the text put first in the Hebrew “Emmanuel,” and afterwards it is translated into the Gentile tongue, “God with us;” “being interpreted,” that we may know that we are invited, that we are welcome, that God has seen our necessities and has provided for us, and that now we may freely come, even we who were sinners of the Gentiles, and far off from God. Let us preserve with reverent love both forms of the precious name and wait the happy day when our Hebrew brethren shall unite their “Emmanuel” with our “God with us.”

Our text speaks of a name of our Lord Jesus. It is said, “They shall call his name Emmanuel.” In these days we call children by names which have no particular meaning. They are the names, perhaps, of father or mother or some respected relative, but there is no special meaning as a general rule in our children’s names. It was not so in the olden times. Then names meant something. Scriptural names, as a general rule, contain teaching, and especially is this the case in every name ascribed to the Lord Jesus. With him names indicate things. “His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace,” because he really is all these. His name is called Jesus, but not without a reason. By any other name Jesus would not be so sweet, because no other name could fairly describe his great work of saving his people from their sins. When he is said to be called this or that, it means that he really is so. I am not aware that anywhere in the New Testament our Lord is afterwards called Emmanuel. I do not find his apostles, or any of his disciples, calling him by that name literally; but we find them all doing so in effect, for they speak of him as “God manifest in the flesh”, and they say, “The word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” They do not use the actual word, but they again interpret and give us free and instructive renderings, while they proclaim the sense of the august title and inform us in divers ways what is meant by God being with us in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a glorious fact, of the highest importance, that since Christ was born into the world God is with us.

You may divide the text, if you please, into two portions:-“God,” and then “God with us.” We must dwell with equal emphasis upon each word. Never let us for a moment hesitate as to the Godhead of our Lord Jesus Christ, for his Deity is a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith. It may be we shall never understand fully how God and man could unite in one person, for who can by searching find out God. These great mysteries of godliness, these “deep things of God,” are beyond our measurement: our little skiff might be lost if we ventured so far out upon this vast, this infinite ocean, as to lose sight of the shore of plainly revealed truth. But let it remain as a matter of faith that Jesus Christ, even he who lay in Bethlehem’s manger, and was carried in a woman’s arms, and lived a suffering life and died on a malefactor’s cross, was, nevertheless, “God over all, blessed for ever,” “upholding all things by the word of his power.” He was not an angel-that the apostle has abundantly disproved in the first and second chapters of the epistle to the Hebrews: he could not have been an angel, for honours are ascribed to him which were never bestowed on angels. He was no subordinate deity or being elevated to the Godhead, as some have absurdly said-all these things are dreams and falsehoods; he was as surely God as God can be, one with the Father and the ever-blessed Spirit. If it were not so, not only would the great strength of our hope be gone, but as to this text the sweetness had evaporated altogether. The very essence and glory of the incarnation is that he was God who was veiled in human flesh: if it was any other being who thus came to us in human flesh, I see nothing very remarkable in it, nothing comforting, certainly. That an angel should become a man is a matter of no great consequence to me: that some other superior being should assume the nature of man brings no joy to my heart, and opens no well of consolation to me. But “God with us” is exquisite delight. “God with us”: all that “God” means, the Deity, the infinite Jehovah with us; this, this is worthy of the burst of midnight song, when angels startled the shepherds with their carols, singing “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men.” This was worthy of the foresight of seers and prophets, worthy of a new star in the heavens, worthy of the care which inspiration has manifested to preserve the record. This, too, was worthy of the martyr deaths of apostles and confessors who counted not their lives dear unto them for the sake of the incarnate God; and this, my brethren, is worthy at this day of your most earnest endeavours to spread the glad tidings, worthy of a holy life to illustrate its blessed influences, and worthy of a joyful death to prove its consoling power. Here is the first truth of our holy faith-“Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh.” He who was born at Bethlehem is God and “God with us.” God-there lies the majesty; “God with us,” there lies the mercy. God-therein is glory; “God with us,” therein is grace. God alone might well strike us with terror; but “God with us” inspires us with hope and confidence. Take my text as a whole, and carry it in your bosoms as a bundle of sweet spices to perfume your hearts with peace and joy. May the Holy Spirit open to you the truth, and the truth to you. I would joyfully say to you in the words of one of our poets-

“Veil’d in flesh the Godhead see:

Hail the incarnate Deity!

