C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.”-Isaiah 54:7-10.

This precious passage is the property of all true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. We might not have ventured to say this if it were not for the last verse of the chapter, which assures us that it is so. “This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.” The matchless promises and assurances of this chapter do not belong to the Jewish church alone, nor only to the Gentile church, nor even exclusively to the whole church considered as a community, but they are the property of all who are sons and servants of the living God. Isaiah speaks of both sonship and service. “This is the heritage,” or portion obtained by heirship; which implies sonship. The promise, then, is ours, if we have been born into the family of grace. But then all God’s sons are also servants, even as the firstborn among many brethren became a servant of servants for our sakes. Judge yourselves, dear friends, as to whether you are sons of God by birth and servants of God by choice, for if you be, then may you take these promises to yourselves. In the last clause it is written, “Their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.” In this we can claim our part, for we have no righteousness of our own, but it has pleased the Lord to work a righteousness for us, and a righteousness in us; since we stood in great need of both of these, neither could we by any means have procured them for ourselves. If the Lord Jesus had not been made unto us both our justification and our sanctification, we could have had no hope of seeing the face of God with acceptance. If we are sons by regeneration, and servants by the renewal of our nature, and if our righteousness both imputed and imparted is found in God alone, then the text is ours most richly to enjoy. Stand not back from a table so richly spread, but eat and drink abundantly of its dainty provisions. If this be our heritage, the Lord says to us as he did to Abraham, “Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it.”

Before going further I would call your attention to the position of the wonderful chapter now before us. It may seem to be a commonplace remark, but its position is remarkable as following the fifty-third of Isaiah-that clearest of all prophecies concerning our Lord. The fifty-third of Isaiah is the lay of the great minstrel prophet concerning the sufferings of the despised and rejected of men, and it is followed by this golden chapter. By the way of the atonement we come to enjoy covenant blessings. Fresh from the woes of Calvary we are able to bear our own griefs without repining, and with the great ransom full in view we are convinced of our security before the Lord. You will never have faith enough to comprehend the extent of the heritage prepared of the Lord for you, except as your eyes are strengthened by gazing upon him whom it pleased the Father to bruise for us. When we have the fullest sense of the sufferings of Jesus and of the love which brought him to bear the iniquities of his people, we are then in the fittest state to comprehend the wonders of covenant grace, and to appreciate the priceless mercies which come to us by the way of his substitutionary sacrifice. Carrying in your hearts such words as these, “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; he was wounded for our transgressions, and he was bruised for our iniquities,” let us draw near to the treasures which are spread before us. May the Holy Ghost assist us.

The people of God are often very severely afflicted. They are tried in providence, and they are vexed by the wicked among whom they dwell, and at times it seems as if their lot were far less desirable than that of the ungodly. The best of saints have been tempted to envy the worst of sinners when they have seen them in great power, spreading themselves as a green bay tree, while they themselves have been as withered plants. The saints are chastened and the sinners are enriched: this is no small trial of faith. What is worse, at times the children of God are the subjects of great spiritual griefs, and derive no comfort from their religion. They judge themselves to be deserted by their God, and they enquire within themselves, “Is his mercy clean gone for ever? Will he be favourable no more?” Then the joy of their heart ceases, and their music is turned into mourning. At such times there is powerful comfort for the child of God in the fact that, whatever the Lord may do with him, he cannot be wroth with him, nor rebuke him in the weightiest sense of those words. Since Jesus has made complete atonement on our behalf there may be much that is bitter in our cup, but there cannot be in it even a single drop of judicial punishment for sin, because Christ has borne all that justice could inflict. It would be inconsistent with the integrity of the Most High first to execute vengeance upon the surety, and then to call his people to account for the sin which that surety has put away. There is not therefore in all the chastisements which God lays upon us so much as a single trace of punitive wrath

“Death and the curse were in our cup:

O Christ, ’twas full for thee!

But thou hast drained the last dark drop,

’Tis empty now for me:

That bitter cup, love drank it up,

Now blessing’s draught for me.”

The punishment for sin has been executed once for all upon Jesus Christ our Saviour, and now if ever there be wrath on God’s part towards his people it is of quite another kind from that with which he visits the unbelieving world. Towards the ungodly he is a Judge, and he summons them to judgment, and executes his righteous sentences upon them; but we who are in Christ have virtually died in him, and upon us justice has executed its sentence in the person of our great Substitute, and therefore the law cannot make any further demands upon us. We are henceforth the children of God, and have come under another discipline altogether, the discipline of a loving father towards his family. The Lord may be angry with us as a father is angry with his child, but never as a judge is wroth with a criminal. In that respect his anger is for ever turned away from the redeemed.

Our subject is to be God’s little wrath and God’s great wrath; the little wrath may light upon the Lord’s beloved, for he says, “In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment”; but there is a great wrath which burns as a consuming fire, and this cannot fall upon the redeemed, for the Lord has sworn that he will not be wroth with them nor rebuke them.

The first subject, then, is what the Lord calls his “little wrath.” Let us speak of it and its modifications: and perhaps the Holy Spirit will bless our meditation to the comfort of his afflicted.

Our first remark shall be that our view of that wrath, and God’s view of it may very greatly differ. To a child of God in a right state even the most modified form of divine anger is very painful. A loving child dreads the smallest displeasure on his father’s part. He may be right well assured that his parent will not kill him, or disown him, or deliver him over to the magistrate to be put in prison, but it is sorrow enough for him that his father’s heart is grieved. The terrors of a slave are not needed to keep the children of God in order; the filial fear which trembles at a father’s frown is quite sufficient; let God but hide his face and we are troubled. We do not, therefore, despise the chastening of the Lord, or think little of his fatherly anger; on the contrary, we are weary with crying, our eyes fail while we wait for our God. Our entreaty is, “Hide not thy face from thy servant; for I am in troubles hear me speedily.” It breaks our hearts to think that we should grieve our God. This pain of heart is a very proper feeling, but it may be perverted by unbelief into the occasion of sin. We may conclude from the chastening rod that the Lord is about to destroy us though he has plainly said, “Fury is not in me.” We may falsely conclude, as the text seems to hint, that God has utterly forsaken us, and hidden his face for ever. When we prayed we enjoyed no liberty and felt no access to the mercy-seat; when we tried to sing, our hosannas fell flat from our tongues; when we went to the assembly of the saints, we no longer beheld the glory of the Lord as we had aforetime seen him in his sanctuary; when we opened the Bible its choicest promises appeared to be as dry bones from which the marrow is taken; therefore we concluded that all was over with us, that God had forsaken us; and we therefore feared that nothing remained for us but eternal destruction.

“If sometimes I strive, as I mourn,

My hold of thy promise to keep,

The billows more fiercely return,

And plunge me again in the deep:

While harass’d and cast from thy sight,

The tempter suggests with a roar,

‘The Lord hath forsaken thee quite:

Thy God will be gracious no more.’ ”

This dark estimate of our affairs is not God’s view of them. He knows that he has not utterly or finally withdrawn, but he puts it thus: “For a small moment have I forsaken thee.” It is but a partial departure under which the saint is suffering; the small moment will soon be over.

The tried one is enduring only a partial and transient withdrawal of the light of his countenance, for the Lord says, “in a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment.” I suppose if we were quite new in this world, and had never seen the sun descend below the horizon, we should conclude at his setting that we were about to be plunged into everlasting night. We have now become so accustomed to see him set and rise again, that evening causes us no alarm. Well, child of God, I trust you will not for an instant lose the light of your Father’s countenance, but if you should do so it will return again: he has not forsaken you altogether nor for ever. Weeping shall have its night, but joy’s bright morning will follow; for the Lord will not cast off for ever, but though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. When we are under the hiding of God’s face, we cannot judge rightly; we are too agitated, too distressed, too distracted to see matters in their true light. At such times we are in fear where no fear is, and also magnify that which is legitimately a cause of anxiety. Unbelief is so natural to us, and the propensity to write bitter things against ourselves is so very common, that we are not to be trusted with the scales of judgment. Let us not be too positive that our conclusions are the truth; but let us rather take God’s estimate of his own dealings, and if we are at this time walking in darkness and seeing no light, let us trust in the Lord and stay ourselves upon his word, for all that God has done towards us, if we are indeed his servants, amounts to this, that for a small moment he has forsaken us, and in a little wrath he has hidden his face from us.

I will now call your attention to two or three things which should greatly modify the view we take of the hidings of God’s face. First, as to time; the time during which our God withdraws himself is very short: “for a moment,” he says; but he puts it less than that, “For a small moment.” Do any of you know what a small moment is? Yet that is the Lord’s own expression. Think of how long he has loved us, even from before the foundation of the world! The time in which he hides his face is very short compared with that. Think of how long he will love us: when all this universe shall have subsided into its native nothingness, he will love us for ever! The time during which he chastens us is, compared with that, a very small moment. Think of how long we deserved to have been in hell, to lie for ever beneath his indignation: the little moment in which his heavy hand is upon us is indeed as nothing compared with the eternal misery which our sins have merited. Dear brethren, when you come forth from the hiding of his face into the light again, this gloom will seem to have been but a small moment; you shall forget the shame of your youth, you shall not remember the reproach of your widowhood any more. Sorrows past are slight and short when followed by boundless, endless joys. An eternity of heaven makes even a lifetime of pain to shrivel into a small moment.

When you have noticed the time, then I would call your attention to the recompense which is promised. “For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee.” The Lord will make up to you all your losses, your afflictions, your crosses, and your chastisements. God’s dealings with us never seem to be so merciful as after a time of trial. Then every blessing is a mercy indeed, and we adore the love which grants it to us. When the taste of the wormwood and the gall is still on the palate, then the wines on the lees well refined have a peculiar flavour, and we drink of them with a special zest. The bitterness makes the sweet the sweeter, and the sorrow makes the joy the more abounding. The text does not say that God will give us mercy after he has for awhile left us, but the word is in the plural, “mercies,” multitudes of mercies. Nay, it does not merely say “mercies,” but “great mercies,” for they are all the greater because we so greatly need them, are plunged in such great distress for want of them, and filled with so many great fears as to our future estate. With great mercies will the Lord come to us, silence our fears, and help us to gather up our scattered hopes and confidences. The Lord not only promises us these great favours, but he promises that he himself will bring them. They are not to be sent to us by angels or by external providences, but he himself declares, “With great mercies will I gather thee.” The work of restoration shall be the Lord’s own personal work: his own right hand shall be laid to it, and after downcastings and scatterings of divers sorts, the Lord himself shall arise for the gathering of his people. “He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him as a shepherd doth his flock.” “Thus saith the Lord, as one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.” The Lord himself will devise means to bring back his banished ones: he will turn away his wrath from them, and they shall sing, “O Lord, I will praise thee, for though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away and thou comfortest me.” It would be far better to walk with God in one long-continued fellowship throughout life, but if fellowship be broken you may return, and return at once. It is a great thing to have your joy continued even under trouble, but if the trouble should be too much for you, and all God’s waves and billows should roll over you, yet he will restore you, for he has said, “I will bring again from Bashan, I will bring my people again from the depths of the sea.” You shall see how little his wrath was, for love’s binding up shall make you forget the wounding, and the heavenly oil of consolation shall effectually remove the bruising. Though the Lord may shut you up in the dark, yet afterwards he will give you light again, and the light will be all the brighter because of the darkness. When comforts are restored we see the reason for their withdrawal, and like good old Jacob when he found his long lost Joseph, we admire the love which afflicted us as much as the grace which restores our comforts. Bear ye, then, with patience the little wrath of God, because of the shortness of its duration and the greatness of its recompense.

