When we read such a choice verse as this we are apt at once to conclude that it “belongeth to them that are of full age, even to those who by reason of use, have had their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.” We set this aside as a choice morsel reserved for those who have worn well and borne the burden and heat of the day, who have attained to full assurance of faith, and therefore are able to lay hold upon rich covenant provisions. Let us at once correct this mistake, for the passage belongs to a very early form of Christian experience: it relates, indeed, to the lowest degree of Christian grace. Let me read it again. “That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation.” To whom does the “we” refer? We “who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.” The strong consolation mentioned in the text belongs to those who have fled to Christ for refuge, and surely this is the very beginning of the divine life; it belongs also to those who lay hold upon the hope of the gospel, and this also is a very elementary part of Christian experience. If you have only newly fled to Christ for refuge, and if by a childlike faith you have freshly laid hold upon the hope that is set before you, then the riches of grace are yours, and God’s oath and promise are intended to afford you strong consolation. As far as this text is concerned, you need not examine yourselves to search for strong faith, or deep experience, or great growth in grace, or advanced holiness, for if you are but Christ’s refugee and a grasper of the Lord’s promise you may rejoice in the two immutable things and rest in peace.

I gather from God’s beginning thus early to encourage his people, and from his laying down so much of comfort for them at the outset, that he would have them happy all their lives. It is not the Lord’s mind that the King’s children should go mourning all their days. If ye hang your harps upon the willows, it is not by divine precept that ye do so, for his word to the prophet is, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably unto Jerusalem.” He would have you clothed in raiment of rejoicing, yea, he desireth that your joy may be full. If your heavenly Father would not have you sorrowful, will you not consent to his loving wish concerning you, and drink deeply into the comfort which he provides? The Lord knew of old that his people would want comforting, for he foresaw our infirmities and our afflictions from our birth. He knew what creatures of the dust we are, how frail and feeble, and therefore he hath ordained abundant consolation, that his poor, weak, tried, and tempted people may be strengthened and cheered.

Carefully notice that the Lord has laid most stress upon the point which is most vital to the believer’s comfort. He knew right well that we should often doubt his great grace, and think the covenant way of salvation to be too good to be true, and therefore that we might have no excuse for mistrust or suspicion, he has first pledged his word and then has condescendingly uttered a solemn oath, swearing by himself, that henceforth we might never raise a question about the foundations upon which the eternal settlements of love are laid. To believers he has put salvation and all other covenant blessings beyond dispute, in order that all who are interested in them might have the firmest assurance concerning them. The worst possible trial to a believer is to have it suggested to him that the gospel is not true, that pardon through the precious blood is a fiction, and that God is not reconciled through the atoning sacrifice. If we are absolutely certain as to the truth of God’s gospel and our own salvation thereby then all other things are of small concern to us; and therefore hath the Lord fixed on a sure basis of promise and oath this corner-stone of our comfort, and set his promise in such a light that it becomes blasphemy to doubt it.

Our loving Father knew that we should often be assailed by the spirit of distrust, and this has led him so abundantly to certify the truth of the things which he has promised. For you know, beloved, guilt is very suspicious; when you have done wrong to a man you cannot believe him. Nothing renders you so full of doubt towards another as your own consciousness of having acted unjustly towards him. Now, when a sense of guilt comes over the soul, nature begins to say, “Can the Lord be a sin-pardoning Lord? Can he love me as he says he does? Such a base, ungrateful rebel as I, can I really have part in so great a salvation as that which God has provided and set forth?” Knowing the suspicious nature of a guilty heart, God has made his oath and promise to be two sheet-anchors to the soul, that our faith may ride out every storm of doubt.

The greatness of the mercies themselves often staggers us. When we consider God’s electing love, when we reckon the amazing cost of redemption, and when we see the high honour of adoption, union to Christ, and heirship with him, we naturally exclaim-“Whence is this to me?” and, alas, we are apt to go a step further and say, “Can it be true? Is it not all a pleasant dream? Hath the Lord really made me one with Christ and called me his beloved, and will he prepare for me also a place among the glorified?” Now, lest the greatness of the blessing should stagger our confidence, the Lord has ensured every blessing to us by a covenant rendered valid by his own act and deed; a covenant signed, sealed, and delivered, so as to be beyond all question.

Moreover the Lord knew that we should doubt his faithfulness, because we ourselves are so false. We remember many a broken promise, broken though made before the Lord; and persons who are untruthful themselves are very apt to think others so. Therefore our God, knowing the deceitful nature of our hearts, foresaw that we should be an unbelieving race, and has set two swords at the heart of our suspicions and questionings: slaying unbelief by his oath and promise.

Besides, our nature runs so cross to the whole system of divine grace that we need much assuring before we can believe it. We are always for working, deserving, and earning. Phariseeism is the religion of nature. We boast of our merit and yet we are as meritless as Satan himself. The idea of working and deserving appears to be ingrained in our nature; and as certain as the blood is red, so sure is the heart self-righteous. We cannot divest ourselves of the idea of salvation as payment for work done: that it is a gift, a free gift of grace, it is hard to make us believe. Even after conversion the old tendency betrays itself; we steal away from Jesus to Moses as often as we get opportunity, and then begin to doubt free grace. Therefore the Lord has fettered and bound us down to believing with golden chains of promise and oath. “It must be so,” saith he, “the grace that I have revealed is indeed true, for I have sworn by myself.” Beloved, we ought earnestly to abhor that wicked legality of ours which so often does despite to the grace of God, casts suspicion upon his mercy, and brings our souls into bondage.

Another door for doubt is found in the fear of presuming. It is right that we should be fearful of being comforted in a wrong manner, for nothing is more deadly than false peace. The Lord approves of that holy jealousy which leads us to examine ourselves whether we be in the faith. I am always sorrowful when hallowed fear departs from a man, so that he no longer dreads self-deception; but yet the fear of presuming may be perverted by the evil one, and then it becomes a snare to our feet. Beloved, be sure of this, that it is no presumption to believe God; the presumption lies in doubting him. Faith is sister to humility, and mistrust is neighbour to pride. But lest any of you, tremblers, should be afraid to take the promise of God as being verity and truth to you, behold Jehovah swears it, and now you dare not doubt it. You dare not question the veracity of God who thus with “amens” and “verilys” pledges his own eternal power and Godhead that the covenant of his grace shall stand fast for ever. Thus doth God lay the stress of assurance where we are apt to put the force of our doubt, and by making his own promise sure he affords to us consolation of the strongest order.

At this time, hoping that some of God’s people may be comforted thereby, we shall describe the conditions of mind to which the text is addressed and the blessing which it brings. The text speaks of three states: first, we have “fled for refuge”; secondly, we have “laid hold upon the hope set before us”; and thirdly, we have “a strong consolation.”

First, we have “fled for refuge.” Although the original Greek does not quite so plainly refer to a refuge, as our authorized version would suggest, yet the figure here used is undoubtedly that of the city of refuge to which the man-slayer fled when he was in danger from the avenger of blood. I shall not attempt to draw the parallel at any length, pleasing as such a work would be, for you can easily trace it out for yourselves. I will only follow the figure so far as I need it for my present purpose.

