Whatever may be said of the Old Testament dispensation, however dimly it may have revealed certain truths, there was one matter about which it was clear as the sun. Under the Old Testament economy the Lord God of Israel is ever most conspicuous. God is in all, and over all; and from the pages of the prophets, as well as from the lips of the temple choirs, we hear loudly sounding forth the note, “The Lord shall reign for ever, even thy God, O Zion, unto all generations. Hallelujah!” By priest and prophet, saint and seer, the one testimony is borne, “The Lord reigneth.” You cannot read the Book of Job without trembling in the majestic presence of the Almighty; nor can you turn to the Psalms without being filled with solemn awe as you see David, and Asaph, and Heman adoring the Lord, who made heaven and earth and the sea. Everywhere, from Abraham to Malachi, man is of small account, and God is all in all. Very little consideration is given to any fancied rights and claims of man, but wonder is expressed that the Creator should be mindful of him. We read no discourse upon the dignity of human nature, or upon the beauty of human character; but God alone is holy, and when he looks from heaven he sees none that doeth good, no, not one. Man is rolled in the dust from which he sprang, and to which he must return; all his pride is cut down, and his comeliness withered, and over all is seen one God, and none beside him.

It will be a great offence if, coming into the brighter light of the New Testament, we are less vivid in our conceptions of the glory of God. If God should be less clearly seen in the person of our Lord Jesus, than he was under the symbols of the law, it will be the fault of our blinded hearts. It will be ill for us to turn day into night, and like owls to see less because the light is increased. Let it not be so among us, but let it be in our churches as in Israel of old, of which it was said, “in Judah is God known; his name is great in Israel.” “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son,” and by him as the incarnate Word he has revealed himself with a sevenfold splendour, and therefore it should be our soul’s great delight to perceive God in all things, to rejoice in his presence, and to magnify him in all things as King of kings and Lord of lords.

The Psalmist in this particular case ascribes to the Lord universal action and power over us, for he ascribes to him the mercies of life and the issues of death. He says, “Blessed be the Lord who daily loadeth us with benefits.” The Lord heaps up his favours till their number loads the memory, and their value burdens the shoulders of gratitude. He gives us so many mercies that the mind is burdened in endeavouring to calculate their worth: we are overwhelmed with a sense of his goodness, and the consciousness that we cannot return any adequate thanks for such abundance of daily grace. Such is our God in life, and what will he be in death? Shall we be without him there? No, blessed be his name, “Unto God the Lord belong the issues from death.” His kingdom includes the land of death-shade, and all the borders thereof. We shall not die without his permit, nor without his presence. Though temporal mercies will find their end when life ends, yet are there eternal mercies which throughout eternal life shall manifest the goodness of the Most High; and meanwhile by rescues, recoveries, and escapes we shall be preserved from prematurely descending to the tomb. If any of you, dear friends, have been brought near to the gates of death, if you have been laid low by wearisome sickness, if your heart has sunk within you in a sort of mental death, you will in coming back to health and strength most heartily bless the Lord who finds for us a way of return from the suburbs of the sepulchre. He is not only the God of life but the God of death; he keeps us in life, and makes life happy; he keeps us from death and from the fierce agencies which wait to drag us to the grave. There are issues out of the dark border-land of sickness, and peril, and despair, and the Lord leads us by his own right hand to cause us to escape. Doth he not say “I will bring again from Bashan, I will bring my people again from the depths of the sea”? We must, and we will praise him for this with a new song.

I gather from our text that death is in the hand of God, that escapes from death are manifestations of his divine power, and that he is to be praised for them.

The outline of this morning’s discourse, as indicated by the text, is just this: first, the sovereign prerogative of God, “To God the Lord belong the issues from death”: secondly, the character of the sovereign with whom this prerogative is lodged, “He that is our God is the God of salvation”: and then, thirdly, the solemn warning which this great sovereign gives in reference to the exercise of his prerogative; weighty are the words, may the Holy Spirit cause us to feel their power-“God shall wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of such an one as goeth on still in his trespasses.”

First, then, with deep reverence let us speak upon the sovereign prerogative of God-“Unto God the Lord belong the issues from death.” Kings have been accustomed to keep the power of life and death in their own hands. The great King of kings, the sovereign Ruler and absolute Lord of all worlds reserves this to himself.-that he shall permit men to die, or shall give them an issue from death at his own good will and pleasure. He can alike create and destroy. He sendeth forth his Spirit and they are created, and at his own pleasure he saith, “Return, ye children of men,” and lo! they fall before him like autumn’s faded leaves.