The text further declares that the wrath is in itself little. I should hardly have used such a term if I had not found it written here by an infallible pen. “In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment.” God’s wrath against his own people, as compared with that which burns against the ungodly is but little, and it never can get beyond that point. If you read the context you will see that it must be little wrath, for first it is the wrath of a husband against his wife. “Thy Maker is thy husband.” Yes, good Lord, thou mayest be angry with me, but thou art my husband still: thou mayest forsake me for awhile, but thou hast betrothed me unto thyself for ever in faithfulness and in mercy, and in thy word it is written, “The Lord, the God of Israel, saith he hateth putting away.” Observe with delight that the Lord’s wrath against his chosen is not the anger of a king against rebellious subjects, nor that of an enemy against his foe, but the tender jealousy, the affectionate grief of a loving husband when his bride has treated him ill. Note an instance of this in the book of Jeremiah, where even when he afflicts his people, he shows his love at the same time, and sighs, “I have given the dearly beloved of my soul into the hands of her enemies.” Observe, also, that the wrath is that of a Redeemer against those he has redeemed. We read at the end of the eighth verse “Saith the Lord thy Redeemer.” It is such anger that nevertheless he died for us, such anger that still he puts forth his power to win what he has purchased, such anger that he values us far too well to lose us. Is not that a little anger which nevertheless calls to remembrance the blood with which it redeemed the offending one? O Saviour, Son of God, my Lord, my life, my all, if I cannot see the smiles of thy face, I can still look to the wounds of thy hands; if I may not be ravished with thy love as it is shed abroad in my heart by the Holy Ghost, yet I know it as it was shed abroad from thy dear wounded side, when the spear rent thy heart! Here is consolation to those who are under a cloud; it is only in a little wrath that a Redeemer can hide himself from the purchase of his agonies. It is, moreover, the anger of One who pities us, for the passage at the end of the tenth verse runs thus “Saith the Lord, that hath mercy on thee”; and in the Hebrew it is, “Saith the Lord thy Pitier.” It is the wrath of One who is tender and compassionate, and pities while he smites. It is the anger of a father who takes the rod and scourges the child, but feels more of the smart than the child does, for every twig seems to lacerate his heart while he makes his child to cry and weep. It is such wrath as is consistent with love:-“While I spake against him I do earnestly remember him still.” Our names are graven on the very hand which buffets us, and the rod which bruises us is steeped in mercy.

I have not time to linger where there is so much to detain us, but we will notice next that the expression of his little anger is not after all so extremely severe, for what does it say? “I hid my face.” The face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth, but our text does not say, “I turned my face against thee,” but only, “I hid my face from thee.” I grant that this is painful, but still there is this sweet reflection-why does he hide his face? It is because the sight of it would be pleasant to us. It is a face of love; for if it were a face of anger he would not need to hide it from his erring child. If it were an angry face, and he wished to chasten us, he would unveil it; and, therefore, we may be sure that he covers it because it is so bright with everlasting love that if it could be seen no chastisement would be felt by us. See, then, that

“Behind a frowning providence

He hides a smiling face.”

His hidden love is true love, and it hides itself because it is so. Remember that we might have been plunged in outer darkness, and have felt the crushing blows of the iron rod, but as it is we are only put under his frown for a time: “He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.” Be it ours to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, but let us not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when we are corrected of him, for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. Let us neither despair nor distrust our God, nor think that we are the objects of his great wrath when, indeed, we are only feeling his fatherly anger, which is only a form of his wise and deep love.

Observe, too, for we must not leave out a word here, that this little wrath is perfectly consistent with everlasting love. “In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee.” The Lord is filled with everlasting kindness at the very time when he is making the promise, for if you promise a person that you will love him you do love him already; love alone could prompt a promise such as that which I have read. O thou from whom God has hidden his face, when he promises that he will have mercy on thee with everlasting kindness, is not love already ruling his bosom? Our heavenly Father loves his child as much when he chastens it as when he caresses it. The Lord’s own people are as dear to him in the furnace of affliction as on the mount of communion: they are just as precious in his sight when he slays them, and seems in his fierce anger to destroy their joys and wither their hopes, as when he lifts them to his own right hand. The Lord does not rise and fall in his love like the waves of the sea, but his firm affections stand fast like the great mountains, and are stable as the everlasting hills.

You have no right to infer from the greatness of your griefs that God is ceasing to love you, or that he loves you less: on the contrary, I am persuaded that if all the griefs which are possible to men could be heaped upon a child of God, if all God’s waves and billows went over him; if he were to descend into the deeps of affliction so low that the earth with her bars seemed to be about him for ever; if not one ray of light came into his soul, but he was tormented with temptation, and afflicted by Satan, and deserted by man, and body and soul were alike in grief and pain, yet would all this only be a token of divine love to him and part of the process by which love would supremely bless him. The utmost that can be truthfully said on the dark side of a believer’s worst estate is this, “In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment.” O children of God, you ought to be comforted by this, but I know you will not be unless the divine Comforter shall lay these heavenly truths home to your souls. I can but speak them in my own feeble manner; he can speak them with power. Our duty, then, under the Lord’s little wrath is to feel it and grieve about it, and to search ourselves, and put away our sins; but we must not dishonour the Lord by unbelief, nor fancy ourselves to be under the covenant of works, or speak as if the atonement had failed and left us as much the heirs of wrath as before. We are not under the law, and cannot therefore be under the wrath which the law worketh. We are not accounted as guilty before the Lord, and therefore cannot be obnoxious to his great anger. Let us remember this, and be of good courage when we are enduring the chastisements of the Lord.

We are now to consider the great wrath of god and our security against it. Our security against it is this: “This is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee.” Until God drowns the whole world again, he never can let out his great wrath against his people. Many centuries have gone by since Noah was saved in the ark, and there has been no other universal flood. There have been partial floods here and there, but the earth has never been completely destroyed with water. I should not wonder but what the first shower of rain that fell after he came out of the ark frightened Noah, and if it had not been that he saw the bow of God in the cloud, he would have trembled lest once again the fair world would be buried in the deeps; but his fears were all in vain, generations have followed generations in perfect safety from a deluge, and I do not suppose that there is now a man existing who is afraid of a general flood. Now, child of God, you must get rid, once for all, of all fear that God’s great wrath can ever be let loose upon you; for it can never come upon the justified. Be sure of this, that as the waters of Noah shall no more go over the earth, so if thou believest in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord will never be wroth with thee nor rebuke thee, so as to destroy thee, or count thee his enemy. His great wrath is over. The flood of old lasted twelve months and more, and during that time there was neither sowing nor reaping, but the Lord has said that never again shall a flood interrupt the operations of nature. “Seed time and harvest,” said he, “summer and winter shall not cease:” and they have not ceased. Go abroad now into the fields and see how loaded they are with the fruits of the earth, which are ripening for the sickle. Note, then, that as God has not suffered the seasons to be suspended by another flood, though thousands of years have passed away, so certain is it that he will not suspend your spiritual life, nor take from you the blessings of his covenant by letting out his wrath against you. He says he will not, and, brother, it were something like blasphemy to indulge a doubt after this.

My text suggests to me that we have ample security that the wrath of God will never break out against us, for it has broken out against us once. The waters of Noah did go over the earth once, but never twice. Now, the wrath of God can never break forth against his redeemed, because it has already broken forth against them. Do you not remember it? It was on that dark, that doleful night, when our great covenant Head and Representative was in the garden all alone, and then the flood began to rise and rage, and he said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” There was a sight in the garden that night such as none of us have ever seen:-

“Immanuel, sunk with dreadful woe,

Unfelt, unknown to all below-

Except the Son of God-

In agonizing pangs of soul,

Drinks deep of wormwood’s bitterest bowl,

And sweats great drops of blood.”

The floods lifted up their voice, the cataracts of wrath descended, and the great deeps opened up from beneath to overwhelm his spirit. The waters came in even unto his soul. Ye know what happened to him in Pilate’s hall, and among the soldiers, how he hid not his face from shame and spitting while he bowed his back to the smiter’s lash; and ye remember well how they took him to the cross and nailed him there, your Lord and mine. “It pleased the Father to bruise him: he hath put him to grief”; he made his soul an offering for sin, and laid on him the iniquities of us all. The Father hid his face from him, and refused to smile on the sinner’s Substitute. The tempest had come to its highest, the floods were out twenty cubits above the tops of the mountains when our Lord cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The flood was then at its height, even that flood of wrath which was due to us for sin. In the death of the Lord Jesus we died. We were crucified in him; in him we bore the punishment for sin. The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Take it for a stable maxim, which never can be denied, that two judgments can never be meted out for the same offence: neither the laws of earth nor heaven will permit that the Substitute should bleed and then that the penalty should a second time be demanded. Where would be the value of atonement if such could be the case? Jesus has paid our debts, and therefore we are out of debt; he has taken the handwriting of ordinances which was against us, and nailed it to his cross; there is the receipt for all our debts, fastened up before heaven and hell upon the cross of Christ. “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died.” Is not that answer enough for all the charges of hell?