The man-slayer, the moment he had in the heat of passion killed a man, became an apt representative of an awakened sinner who discovers himself to be in an evil case. There lies the body of the man he has murdered with a hasty blow. He knows not what to do. Can you conceive the rush of unhappy feeling which overwhelms his mind? May none of us ever know the pang of seriously injuring, much less of killing, any man by accident; but to have done it in the heat of wrath, in sudden passion, how terrible! What must be the horror of the man’s soul! He sees the clay-cold corpse upon the ground, and wishes he could die too! Blood is on his hand and on the soil, and his conscience hears a voice appealing to God for vengeance! He looks around and trembles at the fall of a leaf. Everything is changed. The plot of land which his father left him, once so pleasant, is now a horrible Aceldama, a field of blood: he cannot endure to look upon the homestead which once he loved. He turns his eyes upward, and the very skies seem to frown! He wonders that the earth beneath him does not open and swallow him up. Blood-smears are on everything; even when he shuts his eyes he sees the crimson blot. He knows not what to do-to go to his house, or to hide himself in yonder thicket, or to plunge into the river which flows hard by. He is in a terrible state of mind, the furies hover around him, and a thousand stings of serpents are fixed in him. I do remember well when I was in a similar state of heart as to my sins, for I saw my Lord upon the tree, and felt that I was guilty of his death.

“My conscience felt, and own’d the guilt,

And plunged me in despair;

I saw my sins his blood had spilt,

And help’d to nail him there.

“Alas! I knew not what I did;

But now my tears are vain;

Where shall my trembling soul be hid?

For I the Lord have slain.”

I discovered that I had so sinned as to have involved myself in eternal destruction. What a horrible discovery it was! Everything had been pleasant enough before, but, lo, I found myself a rebel against the Most High, and my very existence was dreadful beyond conception. Whither should I flee, or how should I escape? An awful dread was over me, and I could not bear it. Hell had begun to burn within my spirit, and the undying worm had commenced its gnawings. It is the work of the Spirit of God to convince men of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come, and it is well when the soul begins to fear, for then it begins to live.

The alarmed man-slayer would next, if he could calm himself at all consider what he could do, and he would soon come to the conclusion that he could neither defy, nor escape, nor endure the doom which threatened him. The avenger of blood would be sure to be after him. Could he resist him? Would it do to take up arms and defend himself? Could he hope to escape from the vengeance of the tribe by hiding in some secret den or cave of the earth? Or could he endure the wrath of the avenger? He knew that he could not, for the avenger of blood would seek blood for blood, and not be satisfied till he had taken his life. Now, it is altogether in vain that men dream of defying the Lord. They would be utterly consumed as stubble in the flame. The Lord of hosts is terrible in arms, and we cannot stand out against him. We may have thought ourselves strong, but when it comes to an actual facing the Lord before the bar of judgment in our own conscience we find that we cannot stand before him for an instant, and our loins are loosed with fear. As to escaping from him, how impossible we feel it to be! The top of Carmel has no caverns in which we could lie concealed, and in the deeps of the sea the crooked serpent, commissioned by God, would find us out. The wings of the morning could not bear us swiftly enough to enable us to escape from the right hand of Jehovah, nor could the thick darkness cover us from his eye. As to bearing the penalty of his wrath, that we know to be impossible, for should he once begin to deal with us in vengeance we must be driven from his presence into the lowest hell. Thus in the days of our conviction no hope was discovered to natural reason, and our dread increased till fear took hold upon us there, and pain as of a woman in travail, for we saw what we had done, but we knew not what we could do to escape from the consequences thereof.

Then there came to our ear what perhaps we had heard before, but had heard so indifferently as never to have really understood it-we heard of a divinely provided way of escape. The man-slayer had, perhaps, aforetime left unnoticed the provision of the six cities of refuge, because he had then no personal need of them; but as soon as he became a homicide, those places became all important in his esteem, and his mind admired that merciful statute which had ordained a shelter from blood-revenge. When under a sense of sin men value Christ Jesus. We ourselves heard of God’s way of salvation, but we never studied it, set our hearts upon it, and laboured to understand it fully, until we saw our guilt before us in all its blood-red hue.

How wonderful is the system of grace! Here it is: that as in Adam we die through Adam’s sin, so if we be in Christ we live through Christ’s righteousness. The way of escape for the sinner lies not in himself but in another. He must come under another headship, and then he is saved. Under the first natural headship we became sinners, and under the second gracious headship we become righteous. How consoling it is to perceive that the second Adam in whom we become righteous through believing has the power to save us, because the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all, and he has made atonement to the full. Instead of dealing personally with every man in Christ, and asking from him the penalty due for sin, God in his mercy has taken the whole sin of those in Christ in the bulk and asked payment for the whole mass at the hand of their great covenant Head. The Lord has gone, in fact, to the second Adam, to Christ Jesus, and presented to him the dread account of all the sin of his redeemed, and said to him, “Wilt thou discharge all this?” and he has answered, “Ay,” and has carried up to the cross all the gigantic load of sin, and made an end of it there. He shouted the victory, saying, “It is finished,” for the whole debt of his people was for ever blotted out. Their sins were buried in his sepulchre, never to rise again; but he himself has risen, having discharged himself personally of all the liabilities which he took upon himself on our behalf, and so we also are discharged, for he died for our offences, but he rose again for our justification.

Now, when a man begins to perceive that it can be reckoned with by God otherwise than according to what it has personally been and done; when it learns that God regards believers as being in Christ, and therefore reckons with Christ for them; then his soul finds peace. Behold this, and admire: I, believing, am dead to sin, for Jesus died; I, believing, have borne Jehovah’s wrath, for Jesus bore it on my behalf! Behold, he saith unto the believer, “Thy warfare is accomplished and thy sin is pardoned, for thou hast received at the Lord’s hand in the person of his Son double for all thy sins.” The believer’s debt was imputed to the Lord Jesus, and therefore it is no more on the believer. He is discharged, and may go his way in peace. Dear hearers, such a plan as this may not please some of you who have never felt the horror of guilt and have known no need of a Saviour, but it charms us. You have always been so good and excellent that you feel no joy at the thought of another standing in your stead; but a man who is alarmed, distressed, amazed, and conscious of his guilt, when he hears of this strange, this wondrous plan of not imputing unto us our trespasses because God has laid all our iniquity upon Jesus, our surety and substitute, rejoices when he hears of it, and at once flies to it.

The text, however, not only implies that we need the refuge and have heard of it, but that we have fled to it. To flee away from self to the provided refuge is a main act of faith. The manslayer left his house, his wife, his children, his farm, and the oxen with which he was ploughing, he left everything to flee away to the city of refuge. That is just what a man does when he resolves to be saved by grace,-he leaves everything he calls his own, renounces all his rights and privileges which he thought he possessed by nature; yea, he confesses to have lost his own natural right to live, and he flies for life to the grace of God in Christ Jesus. The manslayer had no right to live except that he was in the city of refuge, no right to anything except that he was God’s guest within those enclosing walls; and so do we relinquish, heartily and thoroughly, once and for ever, all claims and rights arising out of our supposed merits; we hasten away from self that Christ may be all in all to us. We have “fled for refuge.”

Observe that fleeing for refuge implies that a man flees from his sin. He sees it and he repents of it, but he flees away to Christ the sin bearer directly. His thoughts return gloomily to the sad memories of the past, but from all these he flies to Christ. He thinks of himself as under the law, and he soon finds that he cannot keep it, and therefore the law curses him for his failures; he will then have no consolation unless he flees away to Christ who kept the law on our behalf. In Christ is our refuge from the law, and nowhere else. When despair hovers over a man like a black cloud charged with lightning he must run to Jesus. “How can you be justified?” says the wounded conscience: the answer must be found in Jesus. When we fly to Christ, the fulfiller of the law, despair vanishes at once, for we see that we are righteous in the righteousness of Christ and accepted in the Beloved. Every now and then we foolishly go back to our own self-righteousness, but our wisdom is to flee from this as from the plague. We cannot live in that abomination; creature righteousness is all a lie and a forgery; it ought to be regarded by us as dross and dung, for it is no better. Flee from it with all your might. A Christian man is always fleeing from himself; it is the business of his life to escape alike from his sin and his righteousness, that he may never regard himself before the Lord as an individual, sole and separate from Christ, but only as one with Jesus, and therefore in him dear to the Father’s heart, cleansed, justified, and accepted. May the Holy Ghost keep us to this.