The prerogative of life or death belongs to God in a wide range of senses. First of all as to natural life, we are all dependent upon his good pleasure. We shall not die until the time which he appoints; for our death-time, like all our time, is in his hands. Our skirts may brush against the portals of the sepulchre, and yet we shall pass the iron gate unharmed if the Lord be our guard. The wolves of disease will hunt us in vain until God shall permit them to overtake us. The most desperate enemies may waylay us, but no bullet shall find its billet in any heart unless the Lord allows it. Our life does not even depend upon the care of angels, nor can our death be compassed by the malice of devils. We are immortal till our work is done, immortal till the immortal King shall call us home to the land where we shall be immortal in a still higher sense. When we are most sick, and most ready to faint into the grave, we need not despair of recovery, since the issues from death are in Almighty hands. “The Lord killeth and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up.” When we have passed beyond the skill of the physician we have not passed beyond the succour of our God, to whom belong the issues from death.

Spiritually, too, this prerogative is with God. We are by nature under the condemnation of the law on account of our sins, and we are like criminals tried, convicted, sentenced, and left for death. It is for God, as the great Judge, to see the sentence executed, or to issue a free pardon, according as he pleases; and he will have us know that it is upon his supreme pleasure that this matter depends. Over the head of a universe of sinners I hear this sentence thundering, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” Shut up for death, as men are by reason of their sins, it rests with God to pardon whom he may reserve; none have any claim to his favour, and it must be exercised upon mere prerogative, because he is the Lord God, merciful and gracious, and delighteth to pass by transgression and sin.

So, too, doth the Lord deliver his own believing people from those “deaths oft” which make up their experience. Though we are in Christ Jesus delivered from death as a penalty, yet we often feel an inward death, caused by the old nature, which exercises a deadening influence within us. We feel the sentence of death in ourselves that we may not trust in ourselves, but in Jesus, in whom our life is hid. It may be that for a season our joys are damped, our spiritual vigour is drained away, and we hardly know whether we have any spiritual life left within us. We become like the trees in winter, whose substance is in them but the sap ceases to flow, and there is neither fruit nor leaf to betray the secret life within. We scarcely feel a spiritual emotion in these sad times, and dare not write ourselves among the living in Zion. At such times God the Lord can give us back the fulness of life, he can restore our soul from the pit of corruption and cause us not only to have life but to have it more abundantly. The issues from death are with the quickening Spirit, and when our soul cleaveth to the dust he can revive us again till we rejoice with joy unspeakable.

As the climax of all, when we shall come actually to die, and these bodies of ours shall descend into the remorseless grave, as probably they will, in the hands of our Redeeming Lord are the issues from death. The archangel is even now waiting for the signal: one blast of his trumpet shall suffice to gather the chosen from all lands, from the east and from the west, from the south and from the north. Then death itself shall die away, and the righteous shall arise

“From beds of dust and silent clay

To realms of everlasting day.”

“I am the resurrection and the life,” saith Christ, and he is both of these to all his people. Is he not life, for he saith, “Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die”? Is he not resurrection, for he saith, “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live”? That bright illustrious day in which the saints shall rise with their Lord will show how unto God the Lord belong the issues from death.

Our translation is a very happy one, because it bears so many renderings, and includes not only escape from death, deliverance from condemnation, revival from spiritual death, and uplifting from deadly mental depression, but recovery from death’s direct havoc, by our being raised again from the tomb. In all these respects the Lord Jesus hath the key of death; he openeth and no man shutteth, he shutteth and no man openeth.

Concerning this prerogative we may say, first, that to God belongs the right to exercise it. This right springs, first, from his being our Creator. He saith “all souls are mine.” He has an absolute right to do with us as he pleases, seeing he hath made us, and not we ourselves. Men forget what they are, and boast great things; but truly they are but as clay on the potter’s wheel, and he can fashion them or can break them as he pleases. They think not so, but he knoweth their thoughts, that they are vain. Oh the dignity of man! What a theme for a sarcastic discourse! As the frog in the fable swelled itself till it burst asunder, so doth man in his pride and envy against his Maker, who nevertheless sitteth upon the circle of the heavens, and reckoneth men as though they were grasshoppers, and regardeth whole nations of them as the small dust of the balance. The Lord’s prerogative of creation is manifestly widened morally by our forfeiture of any consideration which might have arisen out of obedience and rectitude if we had possessed them. Our fault has involved forfeiture of the creature’s claims, whatever they may have been. We are all attainted of high treason, and we have each one been guilty of personal rebellion, and therefore we have not the rights of citizens, but lie under sentence of condemnation. What saith the infallible voice of God? “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.” We have come under this curse; justice has pronounced us guilty, and by nature we abide under condemnation. If then the Lord shall be pleased to deliver us from death it rests with him to do so, but we have no right to any such deliverance, nor can we urge any argument which would avail in the courts of justice for reversal of sentence or stay of execution. Before the bar of justice our case must go hard if we set up up any plea of right. We shall be driven away with the disdain of the impartial Judge if we urge our suit upon that line. Our wisest course is to appeal to his mercy and to his sovereign grace, for there alone is our hope. Understand me clearly: if the Lord shall suffer us all to perish we shall only receive our deserts, and we have not one of us a shade of claim upon his mercy: we are therefore absolutely in his hands, and to him belong the issues from death.