Let us put together two or three texts and drink in their sweetness. “Once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” Get hold of that. Sin is put away for ever. “He came,” another prophet tells us, “to finish transgression, and make an end of sin.” Now, if he has made an end of sin, where is it? What reason can we have to fear its return? Think how David puts it: “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” Does anybody know how far in the broad heavens the east is from the west? In the vastness of space no boundary can be imagined in either direction, and therefore the distance is inconceivable. If the great enemy were to try and bring back our sins, it would take him an eternity to do it in, and meanwhile we shall be safe in heaven. What is said concerning the Lord in the Book of Micah? “He will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” Does anybody know how deep the sea is? In some places it is said to be unfathomable. Can we find again that which is cast into the deeps? Our sins are cast by our Lord Jesus into deeps where no line will ever reach them. Glory be to his name for this. Another text flashes upon my memory: “In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found.” Take this again: “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins.” The texts which speak to this effect are many; time would fail us to mention them, but their sum and substance is that Jesus Christ our great covenant surety was made a curse for us, and has thereby redeemed us from the curse of the law. You see, then, my drift. The floods of great wrath have been out, they have rolled over the dear Redeemer’s sacred person and spent their fury:

“The tempest’s awful voice was heard;

O Christ, it broke on thee!

Thy open bosom was my ward,

It braved the storm for me.

Thy form was scarred, thy visage marred;

Now cloudless peace for me.”

It is absolutely certain that there never shall be a second flood either of water to drown the world, or of divine wrath to overwhelm the souls of the redeemed. What joy is this? But this is not all.

Note that the text gives us next the oath of God as our security. “As I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee.” It is always a solemn occasion when Jehovah lifts his hand to heaven and swears. Then is a matter confirmed indeed when it is secured by the oath of God. To my mind nothing is more full of awe: I cannot grasp the thought to the full, and yet I love to dwell upon it. He swears by himself because he could swear by no greater, and thus adding his oath to his promise he gives us two immutable things wherein it is impossible for God to lie. He has pledged himself, saying, “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” The sin which was buried in Christ’s tomb shall never rise again, or be mentioned against us any more for ever; the iniquity which was borne by Christ shall never be laid to the charge of those for whom the Saviour bore it. How could it be? So long as truth and holiness remain, how can it be imagined that atonement can be accepted and yet the sinner punished on his own account. If God can break his oath, may this thing be, but this is inconceivable, and so we rest secure.

But next we have before us the fact that the Lord has guaranteed our security by a covenant, for in the tenth verse he says, “Neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed.” The passage should be read, “Neither shall my covenant of peace be removed.” The eternal Father has entered into covenant with Christ that he would give to him a seed for whom he should be the Covenant Head and Surety. Christ has fulfilled his side of the covenant by bearing all the penalty for his people’s sin, and fulfilling all righteousness, and now that covenant stands fast to be assuredly executed on the Father’s side. Thus runs the covenant, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” “I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, and they shall not depart from me.” God hath said, “I will dwell in them and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” This is the covenant from which the Lord cannot and will not draw back, for he never alters the thing which has gone forth out of his mouth. This covenant was signed and sealed and ratified by the blood of Christ, and it is in all things well ordered and sure, and therefore the people of God may rest in perfect security of their everlasting deliverance from the deluge of righteous wrath.

And now, to close, what blessed illustrations of our security are added in the further declaration of the Lord’s mind and will. The Lord looks on the mountains and the hills, and declares that these and all things visible will pass away, for time’s grandest birth shall perish when eternity resumes its sway. The mountains and the hills may represent the most stable of earthly hopes and confidences: these all must fail us when most we need them. The Lord himself assures us of this, and therefore does not at all guarantee to us any security in the things which are seen, nor any peace that can be drawn from the creature; our consolation lies elsewhere. “The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith Jehovah, the Pitier.” Melt, ye mountains, and dissolve, ye hills; perish, O earth, and flee away ye heavens, but the Lord cannot forget his oath nor forsake his chosen. Should our dearest friends die, should we traverse many times the sorrowful path to the sepulchre, should those who survive become unkind, should our substance be swept away, and our honourable name be unjustly questioned; should we be driven by persecution into banishment, and should weakness and sickness cast us upon the bed of languishing, should consumption mark us for her own, or painful maladies come upon us as armed men, we should then see the mountains depart and the hills remove; but even then we would triumph in almighty love, for thus saith the Lord, “My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall my covenant of peace be removed.” The sick chamber shall be a palace, the sickness itself an angelic messenger, poverty shall make us rich, shame shall increase our honour, banishment shall bring us nearer home, and death itself shall enlarge the bounds of life. Under no conceivable circumstances shall the covenant fail; the Lord who made it cannot change, Jesus who sealed it cannot die, the lore which dictated it cannot cease, the power which executes it cannot decay, and the truth which guarantees it cannot be questioned. In the eternal provisions of that covenant of peace, which is sure to all the seed, we may rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. My brethren, do you believe this? If you do you ought to be as happy as the angels are. Our lot is supremely blessed. What a loving God we serve, and what great things has he spoken concerning us. The soul is filled with wonder that the Almighty God should in very deed enter into covenant engagements with the insects of a day who are crushed before the moth! Whatever may be our outward sorrows, yet when we consider these choice favours and enjoy them in our own souls we may count ourselves of all men the most happy. How can we be so cold, so dead, as we are? Such favours are enough to make rocks and hills sing out. O my soul, arouse thee, and henceforth and evermore pour forth loud hallelujahs unto the Lord.

As for you who have no portion in divine realities, what do you possess that is worth having? O you who are seeking the world, but are despising covenant mercies, it were better for you that you had never been born. “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Think upon this, and consider your ways. There is this encouragement for you, that all through our text the leading note is mercy. Look at the seventh verse, “With great mercies will I gather thee.” Look at the eighth verse, “Will I have mercy on thee.” The word of God drips with mercy. Remember also that if any of us have obtained these covenant promises we were no better than you by nature, and we had no more meritorious right to them than you have; but God in infinite distinguishing grace was pleased to bring us into the enjoyment of these privileges: why should he not bring you also? If salvation were by merit, there would be no gospel; but as it is of mercy, free mercy, rich mercy, here is good news for you. Dear heart, if thou wouldst be forgiven, Christ is ready to forgive; if thou wouldst have peace with God, that peace is made. If thou believest in the Lord Jesus Christ thou shalt be saved, even as they are who are this day rejoicing in his complete redemption. The Lord bring thee this day to confess thy sin humbly, to look up to Christ believingly, and to find salvation through the blood of the Lamb. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Isaiah 54.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-245, 738.

ENOCH

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, July 30th, 1876, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

“And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah: and Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: and all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: and Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.”-Genesis 5:21-24.

“By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”-Hebrews 11:5, 6.

“And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”-Jude 14, 15.

The three passages of Scripture which I have read are all the authentic information we have concerning Enoch, and it would be idle to supplement it with the fictions of ancient commentators. Enoch is called the seventh from Adam, to distinguish him from the other Enoch of the line of Cain, who was the third from Adam. In the first patriarchs God was pleased to manifest to men portions of the truth in reference to true religion. These men of the olden times were not only themselves taught of God, but they were also teachers of their age, and types in whom great truths were exhibited. Abel taught the need of approaching the Lord with sacrifice, the need of atonement by blood: he laid the lamb upon the altar, and sealed his testimony with his own blood. Atonement is so precious a truth that to die for its defence is a worthy deed, and from the very first it is a doctrine which has secured its martyrs, who being dead yet speak.

Then Seth and Enos taught men the necessity of a distinct avowal of their faith in the Lord, and the need of assembling for his worship, for we read concerning the days of Enos and Seth, “Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.” Those who worshipped through the atoning sacrifice separated themselves from the rest of men, assembled as a church in the name of the Lord, and worshipped, calling upon the name of Jehovah. The heart must first believe in the great sacrifice with Abel, and then the mouth must confess the same with Seth. Then came Enoch whose life went beyond the reception and confession of the atonement, for he set before men the great truth of communion with God; he displayed in his life the relation of the believer to the Most High, and showed how near the living God condescends to be to his own children. May our progress in knowledge be similar to the growth of the patriarchal teaching. Brethren, you do know as Abel did the sacrificial lamb, your confidence is in the precious blood, and so by faith you bring to God the most acceptable of all offerings. Having advanced so far the most of us have proceeded a step further, and we have called upon the name, and are the avowed followers of Jesus. We have given ourselves up to the Lord in the solemn burial of baptism, when we were baptised into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, because we reckoned ourselves dead in Christ to all the world, and risen with him into newness of life. Henceforth the divine name is named on us, and we are no more our own. And now we gather together in our church capacity, we assemble around the table of fellowship, we unite in our meetings for prayer and worship, and the centre for us all is the name of the Lord. We are separated from the world, and set apart to be a people who declare his name. Thus far well; we have seen the sacrifice of Jesus as the way with Abel; and we have avowed the truth with Seth; now let us take the next step and know the life with Enoch. Let us endeavour to walk with God as Enoch did.

Perhaps a meditation upon the holy patriarch’s life may help us to imitate it; while considering what he was, and under what circumstances he came to be so, we may by the Holy Spirit be helped to reach the point to which he attained. This is the desire of every godly man, all the saints desire communion with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. The constant cry of our soul is to our Lord, “Abide with me.” I buried yesterday one of the excellent of the earth, who loved and feared and served his God far better than most of us; he was an eminently devout brother, and one of the last wishes of his heart he had committed to writing in a letter to a friend, when he little thought of dying. It was this “I have longed to realize the life of Enoch, and to walk with God;”-

“Oh for a closer walk with God!”

He did but write what you and I also feel. If such be your desires, and such I feel sure they are, so surely as you are the Lord’s people, then I hope a consideration of the life of Enoch may help you towards the realization of your wish.

First, then, what does Enoch’s walking with God imply? It is a short description of a man’s life, but there is a mint of meaning in it; secondly, what circumstances were connected with his remarkable life? for these are highly instructive: and thirdly, what was the close of it? It was as remarkable as the life itself.