You will perhaps say to me, how came the apostle Paul to get where this text lands him? What line of thought led him to speak about the strong consolations which furnish the Lord’s fugitives with such confidence? He had been speaking of three matters which represent the confidence to which we flee. He spoke just before (Heb. 6:13-16), of the covenant which the Lord made with Abraham, in which he had sworn with an oath that he would bless him and his seed. Now it is understood that the seed of Abraham is, first, the Lord Jesus, and secondly, all believers; for the covenant was by promise, as in another place the apostle proves, and was made with a seed, not after the flesh, but after the spirit, so that Abraham was the father of the faithful, or of all who have faith. Now a covenant firmly established by oath with the father is sure to the heirs, and accordingly Paul says: “Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath.” He then who is a believer is certified by the oath of God that in blessing he will bless him. This is sure to all believers, and sure to me and to you if we are believers. As believers we flee away from ourselves and the covenant of works to the sure covenant of unchanging grace, and our consolation is strong, because God is true.

The apostle had also been speaking of the inheritance of rest which was typified by Canaan. An oath was sworn by God that the unbelievers in the wilderness should not enter into his rest, and this was tantamount to an oath that believers should enter into his rest, seeing that some must enter therein. Now, we, because we are believers, and upon that ground alone, do enter into rest. Believing in him who justifieth the ungodly, we by faith enjoy peace with God, nor need we fear but what we shall enter into rest eternal, for the oath of God will bring us in.

Furthermore, the apostle referred to the eternal priesthood of Christ, as set forth in the type of Melchisedec, and there again we have a matter in which promise and oath unite. In an after chapter Paul opens up what he had already mentioned: “For those priests were made without an oath; but this with an oath by him that said unto him, the Lord sware and will not repent, thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.” By the oath of God the Son is consecrated for evermore, and, having offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, he sits at the right hand of God, able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him. Well then, I, a poor convinced sinner, without any other hope, do flee away from myself to the eternal priesthood of Christ, and to the sacrifice that he has offered once for all, and I know, because God has sworn it, that his sacrifice avails for me and for all believers. In thus fleeing for refuge to our great Lord and priest, we find a strong consolation in the oath and promise of God.

The one solemn question is-Beloved hearers, have you fled for refuge? Are you the Lord’s refugees to day? Are you fugitives daily from self and sin? Are you in Christ as in a city of refuge, and is this the sole ground of your security? If so, the strongest consolations are your portion.

But, secondly, we have come to “lay hold.” Here we have a change of figure, unless we recall the case of Joab, who fled for refuge to the temple and laid hold upon the horns of the altar. We will not insist upon that rare incident, for probably it did not occur to the apostle’s mind. Beloved, we feel that we need a refuge, and we find that God has been pleased to set one forth: he says, “Whosoever believeth in the Lord Jesus Christ shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” He bids us cease from all hopes of merit, and simply come and believe him and trust in the great work which his well-beloved Son has finished for us. He bids us accept the great plan of Christ’s headship on our behalf, and his sacrificial suffering in our room and stead. Justification by faith in Jesus is set before us. What are we to do according to the text? We have to “lay hold” upon it. We are not commanded to prepare ourselves for it, or to get what the Romish writers call “the grace of congruity,” by which we should be fit for it, but it is to be laid hold upon by us just as we are. Everybody here knows what it is to lay hold upon a support or a treasure: sinner, that is just what you have to do with Christ! You have to lay hold upon him by faith. You are drowning; there is a rope thrown to you; what have you to do? “Lay hold.” You are not to look at your hands to see whether they are clean enough. No, lay hold, dirty hand or clean hand. “But my hand is weak.” Lay hold, brother, as best you can, weak hand or not, for while you are laying hold of Christ God is laying hold of you; you may rest assured of that. If you have the faintest grip of Christ, Christ has a firm grip of you such as never shall be relaxed. Your business is at this moment to lay hold and keep hold. God has given us this blessed hope, that those who are in Christ are for Christ’s sake forgiven all their iniquities, are accepted and are secure of everlasting life, and of this we have only to lay hold. What does it mean? What is to be done in order to lay hold?

Well, first, we must believe the gospel to be true. Do you, all of you, believe it to be true that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them? Yes, I know you believe that God has sent his Son to be a propitiation for sin. So far, so good: the next thing is to apprehend for yourselves this truth. Christ justifies believers; he is worthy of trust: trust him, and he has justified you. “I do not feel it,” says one. You do not need to feel it. It is a matter of believing. Believe in Jesus, and because you are a believer be assured that you are saved. “But I thought I should feel,” says another. Yes, you shall feel enough by-and-by, but now there is a question between you and God. Is the Lord a liar or not? “He that believeth not hath made God a liar,” and on the other hand, “He that believeth on him hath set to his seal that God is true.” Which of the two is it to be? God with a solemn oath declares that believers are blessed, being the seed of Abraham, blessed according to his covenant; with an oath he declares that believers shall enter into his rest; with an oath he declares that his Son, the everlasting Melchisedec, is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him. What then? Dost thou believe him or not? “Oh,” saith one, “I believe God’s word, but I doubt its application to myself?” You do not believe it unless you believe it for yourself, for there are no exceptions made in the case. If thou believest, thou art blessed; if thou believest, thou shalt have rest; if thou believest, the great Melchisedec lives for thee and pleads for thee, and thou art saved. If thou believest-there is the point-if thou honourest God by accepting his word as true, and by relying upon Christ for thyself,-then is it well with thee. If thou sayest, “Yes, the rope is a strong one, and I believe it will support a sinking man,” why not lay hold upon it? There is the vital point of faith: practically to believe God by resting one’s own eternal destiny upon the truth which we say we believe. “Lay hold on the hope.”

While a man lays hold upon a thing he goes no further, but continues to cling to it. We have fled for refuge, but we flee no further than the hope which we now lay hold upon, namely, eternal life in Christ Jesus. We never wish to get beyond God’s promise in Christ Jesus to believers, the promise of salvation to faith. We are satisfied with that, and there we rest. “Laying hold” in the forcible language of the Greek would imply firm retention of that which we have seized. I remember well when first I laid hold on the hope that God had set before me. I was terribly afraid to grasp it, for I thought it was too good to be true: but I saw that there was no other chance for me, and therefore I was driven right out of myself to be bold, and venture all. I knew that I must flee somewhere, and it seemed to be that or nothing; I was forced to believe in the wondrous plan of salvation by another and in another, even in salvation by Jesus Christ. I made a dash at it, and believed it, and joy and peace filled my spirit. That is twenty-seven years ago now, and I am laying hold upon it still. Brethren and sisters, I have not gone an inch beyond the old hope. Jesus Christ was all in all to me then, and he is the same now, only I am more resolved than ever to lean my soul on him and upon him alone. I do profess to you this day I dare not place a shadow of reliance on any sermons I have preached, or any alms I have given, or any prayers I have offered, or any communions with Christ I have enjoyed, or on anything that I have done, or said, or thought: but I rely wholly on what Jesus did, and is doing, as my covenant Head and Surety. I know he bore my sin in his own body on the tree, I know he buried my sin where it never shall have a resurrection, and I know he stands as my representative at the eternal throne, and I also know that I shall soon be where he is; because I am one with him, since I have believed in him. Now, my friend, if you believe in him too, if it be but five minutes ago that you received faith, you are just as safe in the hand of Jesus as those of us who have been in him for years. If by an act of trust you do but accept what God has set forth, fleeing to it and laying hold upon it, the “strong consolation” of which the text speaks belongs to you. I pray God of his mighty mercy to lead many to believe in him now.