Pleased as man with men to appear,

Jesus our Immanuel here.”

First, let us admire this truth; then let us consider it more at length; and after that let us endeavour personally to appropriate it.

Let us admire this truth. “God with us.” Let us stand at a reverent distance from it as Moses when he saw God in the bush stood a little back, and put his shoes from off his feet, feeling that the place whereon he stood was holy ground. This is a wonderful fact, God the Infinite once dwelt in the frail body of a child, and tabernacled in the suffering form of a lowly man. “God was in Christ.” “He made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.”

Observe first, the wonder of condescension contained in this fact, that God who made all things should assume the nature of one of his own creatures, that the self-existent should be united with the dependent and derived, and the Almighty linked with the feeble and mortal. In the case before us the Lord descended to the very depth of humiliation, and entered into alliance with a nature which did not occupy the chief place in the scale of existence. It would have been great condescension for the infinite and incomprehensible Jehovah to have taken upon himself the nature of some noble spiritual being, such as a seraph or a cherub; the union of the divine with a created spirit would have been an unmeasurable stoop, but for God to be one with man is far more. Remember that in the person of Christ manhood was not merely quickening spirit, but also suffering, hungering, dying, flesh and blood. There was taken to himself by our Lord all that materialism which makes up a body, and a body is after all but the dust of the earth, a structure fashioned from the materials around us. There is nothing in our bodily frame but what is to be found in the substance of the earth on which we live. We feed upon that which groweth out of the earth, and when we die we go back to the dust from whence we were taken. Is not this a strange thing that this grosser part of creation, this meaner part, this dust of it, should nevertheless be taken into union, with that pure, marvellous, incomprehensible, divine being of whom we know so little, and can comprehend nothing at all? Oh, the condescension of it! I leave it to the meditations of your quiet moments. Dwell on it with awe. I am persuaded that no man has any idea how wonderful a stoop it was for God thus to dwell in human flesh, and to be “God with us.”

Yet, to make it appear still more remarkable, remember that the creature whose nature Christ took was a being that had sinned. I can more readily conceive the Lord’s taking upon himself the nature of a race which had never fallen; but, lo, the race of man stood in rebellion against God, and yet a man did Christ become, that he might deliver us from the consequences of our rebellion, and lift us up to something higher than our pristine purity. “God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, has condemned sin in the flesh.” “Oh, the depths,” is all that we can say, as we look on and marvel at this stoop of divine love.

Note, next, as you view this marvel at a distance, what a miracle of power is before us. Have you ever thought of the power displayed in the Lord’s fashioning a body capable of union with Godhead? Our Lord was incarnate in a body, which was truly a human body, but yet in some wondrous way was prepared to sustain the indwelling of Deity. Contact with God is terrible; “He looketh on the earth and it trembleth; he toucheth the hills and they smoke.” He puts his feet on Paran, and it melts, and Sinai dissolves in flames of fire. So strongly was this truth inwrought into the minds of the early saints, that they said, “No man can see God’s face and live;” and yet here was a manhood which did not merely see the face of God, but which was inhabited by Deity. What a human frame was this which could abide the presence of Jehovah! “A body hast thou prepared me.” This was indeed a body curiously wrought, a holy thing, a special product of the Holy Spirit’s power. It was a body like our own, with nerves as sensitive, and muscles as readily strained, with every organization as delicately fashioned as our own, and yet God was in it. It was a frail barque to bear such a freight. Oh, man Christ, how couldst thou bear the Deity within thee! We know not how it was, but God knoweth. Let us adore this hiding of the Almighty in human weakness, this comprehending of the Incomprehensible, this revealing of the Invisible, this localization of the Omnipresent. Alas, I do but babble! What are words when we deal with such an unutterable truth? Suffice it to say, that the divine power was wonderfully seen in the continued existence of the materialism of Christ’s body, which else had been consumed by such a wondrous contact with divinity. Admire the power which dwelt in “God with us.”