First, then, what is meant by Enoch’s walking with God? Paul helps us to our first observation upon this by his note in the Hebrews. His walk with God was a testimony that Enoch was well pleasing to God. “Before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.” This is evidently the apostle’s interpretation of his walking with God, and it is a most correct one, for the Lord will not walk with a man in whom he has no pleasure. Can two walk together, except they be agreed? If men walk contrary to God, he will not walk with them, but contrary to them. Walking together implies amity, friendship, intimacy, love, and these cannot exist between God and the soul unless the man is acceptable unto the Lord. Doubtless Enoch, like Elias, was a man of like passions with ourselves. He had fallen with the rest of mankind in the sin of Adam, there was sin about him as there is sin about us by nature, and he had gone astray in act and deed as all we, like sheep, have done: and therefore he needed pardon and cleansing, even as we do. Then to be pleasing with God it was needful that he should be forgiven and justified, even as we are; for no man can be pleasing to God till sin is pardoned and righteousness is imputed. To this end there must be faith, for there can be no justification except by faith, and as we have said already, there is no pleasing God except our persons are justified. Right well, then, does the apostle say, “Without faith it is impossible to please God,” and by faith Enoch was made pleasing to God, even as we are at this day. This is worthy of earnest notice, brethren, because this way of faith is open to us. If Enoch had been pleasing to God by virtue of some extraordinary gifts and talents, or by reason of marvellous achievements and miraculous works, we might have been in despair; but if he was pleasing to God through faith, that same faith which saved the dying thief, that same faith which has been wrought in you and in me, then the wicket gate at the head of the way in which men walk with God is open to us also. If we have faith we may enter into fellowship with the Lord. How this ought to endear faith to us! The highest grades of spiritual life depend upon the lower ones, and rise out of them. If you want to walk with God as a man of God, you must begin by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, simply, as a babe in grace. The highest saintship must commence by the confession of our sinnership, and our laying hold upon Christ crucified. Not otherwise does the strongest believer live than the weakest believer; and if you are to grow to be among the strongest of the Lord’s warriors, it must be by faith which lays hold upon divine strength. Beginning in the Spirit you are not to be made perfect in the flesh; you are not to proceed a certain distance by faith in Christ, and then to commence living by your own works; your walk is to continue as it begun. “As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord so walk ye in him.” Enoch was always pleasing to God, but it was because he always believed, and lived in the power of his faith. This is worth knowing and remembering, for we may yet be tempted to strive for some imaginary higher style of religious life by looking to our feelings instead of looking alone to the Lord. We must not remove our eye from looking alone to Jesus himself even to admire his image within ourselves; for if we do so we shall go backward rather than forward. No, beloved; by faith Enoch became pleasing to God, and by faith he walked with God: let us follow in his track.

Next, when we read that Enoch walked with God we are to understand that he realised the divine presence. You cannot consciously walk with a person whose existence is not known to you. When we walk with a man, we know that he is there, we hear his footfall if we cannot see his face; we have some very clear perception that there is such a person at our side. Now, if we look to the Hebrews again, Paul tells us “He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Enoch’s faith, then, was a realizing faith. He did not believe things as a matter of creed, and then put them up on the shelf out of the way, as too many do: he was not merely orthodox in head, but the truth had entered into his heart, and what he believed was true to him, practically true, true as a matter of fact in his daily life. He walked with God: it was not that he thought of God merely, that he speculated about God, that he argued about God, that he read about God, that he talked about God, but he walked with God, which is the practical and experimental part of true godliness. In his daily life he realized that God was with him, and he regarded him as a living friend, in whom he confided and by whom he was loved. Oh, beloved, do you not see that if you are to reach to the highest style of Christian life you must do it through the realization of those very things which by faith you have received? Grasp them, let them be to you substance and evidence. Make them sure, look upon them, handle them, taste them in your inmost soul, and so know them beyond all question. You must see him who is invisible, and possess that which cannot be as yet enjoyed. Believe not only that God is, but that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, for this according to Paul is the Enoch faith. God realized as existing, observing, judging, and rewarding human deeds: a real God, really with us-this we must know, or there is no walking with God.

Then, as we read that Enoch walked with God, we have no doubt it signifies that he had very familiar intercourse with the Most High. I scarcely know an intercourse that is more free, pleasant, and cordial than that which arises out of constant walking with a friend. If I wished to find a man’s most familiar friend it would surely be one with whom he daily walked. If you were to say “I sometimes go into his house and sit a little while with him;” it would not amount to so much as when you can say “I have from day to day walked the fields and climbed the hills with him.” In walking, friends become communicative-one tells his trouble, and the other strives to console him under it, and then imparts to him his own secret in return. When persons are constantly in the habit of walking together from choice, you may be quite sure there are many communications between them with which no stranger may intermeddle. If I wanted to know a man through and through, I should want to walk with him for a time, for walking communion brings out parts of the man which even in domestic life may be concealed. Walking for a continuance implies and engenders close fellowship and great familiarity between friends. But will God in very deed thus walk with men? Yes, he did so with Enoch, and he has done so with many of his people since. He tells us his secret, the secret of the Lord, which he reveals only to them that fear him, and we tell to him alike our joys in praise, our sorrows in prayer, and our sins in confession. The heart unloads itself of all its cares into the heart of him that careth for us; and the Lord pours forth his floods of goodness as he imparts to the beloved ones a sense of his own everlasting love to them. This is the very flower and sweetness of Christian experience, its lily and its rose, its calamus and myrrh. If you would taste the cream of Christian life, it is found in having a realising faith, and entering into intimate intercourse with the heavenly Father. So Enoch walked with God.

Next it is implied in the term “walked” that his intercourse with God was continuous. As an old divine has well remarked, he did not take a turn or two with God and then leave his company, but he walked with God for hundreds of years. It is implied in the text that this was the tenor of his life throughout the whole of its three hundred and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God after Methuselah had been born, three hundred years, and doubtless he had walked with him before. What a splendid walk! A walk of three hundred years! One might desire a change of company if he walked with anybody else, but to walk with God for three centuries was so sweet that the patriarch kept on with his walk until he walked beyond time and space, and walked into paradise, where he is still marching on in the same divine society. He had heaven on earth, and it was therefore not so wonderful that he glided away from earth to heaven so easily. He did not commune with God by fits and starts, but he abode in the conscious love of God. He did not now and then climb to the heights of elevated piety and then descend into the marshy valley of lukewarmness; but he continued in the calm, happy, equable enjoyment of fellowship with God from day to day. Night with its sleep did not suspend it; day with its cares did not endanger it. It was not a run, a rush, a leap, a spurt, but a steady walk. On, on, through three happy centuries and more did Enoch continue to walk with God.

It is implied also in this phrase that his life was progressive: for if a man walks either by himself or with anybody else, he makes progress, he goes forward. Enoch walked with God. At the end of two hundred years he was not where he began, he was in the same company, but he had gone forward in the right way. At the end of the third hundred years Enoch enjoyed more, understood more, loved more, had received more, and could give out more, for he had gone forward in all respects. A man who walks with God will necessarily grow in grace, and in the knowledge of God, and in likeness to Christ. You cannot suppose a perpetual walk with God year after year, without the favoured person being strengthened, sanctified, instructed, and rendered more able to glorify God. So I gather that Enoch’s life was a life of spiritual progress, he went from strength to strength, and made headway in the gracious pilgrimage. May God grant us to be pressing onward ourselves.

Suffer a few more observations upon Enoch’s walk. In “Kitto’s Daily Bible Readings “there is an exceedingly pleasing piece, illustrating what it must be to walk with God by the figure of a father’s taking his little son by the hand and walking forth with him upon the breezy hills. He says, “As that child walks with thee, so do thou walk with God. That child loves thee now. The world-the cold and cruel world-has not yet come between his heart and thine. His love now is the purest and most beautiful he will ever feel, or thou wilt ever receive. Cherish it well, and as that child walks lovingly with thee, so do thou walk lovingly with God.” It is a delight to such children to be with their father. The roughness of the way or of the weather is nothing to them: it is joy enough to go for a walk with father. There is a warm, tender, affectionate grip of the hand and a beaming smile of the eye as they look up to father while he conducts them over hill and dale. Such a walk is humble too, for the child looks upon its father as the greatest and wisest man that ever lived. He considers him to be the incarnation of everything that is strong and wise, and all that his father says or does he admires. As he walks along he feels for his father the utmost affection, but his reverence is equally strong: he is very near his father, but yet he is only a child, and looks up to his father as his king. Moreover such a walk is one of perfect confidence. The boy is not afraid of missing his way, he trusts implicitly his father’s guidance. His father’s arm will screen him from all danger, and therefore he does not so much as give it a thought-why should he? If care is needed as to the road, it is his father’s business to see to it, and the child, therefore, never dreams of anxiety; why should he? If any difficult place is to be passed, the father will have to lift the boy over it, or help him through it-the child meanwhile is merry as a bird-why should he not be? Thus should the believer walk with God, resting on eternal tenderness and rejoicing in undoubted love. A believer should be unconscious of dread either as to the present or to the future. Beloved friend in Christ, your Father may be trusted, he will supply all your need.

“Thou art as much his care as if beside

No man or angel lived in heaven or earth.”

What an instructive walk a child has with a wise, communicative parent! How many of his little puzzles are explained to him, how everything about him is illuminated by the father’s wisdom. The boy every step he takes becomes the wiser for such companionship. Oh, happy children of God, who have been taught of their Father while they have walked with him! Enoch must have been a man of profound knowledge and great wisdom as to divine things. He must have dived into the deep things of God beyond most men.

His life must also have been a holy life, because he walked with God, and God never walks out of the way of holiness. If we walk with God, we must walk according to truth, justice, and love. The Lord has no company with the unjust and rebellious, and therefore we know that he who walked with God must have been an upright and holy man.

Enoch’s life must, moreover, have been a happy one. Who could be unhappy with such a companion! With God himself to be with us the way can never be dreary. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.” Granted that God is your companion, and your road must be a way of pleasantness and a path of peace.

Did Enoch walk with God, then his pilgrimage must have been safe. What a guard is the Great Jehovah! He is sun and shield, he giveth grace and glory. He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. Nothing can harm the man who is walking with the Lord God at his right hand.

And oh, what an honourable thing it is to walk with the Eternal! Many a man would give thousands to walk with a king. Numbers of people are such worshippers of dignities that if a king did but smile at them they would be intoxicated with delight. What, then, is the honour of walking with the King of kings! What a patent of nobility it is to be permitted to walk with the blessed and only Potentate all one’s life long! Who is he that is thus favoured to be the King’s companion, to walk alone with him, and to become his familiar friend? Jehovah ruleth earth and heaven, and hell, and is Lord of all who shall walk with him! If it were only for the honour of it, oh Christians, how you ought to pant to walk with God. Enoch found it safe, happy, holy, honourable, and I know not how much more that is excellent, but certainly this was a golden life: where shall we find anything to equal it?