Did you notice that the apostle speaks of laying hold upon a hope? This does not mean that we are to lay hold by imagination upon something which we hope to obtain in the dim future, for the next verse goes on to say “which hope we have.” We have our hope now, it is not a shadowy idea that possibly when we come to die we may be saved. We know that we at this moment are safe in our refuge, and we lay hold on our confidence as a present joy. Yet that which we lay hold upon is full of hope, there is more in it than we can now see or enjoy. What is the hope? The hope of final perseverance, the hope of ultimate perfection, the hope of eternal glory, the hope of being with our Lord where he is that we may behold his glory for ever-a hope purifying, elevating, and full of glory; a hope which cheers and delights us as often as we think of it. This we have laid hold of by a simple act of faith, believing God to be true. This laying hold upon the hope which God sets before us is a very simple matter, and yet there are some who do not understand it, for they ask us again and again, “What is faith?” Well, it is laying hold, but if you want to know more about it lay hold at once, and see what it is by practice. Lay hold at once, sinner, it is all thou hast to do, and the Spirit of God enables thee to do it. As I said before, black-handed sinner, do not stop to wash thy hands, but lay hold. That which you lay hold on will wash you and cleanse you. And thou, poor, feeble, trembling, paralysed soul, Jesus bids thee stretch out thine hand, and as thou layest hold thou shalt find peace and consolation.

For this is our last point, we enjoy “strong consolation.” I have not time to speak upon this as I should like, and therefore will just throw out a few hints. Many of our fellow-men have no consolation; when trouble comes woe is unto them. There are many others who have a weak consolation; they depend upon the “absolvo te” of a priest. That must be a very poor thing, I should think, for anybody to get consolation out of-to know that you have been to mass, have confessed, and have been assured of forgiveness by a poor, mortal man who is no better than yourself, except that he has had his head shaved. What ground for consolation poor beings can see in this I cannot tell: it must be a very poor support when sin and Satan assail the soul. Many have a very insufficient consolation, for as soon as trial or trouble arise they faint, and when they have the prospect of death before them their consolation vanishes like the dew in the sun. But we have a strong consolation. We call that liquor strong of which a very few drops will flavour all into which it falls: how wonderfully the consolation of Christ has affected our entire lives! There is such potency in it that it sweetens everything about us. It is so strong that it masters all our fears, and slays all our scepticisms. Though there are many teachers busily engaged in suggesting unbelief, yet our strong consolation flings a thousand doubts aside, as Samson slew a thousand Philistines. It conquers all our trouble too, for it makes us feel that, being called according to the eternal purpose, all things work together for our good: yea, this consolation is so strong that it vanquishes death itself and makes us descend into the chill precincts of the sepulchre without a shiver, joyfully triumphant because Christ has promised us life, God has sworn it, and the promise and the oath must be true.

What I want you to note is that the consolation of the Christian lies wholly in his God, because the ground of it is that God has sworn, and that God has promised. Never look, therefore, to yourselves for any consolation; it would be a vain search. Flee from yourselves, and lay hold upon the hope set before you. Oh Christian, you lose consolation when you look away from your God. Fasten the eye of faith on him and never let it glance elsewhere. His promise, his oath, himself, a true and faithful God, this consideration alone can sustain you.

Remember, too, that your consolation must come from what God has spoken and not from his providence. Mind that you do not look to the Lord’s providential dealings for your springs of joy, for he may chasten you with the rod of men, and beat you with many stripes, but his promise smiles when his providence frowns. See how the apostle dwells upon the promise and the oath as the two immutable things, and not upon temporal blessings. Outward providences change, but the oath never changes, hold you on to that. Your comfort must not even depend upon sensible realizations of God’s favour, nor on sweet communions and delights. No, but upon-he has said it and he has sworn it-those are the two strong pillars upon which your comfort must rest. Not upon what you think he says to your heart, nor upon what you may believe you have felt to be applied to your own soul, but upon the bare word, promise, and oath of God without feeling or evidence to back it. God hath said it and sworn it, there is your strong consolation.

Remember, however, that the power of the strong consolation derived from the oath of God must in your personal enjoyment depend very much upon your faith. What is the consolation of a promise if you do not believe it, and what is the comfort of an oath if you doubt it? It is not the end of all strife to those who believe not. O brother, I charge thee by the veracity of God, labour after an increased faith. If thou never doubtest God till thou hast cause to do so, thou wilt never doubt again. It is impossible for him to lie in anything, and above all in the great things that thy soul rests upon, therefore do not treat him as if he could lie, nor dare to suspect his faithfulness, but hold on to the immutable veracity of God.

Remember that this consolation which is intended to come to you by faith, if you do not get it will prove that you are insulting God. It may appear to be a small and an easy thing to believe God, but it is a horrible and a detestable thing to disbelieve him. Picture some generous friend in this assembly coming before us and saying “I promise such and such a thing.” He would be grieved at heart if some one should rise and say, “I am willing enough to believe it, but I cannot.” I can hardly think of anything which would be more insulting to an honest man than to have doubt cast upon him by one who pretends to be anxious to believe him. But suppose in great gentleness of spirit the person so mistrusted were to say, “To put an end to all questioning, engross a deed and I will set my hand and seal to it, and I will at the same time take a solemn oath, calling God to witness that what I promise is true.” Now if any person should say, “I still do not believe it,” can you conceive the pain of heart, yea, and the indignation which would naturally take possession of our friend’s mind! Now God cannot swear by anything greater than himself, for there is no greater, and so he has sworn by himself. By his own existence, by his holiness from which he can never part, by the majesty of his deity, he has solemnly sworn that the believing seed shall be blessed; and blessed they must be. There shall be forgiveness and eternal life to every one that believes in his Son Jesus Christ. This is no fiction. God cannot deceive us on such a point as this, nor indeed, upon any other. This is no dream, no charming myth as some would seem to fancy; it is reality, divine reality. Now then, souls, will you cast yourselves upon this divine reality? May the devil be kept back from you that you may cease blaspheming God by doubting him! May the eternal Spirit now convince you how natural, how proper, how necessary it is that you should at once believe the promise and the oath of God, and trust yourselves with Jesus Christ, whom he sets forth to be a Prince and a Saviour to give repentance unto Israel and remission of sins this day! I wish I knew how to plead with you; but the time has gone. There was a time with me when to have heard this message would have made my heart leap within me, for I wanted Christ; and when I heard that I must lay hold upon him, and flee to him, and so be saved, I was delighted so to do. Those of you who are as sinful as I was, and as conscious of it, will I trust at this very moment look unto him, and be saved: and if you do, by the promise and the oath of God, you are eternally secure. May God the Holy Ghost lead you to Jesus. Amen.

Portions of Scripture Read before Sermon-Hebrews 3:7-19; 4:6-9; 5:1-11; 6:13-20.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-381, 611, 548.

ECCE REX

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, May 6th, 1877, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“He saith unto the Jews, Behold your King!”-John 19:14.