Again, as you gaze upon the mystery, consider what an ensign of good will this must be to the sons of men. When the Lord takes manhood into union with himself in this matchless way it must mean good to man. God cannot mean to destroy that race which he thus weds unto himself. Such a marriage as this, between man and God, must mean peace; war and destruction are never thus predicted. God incarnate in Bethlehem, to be adored by shepherds, augurs nothing but “peace on earth and mercy mild.” O ye sinners who tremble at the thought of the divine wrath, as well you may, lift up your heads with joyful hope of mercy and favour, for God must be full of grace and mercy to that race which he so distinguishes above all others by taking it into union with himself. Be of good cheer, O men of women born, and expect untold blessings for “unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given.” If you look at rivers you can often tell whence they come, and the soil over which they have flowed by their colour: those which flow from melting glaciers are known at once. There is a text concerning a heavenly river which you will understand if you look at it in this light: “He showed me a pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God, and of the Lamb.” Where the throne is occupied by Godhead, and the appointed Mediator, the incarnate God, the once bleeding Lamb, then the river must be pure as crystal, and be a river, not of molten lava of devouring wrath, but a river of the water of life. Look you to “God with us” and you will see that the consequences of incarnation must be pleasant, profitable, saving, and ennobling to the sons of men.

I pray you to continue your admiring glance, and look upon God with us once more as a pledge of our deliverance. We are a fallen race, we are sunken in the mire, we are sold under sin, in bondage and in slavery to Satan; but if God comes to our race, and espouses its nature, why then we must retrieve our fall, it cannot be possible for the gates of hell to keep those down who have God with them. Slaves under sin and bondsmen beneath the law, hearken to the trump of jubilee, for one has come among you, born of a woman, made under the law, who is also mighty God, pledged to set you free. He is a Saviour, and a great one: able to save, for he is Almighty, and pledged to do it, for he has entered the lists and put on the harness for the battle. The champion of his people is one who will not fail nor be discouraged till the battle is fully fought and won. Jesus coming down from heaven is the pledge that he will take his people up to heaven, his taking our nature is the seal of our being lifted up to his throne. Were it an angel that had interposed, we might have some fears; were it a mere man, we might go beyond fear, and sit down in despair; but if it be “God with us,” and God has actually taken manhood into union with himself, then let us “ring the bells of heaven” and be glad; there must be brighter and happier days, there must be salvation to man, there most be glory to God. Let us bask in the beams of the Sun of Righteousness, who now has risen upon us, a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of his people Israel.

Thus we have admired at a distance.

And, now, in the second place, let us come nearer and consider the subject more closely. What is this? What means this, “God with us”? I do not expect this morning to be able to set forth all the meaning of this short text, “God with us,” for indeed, it seems to me to contain the whole history of redemption. It hints at man’s being without God, and God’s having removed from man on account of sin. It seems to tell me of man’s spiritual life, by Christ’s coming to him, and being formed in him the hope of glory. God communes with man, and man returns to God, and receives again the divine image as at the first. Yea, heaven itself is “God with us.” This text might serve for a hundred sermons without any wire drawing; yea, one might continue to expatiate upon its manifold meanings for ever. I can only at this time give mere hints of lines of thought which you can pursue at your leisure, the Holy Spirit enabling you.