Secondly, let us consider what circumstances were connected with Enoch’s walking with God? The first remark is that the details of his life are very few. We do not know much about Enoch, and this is to his advantage. Happy is the nation which has no history, for a nation which has a history has been vexed with wars and revolutions, and bloodshed; but a nation that is always happy, peaceful, and prosperous has no chronicle to attract the lover of sensations. Happy is Enoch that we cannot write a long biography of him; the few words, “Enoch walked with God,” suffice to depict his whole career, until “he was not, for God took him.” If you go and look at a farmer’s field, and you can say of it when you come back, “I saw yellow flowers covering it till it seemed a cloth of gold, and then I spied out here and there white flowers like silver buttons set on the golden vesture, and blue corn-flowers also looked up with their lovely eyes, and begemmed the whole,” you will think that it is a very pretty field if you are a child; but the farmer shakes his head, for he knows that it is in bad condition, and overrun with weeds; but if you come back and simply say, “It is as fine a piece of wheat as ever grew, and that is all,” then your description, though brief, is very satisfactory. Many of those dazzling events and striking incidents and sensational adventures which go to make up an interesting biography may attract attention, but they do not minister to the real excellence of the life. No life can surpass that of a man who quietly continues to serve God in the place where providence has placed him. I believe that in the judgment of angels and all pure-minded beings that woman’s life is most to be admired which consists simply of this: “She did what she could;” and that man’s life shall be the most noteworthy of whom it can be said: “He followed the Lord fully.” Enoch’s life has no adventures; is it not adventure enough for a man to walk with God? What ambition can crave a nobler existence than abiding in fellowship with the Eternal?

But some will say, “Well, but Enoch must have been very peculiarly situated: he was no doubt placed in very advantageous circumstances for piety.” Now, observe that this was not so, for first, he was a public man. He is called the “seventh from Adam.” He was a notable man, and looked up to as one of the fathers of his age. A patriarch in those days must have been a man of mark, loaded with responsibility as well as with honour. The ancient custom was that the head of the family was prophet, priest, and king in his household, and abroad if he was a man of station and substance he was counsellor, magistrate and ruler. Enoch was a great man in his day, one of the most important of the period; hence we may be sure he had his trials, and bore the brunt of opposition from the powerful ungodly party which opposed the ways of godliness. He is mentioned among a noble list of men. Some have unwisely thought,” I could walk with God if I had a little cottage, if I lived in a quiet village, but you see I am a public man, I occupy a position of trust, and I have to mix with my fellow men. I do not see how I am to walk with God.” Ah, my dear friend, but Enoch did; though he was undoubtedly a man distinguished in his time, and full of public cares, yet he lost not the thread of sacred converse with heaven, but held on in his holy course through a life of centuries.

Note again that Enoch was a family man. “Enoch walked with God and begat sons and daughters.” Some have said, “Ah, you cannot live as you like if you have a lot of children about you. Do not tell me about keeping up your hours of prayer and quiet reading of the Scriptures if you have a large family of little ones; you will be disturbed, and there will be many domestic incidents which will be sure to try your temper and upset your equanimity. Get away into the woods, and find a hermit’s cell, there with your brown jug of water and your loaf of bread, you may be able to walk with God, but with a wife, not always amiable, and a troop of children who are never quiet, neither by day nor night, how can a man be expected to walk with God?” The wife on the other hand exclaims, “I believe that had I remained a single woman I might have walked with God. When I was a young woman I was full of devotion, but now with my husband, who is not always in the best of tempers, and with my children, who seem to have an unlimited number of wants, and never to have them satisfied, how is it possible that I can walk with God?” We turn to Enoch again, and we are confident that it can be done. “Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters, and all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years.” Thus, you see, he was a public man, and he was a family man, and yet he walked with God for more than three hundred years. There is no need to be a hermit, or to renounce the married life in order to live near to God.

In addition to this, Enoch lived in a very evil age. He was prominent at a time when sin was beginning to cover the earth, not very long before the earth was corrupt and God saw fit to sweep the whole population from off its surface on account of sin. Enoch lived in a day of mockers and despisers. You know that from his prophecy, as recorded by Jude. He prophesied, saying, “The Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” He lived when few loved God and when those who professed to do so were being drawn aside by the blandishments of the daughters of men. Church and state were proposing an alliance, fashion and pleasure ruled the hour, and unhallowed compromise was the order of the day. He lived towards the close of those primitive times wherein long lives had produced great sinners, and great sinners had invented great provocations of God. Do not complain, therefore, of your times and of your neighbours and other surroundings, for amid them all you may still walk with God.

Enoch walked with God, and in consequence thereof he bore his witness for God. “Enoch the seventh from Adam prophesied.” He could not be silent, the fire burned within his soul, and could not be restrained. When he had delivered his testimony it is clear that he encountered opposition. I am certain that he did so from the context in Jude, because the passage in Jude has to do with murmurers and “complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words,” and Enoch is brought in as having had to do with such persons. His sermon shows that he was a man who stood firm amidst a torrent of blasphemy and rebuke, carrying on the great controversy for the truth of God against the wicked lives and licentious tongues of the scoffers of his age; for he says, “Behold, the Lord cometh with myriads of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed.” It is clear that they spoke against Enoch, they rejected his testimony, they grieved his spirit, and he mourned that in this they were speaking against God; for he speaks “of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” He saw their ungodly lives, and bore witness against them. It is remarkable that his great subject should have been the second advent, and it is still more noteworthy that the two other men whom one would select as living nearest to God, namely, Daniel and John, were both men who spoke much concerning the coming of the Lord and the great judgment-day. I need not quote the words of Daniel, who tells us of the judgment which is to be set, and of the Ancient of Days who shall come upon his throne; nor need I repeat the constant witness of John concerning the Lord’s second coming, I will only mention his fervent exclamation, “Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.”

Thus you see that Enoch was a preacher of the word of God, and therefore he had a care over and above that which falls to the lot of most of you: and yet with that and all the rest put together he could please God until his life’s end, if I may speak of an end to a life which ran into an endless state of joy: he continued as long as he was here to walk in faith, to walk in a manner in which God was pleased, and so his communion with the Lord was never broken.

We would first remark that he finished his work early. Enoch walked with God, and that was such a good, sure, progressive walk that he travelled faster, and reached his house sooner, than those of us who walk with God sometimes and with the world at other times. Three hundred and sixty-five years would have been a long life to us, but it was a short life for that period when several patriarchs attained to nearly a thousand years of age. Enoch’s life as compared to the usual life of the period was like a life of thirty or thirty-five years in these short-lived ages,-in fact, the best parallel to it is the life of our Lord. As compared with the extended ages of men of his period Enoch’s life was of about the same length as that of the Lord Jesus in comparison with such lives as ours. He passed away comparatively a young man, as our dear brother and elder Verdon, just departed, has done: and we do not wonder that he did. They say “Whom the gods love die young:” and both Enoch and Verdon were men greatly beloved. Perhaps these holy men ended their career so soon because they had done their life-work so diligently that they finished betimes. Some workmen if they have a job to do in your house are about it all day long, or rather all the week long, and make no end of chips and confusion. No wonder that some people live a long while, for they had need to do so to do anything at all! But this man did his work so well, and kept so close to God that his day’s work was done at noon, and the Lord said, “Come home, Enoch, there is no need for you to be out of heaven any longer; you have borne your testimony, you have lived your life; through all the ages men will look upon you as a model man, and therefore you may come home.” God never keeps his wheat out in the fields longer than is necessary, when it is ripe he reaps it at once: when his people are ready to go home he will take them home. Do not regret the death of a good man while he is young; on the contrary, bless God that still there is some early ripening wheat in the world, and that some of his saints are sanctified so speedily.

But what did happen to Enoch? I am afraid I have said he died, or that I shall say so, it is so natural to speak of men as dying, but he alone and one other of all the human race are all that have entered the heavenly Canaan without fording the river of death. We are told concerning him that “he was not.” Those gentlemen who believe that the word to “die” signifies to be annihilated, would have been still more confirmed in their views if the words in my text, “he was not” had been applied to all departed men, for if any expression might signify annihilation on their mode of translation-this is the one. “He was not” does not, however, mean that he was annihilated, and neither does the far feebler term of dying signify anything of the kind. “He was not”; that is to say, he was not here, that is all. He was gone from earth, but he was there, there where God had translated him. He was, he is with God, and that without having tasted death. Do not grudge him his avoidance of death. It was a favour, but not by any means so great as some would think, for those who do not die must undergo a change, and Enoch was changed. “We shall not all sleep,” says the apostle, “but we shall all be changed.” The flesh and blood of Enoch could not inherit the kingdom of God: in a moment he underwent a transformation which you and I will have to undergo in the day of the resurrection; and so, though he was not on earth, he was translated or transplanted from the gardens of earth to the Paradise above. Now, if there is any man in the world that shall never die it is he who walks with God. If there is any man to whom death will be as nothing, it is the man who has looked to the second advent of Christ and gloried in it; if there is any man who, though he pass through the iron gates of death shall never feel the terror of the grim foe, it is the man whose life below has been perpetual communion with God. Go not about by any other way to escape the pangs of death, but walk with God, and you will be able to say, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

It is said of him that “God took him.” A very remarkable expression. Perhaps he did it in some visible manner. I should not wonder. Perhaps the whole of the patriarchs saw him depart even as the apostles were present when our Lord was taken up. However that may be, there was some special rapture, some distinct taking up of this choice one to the throne of the Most High. “He was not, for God took him.”

Note that he was missed. This is one thing which I could not overlook. He was missed, for the apostle says he “was not found.” Now, if a man is not found, it shows that somebody looked after him. When Elijah went to heaven, you remember fifty men of the sons of the prophets went and searched for him. I do not wonder that they did; they would not meet with an Elijah every day, and when he was gone away, body and all, they might well look for him. Enoch was not found, but they looked after him. A good man is missed. A true child of God in a church like this, working and serving his Master, is only one among five thousand; but if he has walked with God his decease is lamented. The dear brother whom we have just buried we shall miss, his brother elders will miss him, the many who have been converted to God and helped by his means will miss him, and assuredly I shall miss him. I look towards the spot where he used to sit,-I trust that someone else will sit there who will be half as useful as he was; it will be almost more than I can expect. We do not want so to live and die that nobody will care whether we are on earth or not. Enoch was missed when he was gone, and so will they be who walk with God.