Pilate said much more than he meant, and, therefore, we shall not restrict our consideration of his words to what he intended. John tells us considering Caiaphas, “and this spake he not of himself,” and we may say the same of Pilate. Everything said or done in connection with the Saviour during the day of his crucifixion was full of meaning, far fuller of meaning than the speakers or actors were aware. Transformed by the cross, even the commonplace becomes solemn and weighty. When Caiaphas said that it was expedient that one man should die for the people, that the whole nation perish not, he little thought that he was enunciating the great gospel principle of substitution. When the Jewish people cried out before Pilate “His blood be on us and on our children,” they little knew the judgment which they were bringing upon themselves, which would commence to be fulfilled at the siege of Jerusalem, and follow them, hanging like a heavy cloud over their race, for centuries. When the soldier with a spear pierced his side he had no idea that he was bringing forth before all eyes that blood and water which are to the whole church the emblems of the double cleansing which we find in Jesus, cleansing by atoning blood and sanctifying grace. The fulness of time had come, and all things were full. Each movement on that awful day was brimming with mystery, neither could the Master or those around him stir or speak without teaching some gospel, or enforcing some lesson. Whereas on certain days frivolity seems to rule the hour, and little is to be gathered from much that is spoken; on the day of the passion even the most careless spake as men inspired. Pilate, the undecided spirit, with no mind of his own, uttered language as weighty as if he too had been among the prophets. His acquittal of our Lord, his mention of Barabbas, his writing of the inscription to be fixed over the head of Jesus, and many other matters, were all fraught with instruction.

It was to the Jews that Pilate brought forth Jesus arrayed in garments of derision, and to them he said, “Ecce rex”-“Behold your King!” It was by the seed of Abraham that he was rejected as their King; but we shall not think of them in order to blame that unhappy nation, but to remind ourselves that we also may fall into the same sin. As a nation favoured with the gospel we stand in many respects in the same privileged condition as the Jews did. To us is the word of God made known, to our keeping the oracles of God are committed in these last days, and we, though by nature shoots of the wild olive, are engrafted into that favoured stock from which Israel have for a while been cut off. Shall we prove equally unworthy? Shall any of us be found guilty of the blood of Jesus? We hear of Jesus this day; are we rejecting him? The suffering Messiah will be brought forth again this morning, not by Pilate, but by one who longs to do him honour, and when he stands before you, and is proclaimed again in the words, “Behold your King!” will you also cry, “Away with him, away with him”? Let us hope that there will not be found here hearts so evil as to imitate the rebellious nation and cry, “We will not have this man to reign over us.” Oh that each one of us may acknowledge the Lord Jesus to be his King, for beneath his sceptre there is rest and joy. He is worthy to be crowned by every heart, let us all unite in beholding him with reverence and receiving him with delight. Give me your ears and hearts while Jesus is evidently set forth as standing among you, and for the next few minutes let it be your only business to “Behold your King.”

Come with me, then, to the place which is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew Gabbatha, and there “behold your King.” I shall first ask you to behold your King preparing his throne, yea, and making himself ready to sit thereon. When you look in answer to the summons, “Behold your King,” what do you see? You see the “Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” wearing a crown of thorns and covered with an old purple cloak, which had been thrown about him in mockery; you can see, if you look narrowly, the traces of his streaming blood, for he has just been scourged, and you may also discover that his face is blackened with bruises and stained with shameful spittle from the soldiers’ mouths.

“Thus trimmed forth they bring him to the rout,

Who ‘Crucify him’ cry with one strong shout,

God holds his peace at man, and man cries out.”

It is a terrible spectacle, but I ask you to gaze upon it steadily and see the establishment of the Redeemer’s throne. See how he becomes your mediatorial King. He was setting up a new throne on Gabbatha, whereon he would reign as the King of pardoned sinners and the Prince of Peace. He was King before all worlds as Lord of all by right of his eternal power and Godhead; he had a throne when worlds were made, as King of all kings by creation; he had also always filled the throne of providence, upholding all things by the word of his power. On his head were many crowns, and to Pilate’s question, “Art thou a king then?” he did fitly answer, “Thou sayest that I am a king.” But here before Pilate and the Jews, in his condition of shame and misery, he was about to ascend, and first of all to prepare the throne of the heavenly grace, which now is set up among the sons of men, that they may flee to it and find eternal salvation. Mark how he is preparing this throne of grace, it is by pain and shame endured in our room and stead. Sin was in the way of man’s happiness, and a broken law, and justice requiring a penalty: and all this must be arranged before a throne of grace could be erected among men. If you look at our suffering Lord you see at once the ensigns of his pain, for he wears a crown of thorns which pierce his brow. Pain was a great part of the penalty due for sin, and the great Substitute was therefore sorely pained. When Pilate brought forth our martyr Prince he was the very mirror of agony, he was majesty in misery, misery wrought up to its full height and stature. The cruel furrows of the scourge, and the trickling rivulets of his blood adown his face were but the tokens that he was about to die in cruel pangs upon the cross, and these together were incumbent upon him because there could be no throne of grace till first there had been a substitutionary sacrifice. It behoved him to suffer that he might be a prince and a Saviour. Behold your King in his pains, he is laying the deep foundations of his kingdom of mercy. Many a crown has been secured by blood, and so is this, but it is his own blood; many a throne has been established by suffering, and so is this, but he himself bears the pain. By his great sacrificial griefs our Lord has prepared a throne whereon he shall sit till all the chosen race have been made kings and priests to reign with him. It is by his agony that he obtains the royal power to pardon: by his stripes and bruises he wins the right to absolve poor sinners. We shall have no cause to wonder at the greatness of his mediatorial power if we consider the depth of his sacrificial sufferings: as his misery is the source of his majesty, so the greatness of his pains has secured to him the fulness of power to save. Had he not gone to the end of the law, and honoured justice to the highest degree, he had not now been so gloriously able to dispense mercy from his glorious high throne of mediatorial grace. Behold your King, then, as he lays deep in his own pain and death the basis of his throne of grace.

Nor is it only pain, for he wears also the tokens of scorn. That crown of thorns meant mainly mockery: the soldiers made him a mimic monarch, a carnival king, and that scarlet robe, too, was cast upon his shoulders in bitter scorn: thus did this world deride its God. The evangelists give you the description in brief sentences, as if they stopped between each line to cover their faces with their hands and weep. So there he stands before the crowd, helpless, friendless, with none to declare his generation or give him a good word. He is deserted by all who formerly called him Master, and he has become the centre of a scene of rioting and ridicule. The soldiers have done their worst, and now the chief men of the nation look at him with contempt, and are only kept back from the most ribald scorn by a hate too furiously eager for death to afford them leisure for their scoffs. His enemies had done everything in their power to clothe him with scorn, and they were asking for permission to do more, for they cried, “Let him be crucified.” Behold ye, how he has left all the honour of his Father’s house, and his own glory among the angels, and here he stands with a mock robe, a mimic sceptre, and a thorny crown, the butt of ridicule, scoffed at by all! Yet this must be, because sin is a shameful thing, and a part of the penalty of sin is shame, as they will know who shall wake up in the day of judgment to everlasting contempt. Shame fell on Adam when he sinned, and then and there he knew that he was naked; and now shame has come down in a tremendous hail upon the head of the Second Adam, the substitute for shameful man, and he is covered with contempt. “All they that see me laugh me to scorn.” It is hard to say whether cruelty or mockery had most to do with the person of our Lord at Gabbatha; but by enduring these two things together he laid on an immovable foundation the corner stone of his dominion of love and grace. How could he have been the king of a redeemed people if he had not thus redeemed them? He might have been lord over a people doomed to die, the stern ruler of a people who continued in sin, and would so continue till they perished for ever from his presence; but no such a kingdom did he seek; he sought a kingdom over hearts that should eternally be under obligation to him, hearts that, being redeemed from the lowest hell by his atoning death, would for ever love him with the utmost fervency. His sorrow secured his power to save, his shame endowed him with the right to bless.