This glorious word Emmanuel means, first, that God in Christ is with us in very near association. The Greek particle here used is very forcible, and expresses the strongest form of “with.” It is not merely “in company with us” as another Greek word would signify, but “with,” “together with,” and “sharing with.” This preposition is a close rivet, a firm bond, implying, if not declaring, close fellowship. God is peculiarly and closely “with us.” Now, think for a while, and you will see that God has in very deed come near to us in very close association. He must have done so, for he has taken upon himself our nature, literally our nature,-flesh, blood, bone, everything that made a body; mind, heart, soul, memory, imagination, judgment, everything that makes a rational man. Christ Jesus was the man of men, the second Adam, the model representative man. Think not of him as a deified man any more than you would dare to regard him as a humanized God, or demigod. Do not confound the natures nor divide the person: he is but one person, yet very man as he is also very God. Think of this truth then, and say, “He who sits on the throne is such as I am, sin alone excepted.” No, ’tis too much for speech, I will not speak of it; it is a theme which masters me, and I fear to utter rash expressions. Turn the truth over and over, and see if it be not sweeter than honey and the honey-comb.

“Oh joy! There sitteth in our flesh,

Upon a throne of light,

One of a human mother born,

In perfect Godhead bright!”

Being with us in our nature, God was with us in all our life’s pilgrimage. Scarcely can you find a halting-place in the march of life at which Jesus has not paused, or a weary league which he has not traversed. From the gate of entrance even to the door which closes life’s way the footprints of Jesus may be traced. Were you in the cradle? He was there. Were you a child under parental authority? Christ was also a boy in the home at Nazareth. Have you entered upon life’s battle? Your Lord and Master did the same; and though he lived not to old age, yet through incessant toil and suffering he bore the marred visage which attends a battered old age. Are you alone? So was he, in the wilderness, and on the mountain’s side, and in the garden’s gloom. Do you mix in public society? So did he labour in the thickest press. Where can you find yourself, on the hill top, or in the valley, on the land or on the sea, in the daylight or in darkness,-where, I say, can you be without discovering that Jesus has been there before you? What the world has said of her great poet we might with far more truth say of our Redeemer-

“A man so various that he seemed to be

Not one, but all mankind’s epitome.”

One harmonious man he was, and yet all saintly lives seem to be condensed in his. Two believers may be very unlike each other, and yet both will find that Christ’s life has in it points of likeness to their own. One shall be rich and another shall be poor, one actively laborious and another patiently suffering, and yet each man in studying the history of the Saviour shall be able to say-his pathway ran hard by my own. He was made in all points like unto his brethren. How charming is the fact that our Lord is “God with us,” not here and there, and now and then, but evermore.

Especially does this come out with sweetness in his being “God with us” in our sorrows. There is no pang that rends the heart, I might almost say not one which disturbs the body, but what Jesus Christ has been with us in it all. Feel you the sorrows of poverty? He “had not where to lay his head.” Do you endure the griefs of bereavement? Jesus “wept” at the tomb of Lazarus. Have you been slandered for righteousness’ sake, and has it vexed your spirit? He said “Reproach hath broken mine heart.” Have you been betrayed? Do not forget that he too had his familiar friend, who sold him for the price of a slave. On what stormy seas have you been tossed which have not also roared around his boat? Never glen of adversity so dark, so deep, apparently so pathless, but what in stooping down you may discover the footprints of the Crucified One. In the fires and in the rivers, in the cold night and under the burning sun, he cries, “I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am both thy companion and thy God.”

Mysteriously true is it that when you and I shall come to the last, the closing scene, we shall find that Emmanuel has been there. He felt the pangs and throes of death, he endured the bloody sweat of agony and the parching thirst of fever. He knew the separation of the tortured spirit from the poor fainting flesh, and cried, as we shall, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” Ay, and the grave he knew, for there he slept, and left the sepulchre perfumed and furnished to be a couch of rest, and not a charnel-house of corruption. That new tomb in the garden makes him God with us till the resurrection shall call us from our beds of clay to find him God with us in newness of life. We shall be raised up in his likeness, and the first sight our opening eyes shall see shall be the incarnate God. “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and though after my skin worms devour this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God” “God with us.” I in my flesh shall see him as the man, the God. And so to all eternity he will maintain the most intimate association with us. As long as ages roll he shall be “God with us.” Has he not said, “Because I live ye shall live also”? Both his human and divine life will last on for ever, and so shall our life endure. He shall dwell among us and lead us to living fountains of waters, and “so shall we be for ever with the Lord.”