Last of all, Enoch’s departure was a testimony. What did he say by the fact that “he was not, for God took him,” but this: there is a future state? Men had begun to doubt it, but when they said, “Where is Enoch?” and those who had witnessed his departure said “God took him,” it was to them an evidence that there was a God, and that there was another world. And when they said, “But where is his body?” there was another lesson. Two men had died before him, I mean two whose deaths are recorded in Scripture,-Abel was killed, and his witness was that the seed of the serpent hates the woman’s seed; Adam, too, had died about fifty years before Enoch’s translation, whose witness was that, however late the penalty may come, yet the soul that sinneth it shall die. Now comes Enoch, and his testimony is that the body is capable of immortality. He could not bear testimony to resurrection, for he did not die: for that we have testimony in Christ, who is the first fruits from among the dead; but the testimony of Enoch went a good way towards it, for it bore evidence that the body was capable of being immortal, and of living in a heavenly condition. “He was not, for God took him.”

His departure also was a testimony to mankind that there is a reward for the righteous, that God does not sit with stony eyes regardless of the sins of the wicked, or of the virtues of his saints, but that he sees and is pleased with his people who walk with him, and that he can give them even now present rewards by delivering them from the pangs of death, and therefore he will certainly give rewards to all his people in some way or other. Thus you see, living and dying-nay, not dying, again I do mistake-living and being translated, Enoch was still a witness to his generation, and I do pray that all of us, whether we live or whether we sleep, may be witnesses for God. Oh that we could live as my good brother Verdon, whom we have lately buried, lived, whose soul was on fire with love to Christ. He had a very passion for souls. I scarcely think there is one among us who did as much as he, for though he had to earn his daily bread, his evenings were spent with us in the service of the Lord, or in preaching the gospel, and then all night long he frequently paced the weary streets, looking after the fallen, that he might bring them in, and often went to his morning’s work unrested, except by the rest which he found in the service of Christ. He would sometimes meet a brother with eyes full of joy, and say, “Five souls won for Christ last night.” At other times after a sermon here he was a great soul hunter, and would fetch enquirers downstairs into the prayer-meeting, and when he had squeezed my hand he would say in his Swiss tones, which I cannot imitate, “Jesus saved some more last night: more souls were brought to Jesus.” For him to live was to win souls. He was the youngest in our eldership, but the grey-heads do him honour. As we stood weeping about his tomb, there was not one among us but what felt that we had lost a true brother and a valiant fellow-soldier. The Lord raise up others among you to do what Elder Verdon did! The Lord quicken the elder brethren to be more active than they are, and make the young ones more devoted. Our ranks are broken, who shall fill up the gap? We are getting fewer and fewer as the Lord takes one and another home of the best instructed and of the bravest hearted; but recruits are daily coming in. May others come forward-yea, Lord, bring them forward by thy Holy Spirit to be leaders in the front rank, that as the vanguard melts into the church triumphant, the rear may continually find additions. Translated to the skies are some, may others be translated out of darkness into marvellous light, for Christ’s sake. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Psalm 119:33-56.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-122, 780, 775.

THE RECORDERS

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s-Day Evening, June 25th, 1876, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

“To record, and to thank and praise the Lord God of Israel.”-1 Chronicles 16:4.

David took care of every part of divine worship; he saw that nothing was neglected in the service of the God in whom he delighted. Let this stand as an example to us to be careful about everything which concerns the honour of God. Do not allow any one of the duties of your holy faith to be forgotten, but seek to exhibit harmonious and entire obedience to the divine will. Do not merely attend to what are called religious duties, but with equal religiousness regard your social duties, and present to the Lord as far as you can a complete service. Such David desired to do. You observe that he had those about him who offered burnt offerings unto the Lord continually, morning and evening, as God had commanded-these things were not to be left undone. And then he set apart certain others to attend to the service of song. Theirs it was to sound the trumpets and to call the people together; theirs to touch the harmonious strings of harps, or to sound with cymbals of brass, or to lift their voices on high m the sweet praises of Jehovah; for God is to be served with sacrifice, and praised with song. Our God accepts us when we labour for him, and when we praise him: let both be done heartily. It were a pity if we worked so hard that we could not sing; it were equally unhappy if we sang so much that we idled away our time; there must be a bell and a pomegranate, a bell and a pomegranate, music and fruit, service and song. There was also a third company set apart for a somewhat extraordinary work, namely, as our text tells us, to record. They were to take notes of what God had done, and was doing; they were to be the chronicles of the nation, and out of their chronicles they were to compose the psalms and songs. Perhaps that is the meaning of the word “record” here, but the original bears another meaning-“to bring to remembrance.” If they were not to act as historians to record, they were as minstrels to tell out what had been written in old time, and bring it to remembrance. I rather prefer the idea that their duty was to do both-to record the lovingkindness of the Lord and to bring to the remembrance of the people what the Lord’s right hand had done in former times. Now, if you think a minute, this third class of people who are placed between the Levites before the ark, and the singers who thanked and praised the Lord would be useful both to those who went before and to those who followed after. Those who had to serve before the ark of the Lord are mentioned first. Now, what could so cheer them in their service as to read of the goodness of the Lord? What so inspire them to attend reverently to the service of the Lord’s house as to remember the former lovingkindnesses of the Lord? What arguments could they have for fidelity that should be more powerful than the record of his mercy which endureth for ever? Those who were to conduct the praising and the thanksgiving are mentioned after these recorders. But what is the raw material of which praise is made but the record of what God is and of what he has done for his people? Methinks whenever they wanted to sing they would turn to these remembrancers and recorders, and say to them “Tell us something of what God has done, for the simple record of Jehovah’s acts is the noblest psalmody.” Do you notice that, whenever we praise God best, we simply declare what he is, for the bare fact about God is the highest praise, and you have only to mention what he does in order to produce the sublimest poetry: the grateful mention of his glorious acts is in itself adoration. You cannot adore the Lord better than by devoutly rehearsing his mighty acts-so good is his name, so blessed are his deeds. “Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord? Who can shew forth all his praise?”

Now, from the fact that David set apart certain Levites to record, I gather three or four thoughts, of which I am going to speak to-night. The first is,-it is implied that there is a fault in man’s memory. It is equally clear, in the second place, that we ought to endeavour to assist memory. Thirdly, it is certain, too, from the appointment of recorders, that there is a good deal worth remembering. And, fourthly, from the connection of these recorders with the singers we see that, to right-minded persons memory will always produce praise: when we have recorded the great mercies of the Lord, then we shall be sure to thank and praise him.

First of all, we may gather, I think, without any straining of the text, that if recorders were appointed, there is some fault in our memory towards the lord.

What faults there are in our memory touching the work and word of God! Perhaps some of you have very powerful memories, and may be able to treasure up whole volumes as some have done. It might be said of you as it was of Dr. Lawson, that if the whole Bible had been destroyed, he could have reproduced it from memory. This is a great gift and a worthy use for it, but I fear that few of us have it. It is not likely that men could say of us as of the famous Grecian, that out of ten thousand soldiers he knew every one of his men by name. I do not find fault with short memories, but with good memories which are treacherous towards divine things. What I complain of is that memory may be very strong concerning self-interest, grievances, and trials, and yet towards God’s mercies it may be very weak. I am not going to speak about memory in general, I speak only of that faculty as it is exercised towards the favours and lovingkindnesses of the Lord-and I am sure there is a fault in it, for, first of all, it has been prejudiced by the fall. Do you not know that if anything bad ever reaches your ear you cannot forget it. That lewd song which you heard in your youth-in your unregenerate times; you would give everything to forget it, but it will come up-a snatch of it has perhaps been suggested by a hymn tune sung in worship, or even by the language used in prayer. What a grasp memory has for things that never ought to have crossed the mind at all, and which, though they have crossed the mind, ought to be forgotten. Well said an old divine, “Man’s memory is a pond in which all the fish die and all the frogs live.” I am sure it is so. The bad remains and the good-ah, how you have to charge and constrain yourself to recollect a tithe of it. The filth of Sodom is drawn to shore by memory, but the fair products of Jerusalem are permitted to glide down the stream to the ocean of oblivion. The fall has given a sad bias to memory; like a strainer it lets the good liquor run through and only retains the dregs.

Again, memory towards God’s mercy has been very much impaired by neglect. Any one part of the body left unused will lose power, and any faculty of the mind which is never exercised will gradually become weak. Now you may have very powerful memories, as I said before, towards earthly things, but I will venture to say that some of you have never sought to remember the mercies of the Lord. Nay, you have not seen them to be God’s mercies. It has never occurred to you to try and recollect what God has done for you. I would not bring a harsh impeachment, but I suggest the question,-Have you not lived as if there were no God? as if the mercies of every day were indeed of your own procuring? as if you had no indebtedness to God, and were under no obligation to be grateful to him? I do not wonder that your memory towards divine things is weak, for you have never exercised it-never thought of exercising it; and consequently, my friend, if ever you are to learn to praise the Lord you will have need of great helps in the work, for your memory will not furnish you with materials. It has no store of good things with which to feed your devotion, you have kept its chambers empty by neglect.

Memory, touching God’s mercy, too, is often overloaded with other things. Memory can only carry a certain amount, but, oh, what waggon-loads of mischief memory is freighted with! Some of us can remember so little that it is a pity for us to try to recollect anything trifling or of minor importance. It might be well to dedicate that faculty to the weightiest things only: to things imperative for this life, to things essential for the life to come. How foolishly some will stuff up their memory with rubbish that is not worth harbouring. There are songs and pieces of “poetry,” so called, and scraps taken from novels, and I know not what besides, with which poor memory is gorged, till it is blown out as a balloon with foul gas. It is fed upon mere husks till it is surfeited, stuffed, and crammed, and labours under an indigestion. I think Aristotle used to call memory the stomach of the soul, in which it retains and digests what it gathers; but men cram it full of everything that it does not want-upon which the soul cannot really feed, and thus they ruin it for remembering the best things. Some people can hardly carry home the text of the discourse. Is it likely they would? Other thoughts choke up the memory and put the good thing, the gracious thing, the grateful thing, the right thing, entirely out of the mind. Unload thy memory to-night, man, if thou canst, even of thy necessary cares. It is good when a sermon helps to unload you. You recollect the man who said that when he went to church generally he used to calculate how many looms the building would hold, and how many workmen might be employed in it; but, said he, “When I heard Mr. Whitefield I forgot that there was a loom in the whole world.” I wish it was always so in God’s house. But there, the good woman recollects her household, she does not know whether she put the guard on the fire; she wonders what may have become of the baby while she is away. Another misses a ring from her finger; did she leave it in the basin when she washed her hands before she came away? The merchant is worrying about that bill which is coming due to-morrow: he wishes that he could forget it, but the business will come in. And this is why you cannot remember God’s mercy, because your memory is occupying itself with a host of earthly things which ought not to intrude into God’s day and into God’s worship; or if they do should be treated as Abraham treated the carnivorous birds when they came down upon his sacrifice. The ravens and the kites came to defile and eat what he had offered unto God, but we read that “when the birds came down upon the sacrifice Abraham drove them away.” So must you try to do. When the time has come to remember God’s mercies and to worship him, you must keep the birds away, or else they will devour the ripe fruit of your praise before you can gather it.