“Behold your King.” Look at him with steady eye and see what a King he now is by right of benefit conferred. Behold, he hath put away sin for ever by the sacrifice of himself, and therefore all the ransomed ones agree that he should be king who smote the great dragon which devoured the nations. Behold by his stooping to shame he hath dethroned Satan, who was the prince of this world; and who should occupy the throne but he who has won it, and cast out the strong one who ruled aforetime. Christ has done more for men than the prince of darkness could or would, for he has died for them, and so he has earned a just supremacy over all grateful hearts. As for death, Jesus, by yielding to death, has conquered it. Let him be crowned with the victor’s wreath who has destroyed the world’s destroyer. In his shame you also see the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilling the law and making it honourable. He who could honour that law, which else would have cursed us, deserveth to have all honour and homage paid to him by the sons of men, whom he has rescued from the curse. You see, then, our Lord, when he put on the old red cloak, and submitted his brows to be environed with thorns, was really establishing for himself an empire the foundations of which shall never be shaken: he was performing that saving work which has made him king among sinners whom he saves, and Lord of the kingdom of grace, which through his death is bestowed upon men.

Note this, too, that men are kings among their fellows when they can show deep sympathy, and give substantial succour. He who can sympathise wins power of the best sort, not coarse force, but refined spiritual influence. For this cause our Lord was afflicted, as you see him afflicted, that he might have sympathy with you in your direst grief, and in your most grievous dishonour. As the children were partakers of flesh and blood, he himself also took part of the same, and as they must suffer, so the Captain of their salvation was made perfect by suffering. This gives him his glorious power over us. He is a faithful high priest, for he can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and this ability to enter into our infirmities and sorrows makes him supreme in our hearts. Look at your King in pain and mockery, and see how royal he is to your heart! How sovereignly he commands your heart to rejoice. With what regal power he commands your fears to lie still, and how obediently your despondency yields to his word. Now, as it is with you, so is it on a larger scale in the world. The suffering nations will yet see their true deliverer in their suffering Lord. That sceptre of a reed will secure him power far greater than a rod of iron. His love to man is proved by his suffering to the death on their behalf, and this, when the Holy Ghost hath made men wise, shall be to the myriads of our race the reason for proclaiming him Lord of all. The kings and princes who rule mankind by reason of their descent or by the force of arms have but the names of kings, the true kings are the great benefactors. The heroes are our kings after all. We look upon those as royal who can risk their lives for their fellow men, to win them liberty, or to teach them truth. The race forgets its masters, but it remembers its friends. Earth, but for Jesus, had been a vast prison, and men a race of condemned criminals, but he who stands before us in Gabbatha, in all his shame and grief, hath delivered us from our lost estate, and therefore he must be King. Who shall say him nay? If love must ultimately triumph; if disinterested self-sacrifice must obtain homage, then Jesus is and shall be King. If eventually when the morning breaketh and man’s heart is purged from the prejudice and injustice occasioned by sin, the might shall be with the right, and truth must prevail; then Jesus must reign. The eternal fitness of things demands that the best should be highest, that he who does men most service should be most honoured among them; in a word, that he who was made nothing of for man’s sake should become everything to him. See you, then, how the crown of thorns is mother to the crown which Jesus wears in his church! The scarlet robe is the purchase price of the vesture of universal sovereignty, and the mock sceptre of reed is the precursor of the rod of nations wherewith the whole earth will yet be ruled. “Behold your King,” and see the sources of his mediatorial power.

O you who see in your bleeding and rejected Lord “the King in his beauty,” come ye hither yet again and behold him claiming tour homage. See in what way he comes to win your hearts. What is his right to be King over you? There are many rights, for on his head are many crowns, but the most commanding right which Jesus has over any of us is signified by that crown of thorns: it is the right of supreme love: he loved us as none other could have loved. If we put all the loves of parents and of wives and children all together, we can never rival even for a moment the love of Christ to us, and whenever that love touches us, so that we feel its power, we crown him King directly. Who can resist his charms? One look of his eyes overpowers us. See with your heart those eyes when they are full of tears for perishing sinners, and you are a willing subject. One look at his blessed person subjected to scourging and spitting for our sakes will give us more idea of his crown rights than anything besides. Look into his pierced heart as it pours out its life-flood for us, and all disputes about his sovereignty are ended in our hearts. We own him Lord because we see how he loved. How could we do otherwise? Love in action, or rather love suffering, carries an omnipotence about it. Behold what his love endured, and so “Behold your King.”

Jesus in the garb of mockery, marred with traces of his pain, also reminds us of his complete purchase of us by his deeds and death. “Ye are not your own, ye are bought with a price.” Behold your King, and see the price. It is the price of suffering immense, of shame most cruel. It is an incalculable price, for the Lord of all is set at nought. It is an awful price, for he who only hath immortality yields himself to die. It is the price of blood. It is the scourging and bleeding and woe of Jesus; nay, it is himself. If you would see the price of your redemption, “Behold your King.” ’Tis he that hath redeemed us unto God by his blood, he that “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant; and being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” You own that claim, the love of Christ constraineth you; you feel that henceforth you live for him alone, and count it joy that in all respects he should reign over you with unlimited sway.

Jesus, because he suffered, hath acquired a power over us which is far superior to any which could be urged in courts of law, or enforced by mere power, for our hearts have voluntarily surrendered to him and given him the right of our free submission, charmed to own allegiance to such imperial love. Is it possible for a believer to look at the Lord Jesus Christ without feeling that he longs to be more and more his servant and disciple? Do you not thirst to serve him? Can you behold him in the depth of shame without pining to lift him up to the heights of glory? Can you see him stooping thus for you without pleading with God that a glorious high throne may be his, and that he may sit upon it and rule all the hearts of men? There is no need to argue out the right of King Jesus, for you feel it; his love has carried you by storm, and it holds fast its capture. You cannot have a Saviour without his being your King, and seeing such a Saviour in such a condition, you cannot even think of him without delighting to ascribe to him all power and dominion. Could we escape his sway it would be bondage to us, and when we at any time fail to own it, it is our worst affliction.

“Behold your King,” then, for he himself is his own claim to your obedience. See what he suffered for you, my brethren, and henceforth never draw back from any labour, shame, or suffering for his dear sake. “Behold your King,” and reckon to be treated like him. Do you expect to be crowned with gold where he was crowned with thorns? Shall lilies grow for you and briars for him? Never again be ashamed to own his glorious name, unless indeed you can be so vile as to prove a traitor to such a Lord. See to what shame he was put, and learn from him to despise all shame for his truth’s sake. Shall the disciple be above his master, or the servant above his lord? If they have thus maltreated the master of the house, what shall they do to the household? Let us reckon upon our share of this treatment, and by accepting it prove to all men that the despised and rejected of men is really the King over us, and that the subjects blush not to be like their monarch. Even though the cost be all the shame the world can possibly pour upon us, or all the suffering that flesh and blood can in any condition endure, let us be faithful in our loyalty, and cry, “Who shall separate us? Shall persecution, or distress, or tribulation divide us from our King? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors. King of griefs, thou art King of my soul! O King of shame, thou art absolute monarch of my heart. Thou art King by right divine, and King by mine own voluntary choice. Other lords have had dominion over us, but now, since thou hast revealed thyself after this fashion, thy name only shall govern our spirit.” Do you not see, then, that Jesus before Pilate reveals his claim in the appearance which he wears. “Behold your King.”