Now, my brethren, if you will review these thoughts, you shall find good store of food; in fact, a feast even under that one head. God in Christ is with us in the nearest possible association.

But, secondly, God in Christ is with us in the fullest reconciliation. This, of course, is true, if the former be true. There was a time when we were parted from God; we were without God, being alienated from him by wicked works, and God also was removed from us by reason of the natural rectitude of character which thrusts iniquity far from him. He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, neither can evil dwell with him. That strict justice with which he rules the world requires that he should hide his face from a sinful generation. A God who looks with complacency upon guilty men is not the God of the Bible, who is in multitudes of places set forth as burning with indignation against the wicked. “The wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.” But, now the sin which separated us from God has been put away by the blessed sacrifice of Christ upon the tree, and the righteousness, the absence of which must have caused a gulf between unrighteous man and righteous God, that righteousness, I say, has been found, for Jesus has brought in everlasting righteousness. So that now in Jesus God is with us, reconciled to us, the sin which caused his wrath being for ever put away from his people. There are some who object to this view of the case, and I, for one, will not yield one jot to their objections. I do not wonder that they cavil at certain unwise statements, which I like no better than they do; but, nevertheless, if they oppose the atonement as making a recompense to injured justice, their objections shall have no force with me. It is most true that God is always love, but his stern justice is not opposed thereto. It is also most certainly true that towards his people he always was, in the highest sense, love, and the atonement is the result and not the cause of divine love; yet, still viewed in his rectoral character, as a judge and lawgiver, God is “angry with the wicked every day,” and apart from the reconciling sacrifice of Christ, his own people were “heirs of wrath even as others.” There was anger in the heart of God, as a righteous judge, against those who have broken his holy law, and the reconciliation has a bearing upon the position of the judge of all the earth as well as upon man. I for one shall never cease to say, “O Lord, I will praise thee, for though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortest me.” God can now be with man, and embrace sinners as his children, as he could not have righteously done had not Jesus died. In this sense, and in this sense only, did Dr. Watts write some of his hymns which have been so fiercely condemned. I take leave to quote two verses, and to commend them as setting forth a great truth if the Lord be viewed as a judge, and represented as the awakened conscience of man rightly perceives him. Our poet says of the throne of God:

“Once ’twas the seat of dreadful wrath,

And shot devouring flame;

Our God appeared, consuming fire,

And vengeance was his name.

“Rich were the drops of Jesus’ blood,

Which calmed his frowning face,

Which sprinkled o’er the burning throne,

And turn’d the wrath to grace.”

So that now Jehovah is not God against us, but “God with us,” he has “reconciled us to himself by the death of his Son.”

A third meaning of the text “God with us” is this, God in Christ is with us in blessed commnunication. That is to say, now he has come so near to us as to enter into commerce with us, and this he does in part by hallowed conversation. Now he speaks to us and in us. He has in these last days spoken to us by his Son and by the Divine Spirit with the still small voice of warning, consolation, instruction, and direction. Are you not conscious of this? Since your souls have come to know Christ, have you not also enjoyed intercourse with the Most High? Now, like Enoch, you “walk with God,” and, like Abraham, you talk with him as a man talketh with his friend. What are those prayers and praises of yours but the speech which you are permitted to have with the Most High; and he replies to you when his Spirit seals home the promise or applies the precept, when with fresh light he leads you into the doctrine or bestows brighter confidence as to good things to come. Oh yes, God is with us now, so that when he cries, “Seek ye my face” our heart says to him, “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.” These Sabbath gatherings, what mean they to many of us but “God with us.” That communion table, what means it but “God with us”? Oh, how often in the breaking of bread and the pouring forth of the wine in the memory of his atoning death have we enjoyed his real presence, not in a superstitious, but in a spiritual sense, and found the Lord Jesus to be “God with us.” Yes, in every holy ordinance, in every sacred act of worship, we now find that there is a door opened in heaven and a new and living way by which we may come to the throne of grace. Is not this a joy better than all the riches of earth could buy?