Memory has also suffered from another cause, namely, from its connection with the other faculties. Every power of the mind has been injured by sin. The evil results of the fall went through the entire system, and weakened and perverted our entire nature, so that the whole head is sick. The understanding among the rest, a very noble power, has been very much darkened, and, as every single part of a man operates upon the rest, the darkening of the understanding has caused a grievous weakening of the memory with regard to divine things. You will see this in a minute, for what a man does not understand he does not readily remember. Many forget God’s mercies because they do not appreciate them when they have them. They do not see the mercy of them; they have not the power to see how much love there is in them, and how little they deserve them, and therefore they are not impressed by them so as to make a note of their being received. When daily favours come such men take them into stock as wholesale dealers receive parcels of goods, and send them out again without so much as opening them, or taking their quantity. They scarcely know the meaning of the lovingkindness of the Lord, for he is not in all their thoughts. Of course, a man does not remember what he does not understand. If you set a boy to learn a passage without any meaning in it, he may be able to repeat it to you the next time he says his lesson, but before long it must glide out of his memory, because he does not understand it. Becloud the light of the understanding, and the image formed upon the memory will be dull and indistinct, and very apt to vanish away.

Again, the affections have been perverted, as well as the understanding. Man, by nature, does not love God. I tremble when I think of that sad truth, for it seems to me the most awful thing that can happen to an intelligent being not to love God. That would be my hell. I count it the hell of hell not to love God: to be in such a condition that the infinitely lovable one, so perfect, both in his character and his actions, so divinely fitted to be adored, should not be loved is horrible. It is death, and worse than death. I will not say it is blindness, deafness, and the loss of every honourable moral power: it is utter death not to love God. It is partly because we do not love him that we forget his mercies. Reflect a moment, and you will soon see. Here is a present which has been given you by an entire stranger, and though it may be of some value, you do not think much of it; but there is a ring that was given you by your mother-your mother now among the angels. Ah, you will not forget that gift, love has registered it among your richest possessions. I have many things that have been given to me by divers friends, and I value them all: I never forget them, I never can because of my esteem and affection for those who gave them to me. And so when you view divine mercy as given you by your dear and ever blessed Father in heaven, then you do not forget it; but if it is merely regarded as a passing stranger’s gift, you care not for it. If you think of a blessing as “the gift of fortune,” as the world generally does, or look upon it as a windfall from the tree of luck, you will not remember it. See in the bread you eat a Father’s hand supplying you; see even in the cup of cold water the bounty of your God; see in the comforts of home and health, and the sparing of your reason, the goodness of him who loves you and whom you love; and memory will put forth her strength. Want of love breeds want of recollection in us, and so the memory grows faulty.

And, alas, one thing more. Our memory of God’s goodness is often crushed down by a sense of present pain. When you suffer from sharp pains and weary aches and a fevered brow, you are prone to forget the days of health and strength, and only recollect the sharp intervals of weakness and sorrow. When you stand over the grave of one you love, you are apt in the loss to forget the loan. When a dear one is taken away, the right way to look at it is, that a precious loan has been called in by its owner. We ought to be very grateful to have been allowed to borrow the comfort so long, and ought not to repine when the owner takes back what he so kindly lent. The husband to whom you have been married these ten years, or the child that has nestled in your bosom two years, or the friend that communed with you half a lifetime, or the brother who was such a comfort all his days-when these are gone, do not look at the going only, but thank God that you ever had them. Be honest enough to acknowledge the good as well as to lament the evil. Bless a taking as well as a giving God, for he takes but what he gave. It is not so with us as a rule. We are living in the present too much; we strike a mark of oblivion across the happy past, we look with dread upon the unknown future, and dwell on the troublous present, and so we forget the Lord’s mercy to us. You are getting old now and you are feeble, but bless the Lord you had fifty years of manly vigour. You cannot now do what you once did, and your mind is enfeebled, but bless God there was a time when you could serve him with body and soul without fatigue. Perhaps you are brought low in estate and are afraid of poverty; be grateful that you have had enough and to spare for many long years. Perhaps you are now a little sad. Ay, but recollect the days when you used to praise the Lord on the high-sounding cymbals, and stood upon the high places of the earth. Do not let memory fail you because of the present crushing sorrow, but bless the name of the Lord for what he has done. May the Holy Spirit help your infirmities, and bring the lovingkindness of past years to your remembrance.

Memory is defective-this is our first inference, and I think it is clear enough.

Now, secondly, as David appointed recorders, this proves, in the second place, that we ought to do all that we can to assist our memories towards God. We should not allow the mercies of the Lord to lie forgotten in unthankfulness and without praises die, if we can help it. How can we strengthen memory?

I conceive that sometimes it is a good thing to make an actual record of God’s mercy-literally to write it down in your pocket-book, so as to look at it another day. I am sure it is a proper thing to do, and often it will prove to be a very useful memento. I do not believe in keeping diaries and putting down every day what you feel, or what you think you feel but never did feel. I fear it would become a mere formality, or an exercise of imagination to most of us; for when I read very pious people’s diaries they always seem to me to have had an eye to the people who would read them, and to have put down both more and less than the truth; I am a little frightened at the artificial style of experience which it must lead to. The fact is that we have not a great deal to put down every day if we lead an ordinary life; but there are days which ought to have a memorial. Days of sore trouble and of great deliverance, days of sharp temptation and of wonderful help: these must needs be chronicled. Some days of brilliant mercy are like seven days in one. There are days which seem like chips of heaven, fragments of eternity, stray days of delight which have broken loose from the days of heaven and wandered down to earth. Make a note of the favoured day. Put the event down in black and white just as it occurred. Never mind if nobody else ever reads it: you will read it one of these days; and thank God that it stands recorded for the strengthening of your faith. Therefore make a record. “I cannot express myself well in writing,” says one. Well, you know, Jacob used to set up a stone and pour oil on the top of it; this was his way, though he knew little or nothing about pen and ink. You can invent some way surely by which you can remember choice favours. You can make a notch somewhere, a mark on an old tree, a line on the margin of the Bible over against the text that blessed you. You can put a scratch somewhere of which you shall say afterwards, “I know what that means. I did not want to forget the divine goodness, and there is the record. Glory be to God, it comes fresh to my soul again as I look upon it.”

Another help to memory is to be sure to praise God thoroughly at the time you receive his goodness. You will not forget it if, when it has come, your mind is in a suitable condition of gratitude; and, indeed, if you use the mercy at once to God’s glory you will do better still. Days that are full of thanksgiving will be remembered, and those mercies around which we burned the incense of praise will leave their fragrance in the heart’s secret chambers. Take care that if your memory is weak, you praise God while the mercy is newly born in your house.

Frequently it will help memory much to set apart a little time for meditation. A godly man and his wife were accustomed to take half-an-hour on Saturday evening to go over the mercies of the week: this is a good example. But, says one, “I could not spare so much time.” No, no, I do not suppose you could, but you spare hours to grumble over the miseries of the week. Oh, yes, we talk freely when we get together about our pains and our losses, and about the bad times. They are very bad now, are they not? And you have all talked about them seven days a week for many a long week together. You have said fifty times, “I never saw such a season, there is no business, there is nothing stirring; there never was such stagnation.” Now, as we all know all about that, and are pretty well agreed that it is true, could we not now go on to something else, and could not the time which we waste in telling out our troubles be spent in meditating on our mercies? Try if you cannot spare half-an-hour with your wife for such an exercise as I have mentioned, and I believe that you would never spend half an hour more happily and profitably. Say, “Come, wife, and help me; help my memory, and I will help yours. Let us remember what God has done for us this week”: then go over your own story, and listen to her pleasant annotations. I do not hesitate to say that my life-story is as full of mercy as a honeycomb is full of sweetness when it drips with honey. How God has treated you I do not know, but he has indulged me with such love that if he will only let me get into a corner in heaven and praise him to all eternity, I will scarcely ask him for anything else but the opportunity to adore him: I mean to bless him whatever comes to me: I cannot help it. I have been so favoured of providence and grace that, if I were crushed in a mortar, I think every little bit and fragment of me would bless and praise his holy name, “for he is good, and his mercy endureth for ever.” This is my advice, and I have not given it you without having tried it myself-often meditate on what the Lord has done, and that will help your memory.

Then, again, often rehearse his mercy in the ears of others. I like to get with dear brethren who talk about God’s lovingkindness, they are good company. I have noticed the difference between two farmers for instance. One of them never did have a good crop, though, to my knowledge, he had a “middling” one once, and that was at the time that he could hardly gather it, for it was too heavy for the reapers. But then it was a “middling” one. He has never made any money; I know he was a poor man when he began, and I know he has brought up a large family, and is rich now, but he never made any money-never. Nobody ever does by farming, or by any other business, as you all know by common report. Well, I heard the grumbler’s story, and I turned to another friend. This farmer says, “Well, it may not have been a very good year for wheat last year, but then there is a capital crop coming on to make up for it.” Another year he said, “Well, I do not think the grain will pay, but the sheep are turning out uncommonly well.” He has always something to say by way of honouring God’s mercy. And is not that as it ought to be? He says, “Blessed be God, I have always had bread to eat and raiment to put on; I am a deal better off now than I thought I should be, and I have my portion to give to the work of the Lord, who has dealt so well with me.” That is the way to talk, for it is truthful and it praises God, and it is the talk that God should hear from us. If you tell others your mercies you will not be so likely to forget them.

Sometimes it will help you to remember your mercies if you use everything about you as a memento. How can that be? Have you got a boy? Look at him and think of what mercy is bound up in that child: remember when he was little and sickly, and you prayed that he might live; when he met with an accident, and yet he was not killed, as he might have been; when he went out into life, and God kept him out of temptation; when you saw the first sign of piety; when you heard his first prayer; when you found that he was trying to be useful; when you heard his first address as he tried to speak to others about the Lord Jesus. I know the joy of such mercy, and I cannot hold my tongue when I think of it, for I am highly favoured; and I hope that you either have had the same blessing on your growing lads or will have it. Well, the boy will be a memento of God’s mercy. Look at anybody’s child and say, “I, also, was a child once,” and then think of the mercies of God to you from childhood to the present time. Go into the street and meet a beggar. Should not that make you thank God that you are not forced to beg your bread, and wear rags, but are provided for? Turn down by Bethlehem hospital, and as you pass that institution thank God that you have not lost your reason. Look at the Blind School, and thank God that you have not lost your eyesight. Pass by the hospital, and thank God that you are not stretched upon a bed of agony, having lost a limb. Go into a churchyard, and thank God that you are yet alive. Reflect upon the judgment to come, and thank God that you are not in hell. Oh, my dear friends, everything ought to make us praise God, from the little birds that wake the morning to the twinkling stars that glad the night. Every breath of air, and drop of rain, and gleam of sunlight ought to refresh our memory and arouse us to praise the Lord.