This right of God to save is further made manifest by the redemption of his people. It might have been said that God had no right to save if by saving he would abridge his justice; but now that he hath laid help upon one that is mighty, and his only-begotten Son has become a victim in our place, to magnify the law and make it honourable, the Lord God hath an unquestionable right to deliver from death his own redeemed, for whom the Substitute has died. Our God saves his people in consistency with justice: no one can question his doing right even when he justifies the ungodly. His right and power over the issues from death are in the case of his own blood-bought ones clear as the sun at noon-day, and who shall dispute with him?

Our text, however, puts the prerogative upon the one sole ground of lordship, and we prefer to come back to that. “Unto God the Lord belong the issues from death.” It is a doctrine which is very unpalateable in these days, but one nevertheless which is to be held and taught, that God is an absolute sovereign, and doeth as he wills. The words of Paul may not be suffered to sleep,-“Nay, but O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus?” The Lord cannot do amiss, his perfect nature is a law unto itself. In his case Rex is Lex, the King is the law. He is the source and fountain of all right, truth, rule, and order. Being absolutely perfect within himself, and comprehending all things, it is not possible for him to do otherwise than right. He is goodness, truth, and righteousness itself, and therefore the prerogatives of his throne are not bounded, and to the Lord of heaven and earth belong the issues from death.

Enough with regard to that matter of right. I go on to notice that the Lord has the power of this prerogative. With him is the ability to deliver men from natural death. Jehovah Rophi is a physician who is never baffled. Medicines may fail, but not the great Maker of all plants and herbs and useful drugs. Study and experience may be at a nonplus, but he who fashioned the human frame knows its most intricate parts, and can soon correct its disorders. God can restore when a hundred diseases are upon us all at once. Take courage, thou fainting one, and look up. Certainly, as to the soul, there is no case of man so far gone that God cannot find an issue out of its death. He can cast out seven devils, and a legion of diabolical sins. To God the Lord belong the issues from death, however foul the sin, and however forlorn the condition caused by transgression. He who raised Lazarus from the grave after four days can raise the most corrupt from the grave of their iniquities. O that awakened sinners would believe this!

I remember reading of an aged minister who had for some years fallen into deep despondency. He gave up his pulpit, and kept himself very much alone, always writing bitter things against himself. At last, when he was on a sick bed, a servant of God was sent to him, who dealt wisely with him. This good man said to the despairing one, “Brother, do you believe that passage, ‘He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him’?” “I believe it,” said he, “with all my heart, but I am convinced-” Here the other stopped him, “I do not ask what your convincements may be, nor what your feelings may be, but I come to say to you, the man who trusts that promise lives.” This plain declaration of the gospel was made by the divine Comforter the means of supreme consolation to the despairing one; may it be equally useful to all those who hear it. He who can hang his soul’s hope upon the infinite ability of Christ to save is a saved man. He that believeth on him hath everlasting life. What a blessing this is! The devil may tell me that I never can issue out of deserved death, and that I am shut up for ever under the just results of my trespasses; my own conscience knowing my undeservingness may also condemn me a thousand times over; but unto God the Lord belong the issues from death, and he can and will pluck me from between the jaws of death since I believe in him. He is able to bring up those whom he ordains to save even from the utmost depths of despair. The absolute right of God is supported by almighty power, and thus his prerogative is made a matter of fact.

Nor is this all, the Lord has actually exercised this prerogative in abundant cases. As to those issues from death which are seen in restoration from sickness, I need not remind you that these are plentiful enough. At times these have come in a miraculous form, as when Hezekiah had his life lengthened in answer to prayer, and when many others were healed by the Saviour and his apostles. Life has been preserved in a lion’s den, and in the belly of a fish, in a fiery furnace, and in the heart of the sea. Death has no arrow in his quiver which can hurt the man whom God ordains to live. Out of imminent peril the Lord still delivers in the ordinary course of providence, and there are persons present this morning who are proofs of his interposing power. He has raised some of us from prostration of body and depression of spirit, he has rescued others from shipwreck and fire in very singular ways, and here we are, living to praise God, as we do this day.