And it is not merely in speech that the Lord is with us, but God is with us now by powerful acts as well as words. “God with us,” why it is the inscription upon our royal standard which strikes terror to the heart of the foe, and cheers the sacramental host of God’s elect. Is not this our war cry, “The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge.” As to our foes within, God is with us to overcome our corruptions and frailties; and as to the adversaries of truth without, God is with his church and Christ has promised that he ever will be with her “even to the end of the world” We have not merely God’s word and promise but we have seen his acts of grace on our behalf, both in providence and in the working of his blessed Spirit. “The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the people.” “In Judah is God known: his name is great in Israel. In Salem also is his tabernacle, and his dwelling place in Zion. There brake he the arrows of the bow, the shield, and the sword, and the battle.” “God with us”-oh, my brethren, it makes our hearts leap for joy, it fills us with dauntless courage. How can we be dismayed when the Lord of hosts is on our side?

Nor is it merely that God is with us in acts of power on our behalf, but in emanations of his own life into our nature by which we are at first new born, and afterwards sustained in spiritual life. This is more wonderful still. By the Holy Spirit the divine seed which “liveth and abideth for ever” is sown in our souls, and from day to day we are strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.

Nor is this all, for as the masterpiece of grace, the Lord, by his Spirit, even dwells in his people. God is not incarnate in us as in Christ Jesus, but only second in wonder to the incarnation is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in believers. Now is it “God with us” indeed, for God dwelleth in us. “Know ye not,” says the apostle, “that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost.” “As it is written, I will dwell in them, and I will walk in them.” Oh, the heights and depths then comprehended in those few words, “God with us.”

I had many more things to say unto you, but time compels me to sum them up in brief. The Lord becomes “God with us” by the restoration of his image in us. “God with us” was seen in Adam when he was perfectly pure, but Adam died when he sinned, and God is not the God of the dead but of the living. Now we, in receiving back the new life and being reconciled to God in Christ Jesus, receive also the restored image of God, and are renewed in knowledge and true holiness. “God with us” means sanctification, the image of Jesus Christ imprinted upon all his brethren.

God is with us, too, let us remember, and leave the point, in deepest sympathy. Brethren, are you in sorrow? God is in Christ sympathetic to your grief. Brethren, have you a grand object? I know what it is, it is God’s glory: therein also you are sympathetic with God, and God with you. What, let me inquire, is your greatest joy? Have you not learned to rejoice in the Lord? Do you not joy in God by Jesus Christ? Then God also joyeth in you. He rests in his love, and rejoices over you with singing, so that there is God with us in a very wonderful respect, inasmuch as through Christ our aims and desires are like those of God. We desire the same thing, press forward with the same aim, and rejoice in the same objects of delight. When the Lord says, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” our heart answers, “Ay, and in him we are well pleased too.” The pleasure of the Father is the pleasure of his own chosen children, for we also joy in Christ; our very soul exults at the sound of his name.

I must leave this delightful theme when I have said two or three things about our personal appropriation of the truth before us.

“God with us.” Then, if Jesus Christ be “God with us,” let us come to God without any question or hesitancy. Whoever you may be you need no priest or intercessor to introduce you to God, for God has introduced himself to you. Are you children? Then come to God in the child Jesus, who slept in Bethlehem’s manger. Oh, ye grey-heads, ye need not keep back, but like Simeon come and take him in your arms, and say, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” God sends an ambassador who inspires no fear: not with helmet and coat of mail, bearing lance, does heaven’s herald approach us, but the white flag is held in the hand of a child, in the hand of one chosen out of the people, in the hand of one who died in the hand of one who though he sits in glory wears the nail-print still. O man, God comes to you as one like yourself. Do not be afraid to come to the gentle Jesus. Do not imagine that you need to be prepared for an audience with him, or that you want the intercession of a saint, or the intervention of priest or minister. Anyone could have come to the babe in Bethlehem. The horned oxen, methinks, ate of the hay on which he slept and feared not. Jesus is the friend of each one of us, sinful and unworthy though we be. You, poor ones, you need not fear to come, for, see, in a stable he is born, and in a manger he is cradled. You have not worse accommodation than his, you are not poorer than he. Come and welcome to the poor man’s Prince, to the peasants’ Saviour. Stay not back through fear of your unfitness; the shepherds came to him in all their deshabille. I read not that they tarried to put on their best garments, but in the clothes in which they wrapped themselves that cold midnight they hastened just as they were to the young child’s presence. God looks not at garments, but at hearts, and accepts men when they come to him with willing spirits, whether they be rich or poor. Come, then; come, and welcome, for God indeed is “God with us.”