“Behold your King,” for a third time, that you may see him subduing his dominions. Dressed in robes of scorn, and with a visage marred with pain, he comes forth conquering and to conquer. This is not very apparent at a superficial glance, for he is not arrayed like a man of war. You see no sword upon his thigh, nor bow in his hand. No fiery threatenings fall from his lips, nor does he speak with eloquent persuasion. He is unarmed, yet victorious; is silent, but yet conquering. In this garb he goeth forth to war. His shame is his armour, and his sufferings are his battle axe. How say you? How can it be so? I speak no fiction, but sober fact, and it shall be proved.

Missionaries have gone forth to win the heathen for Christ, and they have commenced with the uncivilized sons of sin by telling them that there is a God, and that he is great and just: the people have listened unmoved, or have only answered, “Dost thou think we know not this?” Then they have spoken of sin and its punishment, and have foretold the coming of the Lord to judgment, but still the people stirred not, but coolly said, “’Tis true,” and then went on their way to live in sin as before. At last these earnest men have let fall the blessed secret, and spoken of the love of God in giving his only begotten Son, and they have begun to tell the story of the matchless griefs of Immanuel. Then have the dry bones stirred, then have the deaf begun to hear. They tell us that they had not long told the story before they noticed that eyes were fastened on them, and that countenances were beaming with interest which had been listless before, and they have said to themselves, “Why did we not begin with this?” Ay, why indeed? for this it is that touches men’s hearts. Christ crucified is the conqueror. Not in his robes of glory does he subdue the heart, but in his vestments of shame. Not as sitting upon the throne does he at first gain the faith and the affections of sinners, but as bleeding, suffering, and dying in their stead. “God forbid that I should glory,” said the apostle, “save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ”; and though every theme that is connected with the Saviour ought to play its part in our ministry, yet this is the master theme. The atoning work of Jesus is the great gun of our battery. The cross is the mighty battering-ram wherewith to break in pieces the brazen gates of human prejudices and the iron bars of obstinacy. Christ coming to be our judge alarms, but Christ the man of sorrows subdues. The crown of thorns has a royal power in it to compel a willing allegiance, the sceptre of reed breaks hearts better than a rod of iron, and the robe of mockery commands more love than Cæsar’s imperial purple. There is nothing like it under heaven. Victories ten thousand times ten thousand have been achieved by him whom Pilate led forth to the multitude,-victories distinctly to be ascribed to the thorny crown and vesture of mockery, are they not written in the book of the wars of the Lord? There will be more such as he is more frequently set forth in his own fashion, and men are bidden in the Man of sorrows to behold their King.

Has it not been so at home as well as among the far-off heathen? What winneth men’s hearts to Christ to-day? What but Christ in shame and Christ in suffering? I appeal to you who have been newly converted; what has bound you as captives to Jesus’ chariot? What has made you henceforth vow to be his followers, rejoicing in his name? What but this, that he bowed his head to the death for your sake and hath redeemed you unto God by his blood? You know it is so.

And oh, dear children of God, if ever you feel the power of Christ upon you to the full, till it utterly overcomes you, is it not the memory of redeeming grief which doeth it? When you become like harps, and Jesus is the minstrel and layeth his finger amongst your heart-strings and bringeth out nothing but praise for his dear name, what is it that charms you into the music of grateful love but the fact of his condescension on your behalf? Is not this your song, that he was slain and hath redeemed you unto God by his blood? I confess I could sit me down at his cross’ foot and do nothing else but weep until I wept myself away, for his sufferings make my soul to melt within me. Then if the call of duty is heard I feel intensely eager to plead with others, ready to make any sacrifice to bring others under my Lord’s dominion, and full of a holy passion that even death could not quench-all this, I say, if I have but just come from gazing on the Redeemer’s passion, and drinking of his cup and being baptized with his baptism. The sceptre of reed rules as nothing else ever did, for it rouses enthusiasm. The thorn-crown commands homage as no other diadem ever did, for it braces men into heroes and martyrs. No royalty is so all-commanding as that which has for its insignia the chaplet of thorn, the reed, the red cloak, and the five wounds. Other sovereignties are forced, and feigned, and hollow compared with the sovereignty of “the despised of men”: fear, or custom, or self-interest make men courtiers elsewhere, but fervent love crowds the courts of King Jesus. We do not merely say that the marred countenance is the most majestic ever seen, but we have felt it to be so on many an occasion, yea, and feel it to be so now. Do you want to make our hard hearts soft? Tell us of Jesus’ grief. Would you make us, strong men, into children? Set the Man of sorrows in our midst; there is no resisting him.

Look ye also at backsliders if ye would see the power of the despised Nazarene. If they have gone away from Christ, if they have become lukewarm, if their hearts have become obdurate to him who once could charm them, what can bring them back? I know but one magnet which in the hands of the Holy Spirit will attract these sadly fallen ones: it is Jesus in his shame and pains. We tell them that they crucified the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame, and they look on him whom they have pierced, and mourn for him. O ye that after having sipped of the communion cup have gone to drink at the table of Bacchus, ye who after having talked of love to Christ have followed after the lusts of the flesh, ye who after singing his praises have blasphemed the sacred name with which ye are named-may his omnipotence of love be proved in you also. What can ever bring you back but this sad reflection, that ye also have twisted for him a crown of thorns and caused him to be blasphemed among his enemies? Still the merit of his death is available for you: the power and efficacy of his precious blood have not ceased even for you, and if you come back to him-and oh, may a sight of him draw you-he will receive you graciously as at the first. I say to you, “Behold your King,” and may the sovereignty of his humiliation and suffering be proved this morning in some of you as you shall come bending at his feet, conquered by his great love and restored to repentance and faith by his marvellous compassion. A sight of his wounds and bruises heals us, so that we grieve at our rebellions and long to be brought home to God, never to wander more.

Ah, dear brethren, we shall always find, as long as the world standeth, that among saints, sinners, backsliders, and all classes of men Jesus Christ’s power is most surely felt when his humiliation is most faithfully declared and most believingly known. It is by this that he will subdue all things to himself. If we will but preach Jesus Christ to the Hindoo it will not be necessary to answer all his metaphysical subtleties-the sorrows of Jesus are as a sharp sword to cut the Gordian knot. If we will go down amongst the degraded inhabitants of Africa we shall not need first to civilize them; the cross is the great lever which lifts up fallen men: it conquers evil and establishes truth and righteousness. The most depraved and hardened learn his great love, and hearts of stone begin to beat; they see Jesus suffering to the death out of nothing else but love to them, and they are touched by it, and eagerly enquire what they must do to be saved by such a Saviour. The Holy Spirit worketh in the minds of many by setting forth the great love and grief of Jesus. May we who are his ministers have great faith in his cross, and henceforth say, as we preach the suffering Jesus, “Behold your King.”