That is the second point: we ought to do our best to assist our feeble memories.

Thirdly-and here I shall ask you to preach to yourselves-we have all had mercies to remember.

I am going to include everybody in these remarks first, whether they are converted people or not.

We have all had common mercies. I have already hinted at them in speaking of those who are suffering from their loss. From our childhood until now we have had bread to eat and raiment to put on. Some of us have enjoyed an abundance of common mercies; we have not had to live from hand to mouth, nor labour like slaves. Others who have had a harder lot should thank God that there has always been deliverance in the hour of need, bread has been given, and water has been sure. They have not always had what they might have liked, but there has been enough to keep them alive; and here they are in good health to prove it. Oh, to have your reason; to have the use of your limbs; to have your children about you! Even though you be poor, these are great blessings. Even these ordinary mercies should awaken your gratitude.

Then, in addition to common mercies, we have had those of special providence. Is there one person here who has not been at times favoured with remarkable interpositions of God’s providence? Flavel used to say, “Those who notice providences will not be long without providences to notice.” I think it is so. I could remember scores. If I had time to write them I could mention dozens of remarkable providences which have occurred to myself, some of which would not be believed by anybody else, and therefore shall not be told, but they are true for all that. There are matters known only to the Master and his unworthy servant for which I praise his name in my heart of hearts. Have you not had some such secrets between you and God: remarkable things, special things which, if you could write them, men would not believe them? Well, praise his name for the peculiar favours, but do not forget the more usual ones. Recollect what the Puritan said. He and his son had to ride some twenty miles each to meet each other, and when his son came in he said, “Father, I have had a most remarkable providence. My horse stumbled badly three times, and yet he did not fall.” “I am grateful,” said the old gentleman, “but I have had a remarkable providence, too, for my horse never stumbled all the way.” We do not think of that. If there is a railway accident, and we just escape by the skin of our teeth, we say, “What a wonderful mercy!” Ought you not to be quite as grateful when you travel without an accident? Should you not see as much the hand of God in your perfect safety as in your rescue from danger? Remember the hourly providence of God which watches over you when you observe it not.

I should like to remind every unregenerate man here present of the longsuffering mercy of God. You have not loved him, but he has blessed you. You have sometimes spoken very sad things against his gospel, but he has not resented it. Possibly I speak to some who have even cursed his name, but he has not cursed you. You have defied him; and oh! it often seems to me to be a wonderful thing that a man should lift his hand to heaven and defy God, and that God remains quiet in pitying patience. Do you think that God-the infinite God-is going to be put into a passion by such a puny thing as you are? No, he has appointed a day in which he will settle these matters with you by his son Jesus Christ who will judge the quick and the dead. He will not stir himself out of his sublime compassion for you. But what a wonderful thing it is that he does not! Why there are thousands of men who, if we had done a hundred thousandth part as much evil towards them as we have done towards God, would have fallen upon us with a word and a blow, or rather there would not have been any word, there would have been two blows; and if it had been in their power to take our lives they would not have hesitated. Men could not have borne such provocation as sinners heap upon the Lord. You have provoked Jehovah to his face and thrust your finger into his eye. “Nay,” say you, “how is that?” Why, when you mock religious people,-when you make jests and mirth about those who fear him you do this. Recollect that text, “He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of my eye.” That is an irritating thing enough, is it not? and yet you have touched the apple of Jehovah’s eye; and instead of smiting you into nothingness in return, or sending you down to hell, he has still had mercy upon you. Let us gratefully remember this almighty patience, and bless his name, whoever we may be.

“Lord, and am I yet alive,

Not in torment, not in hell?

Still doth thy good Spirit strive-

With the chief of sinners dwell?

Tell it unto sinners, tell,

I am, I am, out of hell.”

Furthermore, we should all praise God, or at any rate the most of us here, that we have enjoyed gospel privileges. If you have not believed in Jesus, yet you have heard of him. If you have rejected his grace, yet the kingdom of God has come nigh unto you. The door has been set open if you have not entered; and the call of the gospel has been given though you have not accepted it. You are still on praying ground and pleading terms with God. You are still where you are wooed by a Saviour’s love. Do thank God for this! Do thank God that you are not living in the dark ages, or in a far-off heathen land where the saving name is not known; but you are where the brazen serpent is lifted high, and the message comes to you-“Look and live.” “To you is the word of this salvation sent.”

Dear brethren, though I have thus spoken to everybody in the place, there is a special class to whom I must address myself. You, my brethren in Christ,-you have, above all others, ten thousand times ten thousand reasons for remembering the past and blessing the name of the Lord. Look back to the hole of the pit whence you were digged. Remember him who digged you thence. Look to the blood that bought you. Look to the Holy Spirit who renewed you. Look at the pardon which absolved you; look to the grace that changed you; look to the love that saved you; look to the wisdom that has guided you; look to the power that has upheld you. The life of a Christian should be unbroken gratitude, for it is a life of unceasing mercy. While others should praise God as creatures we must praise him as new creatures. They can praise him because he made them; we must praise him because he hath “begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Therefore, lift up your hearts and voices, beloved, and praise the Lord at the remembrance of his goodness.

The last thing is to be this-that all our memories should tend to make us praise and bless God. We can rest but a minute here.

Remember your mercies. Remember there is not one you have deserved. That bread which does not choke the sinner might justly do so, for he is an unworthy recipient of it. The earth which does not open to swallow you up must often wonder why it is not commissioned so to do, for you are so rebellious against God. We do not deserve the air we breathe, or the water we drink. Everything we have is sweetened with unspeakable mercy.

All the good that we enjoy comes from God. Recollect that! Alas, most men forget it. Rowland Hill used to say that worldlings were like the hogs under the oak, which eat the acorns, but never think of the oak from which they fell, nor lift up their heads to grunt out a thanksgiving. Yes, so it is. They munch the gift and murmur at the giver. Would God we did begin to remember that every good gift comes to us from the Divine hand, and that therefore the Lord is to be praised. We have received mercies at times, when, if we had not had them, the absence of them would have ended our lives, or would have involved us in misery worse than death. Do you not, some of you, remember now when you said in your soul, “O Lord, if thou dost but help me this time, I will praise thee as long as I live”? Yet, when you received the benefit you rendered no fit return. For the time you were grateful after a sort, but, as bread eaten is soon forgotten, so your remembrance of the mercy of God passed away. It ought not so to be.

I am now going to put a few questions to all present. First, have you ever lived in gratitude? Are you now living to God’s praise? Are you now conscious of your obligations, and anxious to show that you feel them? If not-if not, I would like you to feel how mean you are. Does that offend you? I would like you to be offended with yourselves. What do you think of those who are ungrateful to you when you have been kind to them? Ah, you look upon them with indignation. Sometimes when I know that a man has been ungrateful to a friend of mine, very ungrateful, I cannot help looking upon him with contempt. If you have lived in this world for fifty years, and have never shown any gratitude to God in life, feel mean. Feel what a miserable wretch you are to be living wholly for yourself, while the God who has fed you and blessed you all your life long has not had the turn of a penny from you in the way of real praise and true gratitude. I say again, feel mean, and then go to Jesus’ feet and tell him that you feel it, and cry, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” If you have never been a drunkard or a swearer, or unjust, think it bad enough to have been ungrateful. If you have lived without serving your God, think it sin enough to have made yourself as base as the dirt beneath your feet, and, at the thought of it, humble yourself before your gracious God.

Next if you are able to say “Through divine grace I have praised God, and I do desire to live entirely to his glory,” yet, dear brother, have you or I ever praised him enough? Have we ever praised him as we ought? “Oh, no,” say you, “and we never shall.” And I agree with you: we never shall. The poet stretched words a little, but his meaning was right enough, when he said-

“But, oh, eternity’s too short,

To utter all thy praise.”

We must feel, we ought to feel, the happy burden of the Lord’s praise to be too heavy for us. We confess that we cannot bless the Lord enough, either as to heartiness, frequency, or service. No human strength can praise God sufficiently, but still let us be doing something more for God than ever we have done. We sang just now, and we sang, I think, very fairly; but let us act as well as sing. Let us consecrate ourselves and our substance far more fully to God. What are you doing for God? What are you doing for my Lord Jesus? Have you a precious alabaster box at home which you would like to break, that you might pour the ointment on his head? Do it, and do it soon. Some are very choice about their alabaster boxes, and keep them under lock and key. They take their friends upstairs and show them their rare treasures. They ask them to visit their houses to see their alabaster boxes, and they even talk of what will be done with their choice things when their estate shall go through the Probate Court. That is what they are talking about, but as to actually pouring the costly perfume on the head of the Lord Jesus personally, in their own lifetime, it has not entered into their heads yet. God lead you to honour your Redeemer at once with the best you have. Give to God your best-your very best. Give God yourself: your all. He is worthy of it. And, oh, count it a high honour if he accepts it at your hands through Jesus Christ your Saviour.

Lastly, if anybody here says, “I would like to begin to remember the Lord’s mercies, and to praise his name,” then you must begin at the cross. The centre of everything that is good is the cross of Christ. No man begins a life of praise, or a life of prayer, or a life of holiness aright unless he begins within sight of the crucified Saviour, led there by the Holy Spirit. Go there with your ingratitude like a burden on your heart, and look to the flowing of the Redeemer’s precious blood, and the load of ingratitude will roll into his sepulchre and will never be laid to your charge. And then when you get rid of the guilt you can begin-yea, you will begin-henceforward to praise him and magnify his nanie. God give you a memory capable of treasuring up his favours. May he enrich you with the benedictions of his covenant that you may have much to treasure up; and may the whole of the sweet canes and precious spices which memory has laid up be used as fuel for the flame of thanksgiving in life, and in death, and through eternity.

Portion of Scripture Read before Sermon-1 Chron., 16:1-36.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-130, 229, 720, and the Doxology.