But, oh, let there be no delay about it. It did seem to me, as I turned this subject over, yesterday, that for any man to say, “I will not come to God,” after God has come to man in such a form as this, were an unpardonable act of treason. Peradventure, you knew not God’s love when you sinned, as you did; peradventure, though you persecuted his saints, you did it ignorantly in unbelief; but, behold your God extends the olive branch of peace to you, extends it in a wondrous way, for he himself comes here to be born of a woman, that he may meet with you who were born of women too, and save you from your sin. Will you not hearken now that he speaks by his Son? I can understand that you ask to hear no more of his words when he speaks with the sound of a trumpet, waxing exceeding loud and long, from amidst the flaming crags of Sinai; I do not wonder that you are afraid to draw near when the earth rocks and reels before his awful presence; but now he restrains himself and veils the splendour of his face, and comes to you as a child of humble mien, a carpenter’s son. Oh, if he comes so, will you turn your backs upon him? Can ye spurn him? What better ambassador could you desire? This embassage of peace is so tenderly, so gently, so kindly, so touchingly put, that surely you cannot have the heart to resist it. Nay, do not turn away, let not your ears refuse the language of his grace, but say, “If God is with us, we will be with him.” Say it, sinner, say, “I will arise and go to my Father and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned.”

And as for you who have given up all hope, you that think yourselves so degraded and fallen that there can be no future for you,-there is hope for you yet, for you are a man, and the next being to God is a man. He that is God is also man, and there is something about that fact which ought to make you say, “Yes, I may yet discover, mayhap, brotherhood to the Son of man who is the Son of God, I, even I, may yet be lifted up to be set among princes, even the princes of his people, by virtue of my regenerated manhood which brings me into relation with the manhood of Christ, and so into relation with the Godhead.” Fling not yourself away, oh man, you are something too hopeful after all to be meat for the worm that never dies, and fuel for the fire that never can be quenched. Turn you to your God with full purpose of heart, and you shall find a grand destiny in store for you.

And now my brethren to you the last word is, let us be with God since God is with us. I give you for a watchword through the year to come, “Emmanuel, God with us.” You, the saints redeemed by blood, have a right to all this in its fullest sense, drink into it and be filled with courage. Do not say, “We can do nothing.” Who are ye that can do nothing? God is with you. Do not say “The church is feeble and fallen upon evil times,”-nay, “God is with us.” We need the courage of those ancient soldiers who were wont to regard difficulties only as whetstones upon which to sharpen their swords. I like Alexander’s talk-when they said there were so many thousands, so many millions perhaps of Persians. “Very well,” says he, “it is good reaping where the corn is thick. One butcher is not afraid of a thousand sheep.” I like even the talk of the old Gascon, who said when they asked him, “Can you and your troops get into that fortress? it is impregnable.” “Can the sun enter it?” said he. “Yes.” “Well, where the sun can go we can enter.” Whatever is possible or whatever is impossible, Christians can do at God’s command, for God is with us. Do you not see that the word, “God with us,” puts impossibility out of all existence? Hearts that never could else be broken will be broken if God be with us. Errors which never else could be confuted can be overthrown by “God with us.” Things impossible with men are possible with God. John Wesley died with that upon his tongue, and let us live with it upon our hearts.-“The best of all is God with us.” Blessed Son of God, we thank thee that thou hast brought us that word. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Hebrews 1:2

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-249, 256 (vers. 3, 4), 260.