In the fourth place I beg you to “Behold your King” setting forth the pattern of his kingdom. When you look at him you are struck at once with the thought that if he be a king he is like no other monarch, for other kings are covered with rich apparel and surrounded with pomp, but he has none of these. Their glories usually consist in wars by which they have made others suffer, but his glory is his own suffering; no blood but his own has flowed to make him illustrious. He is a king, but he cannot be put in the list of sovereigns such as the nations of the earth are compelled to serve. When Antoninus Pius set up the statue of Jesus in the Pantheon as one of a circle of gods and heroes, it must have seemed strangely out of place to those who gazed upon its visage if the sculptor was at all true to life. It must have stood apart as one that could not be numbered with the rest. Neither can you set him among the masters of the human race who have crushed mankind beneath their iron heel. He was no Cæsar; you cannot make him appear like one: call him not autocrat, emperor, or czar,-he has an authority greater than all these, yet not after their kind. His purple is different from theirs, and his crown also, but his face differs more, and his heart most of all. “My kingdom,” saith he, “is not of this world.” For troops he has a host of sorrows, for pomp a surrounding of scorn, for lofty bearing humility, for adulation mockery, for homage spitting, for glory shame, for a throne a cross. Yet was there never truer king, indeed all kings are but a name, save this King, who is a real ruler in himself and of himself, and not by extraneous force. Right royal indeed is the Nazarene, but he cannot be likened unto the princes of earth, nor can his kingdom be reckoned with theirs. I pray that the day may soon come when none may dream of looking upon the church as a worldly organization capable of alliance with temporal sovereignties so as to be patronized, directed, or reformed by them. Christ’s kingdom shines as a lone star with a brightness all its own. It standeth apart like a hill of light, sacred and sublime: the high hills may leap with envy because of it, but it is not of them nor like unto them. Is not this manifest even in the appearance of our Lord as Pilate brings him forth and cries, “Behold your King!”?

Now as he sets before us in his own person the pattern of his kingdom, we may expect that we shall see some likeness to him in his subjects; and if you will gaze upon the church, which is his kingdom, from the first day of her history until now, you will see that it too is wearing its purple robe. The martyrs’ blood is the purple vesture of the church of Christ; the trials and persecutions of believers are her crown of thorns. Think of the rage of persecution under Pagan Rome, and the equally inhuman proceedings of Papal Rome, and you will see how the ensign of Christ’s kingdom is a crown of thorns; a crown and yet thorns, thorns but still a crown. The bush is burning, but it is not consumed. If you, beloved, are truly followers of Jesus, you must expect to take your measure of shame and dishonour, and you may reckon upon your allotment of griefs and sorrows. The “Man of sorrows” attracts a sorrowful following. The lamb of God’s passover is still eaten with bitter herbs. The child of God cannot escape the rod, for the elder brother did not, and to him we are to be conformed. We must “fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ for his body’s sake, which is the church” (Colossians 1:24).

Recollect, however, that Christ’s sufferings as a pattern were not for his own sins, nor brought upon him as a chastisement for his own faults, so that the sufferings which belong to his kingdom are those which are endured for his name and for his glory’s sake, and for the good of others. If men lie in prison for their own crimes, that has nothing to do with his kingdom; if we suffer for our sins, that is no part of his kingdom; but when a man loseth of his substance for Christ’s cause, layeth out himself to toil even unto death, beareth contempt and suffers hardness as a Christian-this is after the type of Christ’s kingdom. When the missionary goeth forth with his life in his hand among the heathen, or when a believer in any way divesteth himself of comfort for the good of others, it is then that he truly copies the pattern set him in Pilate’s hall by our great King. I say to you Christians who court ease, to you who are hoarding up your gold, to you who will do nothing that would bring you under the criticism of your fellow men, to you who live unto yourselves,-would it not be irony of the severest kind if I were to point to Jesus before Pilate and say, “Behold your King.” Living in undue luxury, amassing wealth, rolling in ease, living to enjoy yourselves! Is that your King? Poor subjects you, and very unlike your Lord; but if there be among us those who for his sake can make sacrifices, we may look upon our King without fear. You who are undaunted by contempt, and who would give all that you have, yea, and give yourselves to know Jesus, and are doing so, to such I say, “Behold your King,” for you are of his kingdom and you shall reign with him. In your your conquest of yourselves you have already become kings. In reigning over your own desires and carnal inclinations, for the sake of his dear love, you are already kings and priests unto God, and you shall reign for ever and ever. He who is ruled by his passions in any degree is still a slave, but he who lives for God and his fellow men hath a royal soul. The insignia of a prince unto God are still shame and suffering: which adornments are readily worn when the Lord calls him so to do. In Christ’s kingdom those are peers of the highest rank who are most like their Lord and are the lowest and humblest in mind, and most truly the servants of all. The secondary princes of his kingdom approximate less closely to him, and the lower you descend in the scale the less you are like him in those respects. The Christian surrounded with every comfort, who never endured hardness for Christ, who never knew what it was to be sneered at for Jesus’ sake, who never made a sacrifice which went so far as to pinch him in the least, he, if indeed he be a Christian, is least in the kingdom of heaven. Proud, rich men who give but trifles to Christ’s cause are pariahs in his kingdom, but they are the chief who are willing to be least of all, they are princes who make themselves the offscouring of all things for his name’s sake, such as were the apostles and first martyrs, and others whom his love has greatly constrained.

Our concluding remark shall be, “Behold your King”-proving the certainty of his empire,-for if, beloved, Christ was King when he was in Pilate’s hands, after being scourged and spit upon, and while he was wearing the robe and crown of mockery, when will he not be King? If he was King at his worst, when is it that his throne can ever be shaken? They have brought him very low, they have brought him lower than the sons of men, for they have made him a worm and no man, despised of the people, and yet he is King! Marks of royalty were present on the day of his death. He dispensed crowns when he was on the cross,-he gave the dying thief a promise of an entrance into Paradise. In his death he shook the earth, he opened the graves, he rent the rocks, he darkened the sun, and he made men smite on their breasts in dismay. One voice after another, even from the ranks of his foes, proclaimed him to be King, even when dying like a malefactor. Was he a King then? When will he not be King? and who is there that can by any means shake his throne? In the days of his flesh “the Kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers took counsel together, saying, Let us break his bonds asunder, and cast his cords from us”; but he that sat in the heavens did laugh, the Lord did have them in derision, and Christ on the cross was acknowledged, in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin, to be still the King of the Jews. When will he not be King? If he was King before he died and was laid in the grave, what is he now that he has risen from the dead, now that he has vanquished the destroyer of our race, and lives no more to die? What is he now? Ye angels, tell what glories surround him now! If he was King when he stood at Pilate’s bar, what will he be when Pilate shall stand at his bar, when he shall come on the great white throne and summon all mankind before him to judgment? What will be his acknowledged sovereignty and his dreaded majesty in the day of the Lord? Come, let us adore him; let us pay our humble homage in the courts of the Lord’s house this day; and then let us go forth to our daily service in his name, and make this our strong resolve, his Spirit helping us, that we will live to crown him in our hearts and in our lives, in every place where our lot may be cast, till the day break and the shadows flee away, and we behold the King in his beauty and the land that is very far off. None can overturn a kingdom which is founded on the death of its King; none can abolish a dominion whose deep foundations are laid in the tears and blood of the Prince himself. Napoleon said that he founded his empire by force, and therefore it had passed away; but, said he, “Jesus founded his kingdom upon love, and it will last for ever.” So it must be, for whatever may or may not be, it is written-“He must reign.”

As for us, if we wish to extend the Redeemer’s kingdom we must be prepared to deny ourselves for Christ, we must be prepared for weariness, slander, and self-denial. In this sign we conquer. The cross will have to be borne by us as well as by him if we are to reign with Jesus. We must both teach the cross and bear the cross. We must participate in the shame if we would participate in the glory. No thorn no throne. When again shall be heard the voice, “Behold your King,” and Jew and Gentile shall see him enthroned, and surrounded with all his Father’s angels, with the whole earth subdued to his power, happy shall he be who shall then in the exalted Saviour behold his King. The Lord grant us this day to be loyal subjects of the Crucified that we may be favoured to share his glory.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-John 19:1-30.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-373, 295, 282.