God has exercised this prerogative spiritually. In what a myriad of cases has he delivered souls from death! Ask you white-robed hosts in heaven, “Has not God displayed in you his sovereign power to save?” Ask many here below, who have tasted that he is gracious, and they will tell, “He saved me.” According to his mercy he has issued a free pardon, signed by his royal hand, saying, “Deliver him from going down into the pit, for I have found a ransom.” Why his sovereignty has interposed to rescue us from death we cannot tell. We often ask, “Why was I made to hear his voice? How was it that I was made to live?” But we are silent with grateful wonder, and invent no answer. Divine will, backed by divine power, worked out the sovereign purpose of love, and here we are, saved from so great a death by love invincible.

Yes, indeed, to God the Lord belong the issues from death. Come, then, brethren and sisters, let him have all the glory of it. If you are alive after a long sickness, bless the Lord, who forgiveth all our iniquities, who healeth all our diseases. If you are saved from condemnation this morning, and know it, bless the Lord, who accepts us in the beloved. If you feel at this moment that the death of sin has no dominion over you, for the life of grace reigns within, then bless the Lord who has quickened you into newness of life. Glorify his name this day, who in love to your soul has delivered you from the pit of corruption, and cast all your sins behind his back. Once more, if you have a glorious hope of a blessed resurrection, and feel that you can smile on death because God smiles on you, then bless the Lord who will raise you up at the last day. Your Redeemer liveth, and you shall live because he lives, therefore clap your hands with holy glee. Bless the all-glorious name of him to whom belong the issues from death.

Thus have I set forth the prerogative; and now, secondly, follow me with your thoughts while I show the character of the sovereign in whom that prerogative is vested. We cannot upon this earth exhibit much love to human princes who claim absolute dominion. Imperialism is not to our mind. Among the worst curses that have ever fallen upon mankind have been absolute monarchs: nowadays men shake them off as Paul shook off the viper into the fire. The Lord grant we may see the last of all despotic dynasties, that the nations may be free. We cannot endure a tyrant, and yet if we could have absolutely perfect despots it might be the best possible form of government. Assuredly, the great and eternal God, who is King of kings and Lord of lords, is absolutely perfect; and we may be well content to leave all prerogatives and vest all powers in his hands. He has never trampled on the rights of the meanest, nor forgotten the weakest. His foot doth not needlessly crush a worm, nor doth he beat down a fly in wantonness. He has never done a wrong, nor wrought an injustice. We oppress each other, but the Judge of all oppresses none. The Lord is holy in all his ways, and his mercy endureth for ever; and the amplest prerogatives are safely lodged in such hands.

Our text yet further tells us who it is in whose hands the issues of life and death are left: “He that is our God is the God of salvation.” Sinner, your salvation rests with God, but do not therefore be discouraged, for that God with whom the matter rests is the God of salvation, or of “salvations,” for so the Hebrew hath it. What mean we by this?

The Scripture signifieth, first, that salvation is the most glorious of all God’s designs. Since this world was made, the working out of salvation has run through history like a silver thread. The Lord made the world, and lit up moon and stars, and set heaven, earth, and sea in order, with his eye upon salvation in the whole arrangement. He has ruled all things by his supreme government with the same end. The great wheels of his providence have been revolving these six thousand years before the eyes of men, and among them, and at their back, a hand has been ever passing to conduct every movement to the ultimate issue, which is the salvation of the covenanted ones. This is the object which is dearest to Jehovah’s heart. He loves best to save. God was pleased with creation, but not as he is with redemption. When he made the heavens and the earth it was every-day work to him, and he merely spake and said, “It is good”; but when he gave his Son to die to redeem his people, and his elect were being saved, he did not speak with the prosaic brevity of creation, but he sang. Is it not written, “He shall rest in his love, he shall rejoice over thee with singing”? Redemption is a matter which Jehovah sings about. Are you able to imagine what it must be for God to sing? For Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to burst forth into a joyous hymn over the work of salvation! This is because salvation is dearest to God’s heart, and in it his whole nature is most intensely engaged. Judgment is his strange work, but he delighteth in mercy. He has put forth many attributes in the accomplishment of other works, but in this he has laid out all his being. He is seen in this as mighty to save. Herein he hath bared his arm. For this he has taken his Son out of his bosom. For this he has caused his Only-begotten to be bruised and put to grief. Salvation is the eternal purpose of the inmost heart of God, and by it his highest glory is revealed. This, then, is the God to whom belong the issues from death: the God whose grandest design is salvation. Sing unto his name and exult that the Lord reigneth, even the Lord who is my strength and my song, who also hath become my salvation.

Ask ye yet again what this meaneth-“He that is our God is the God of salvation,” and we remind you that the most delightful works which the Lord has performed have been works of salvation. To save our first parents at Eden’s gate, and give them a promise of victory over the serpent, was joy to God. To house Noah in the ark was also his pleasure. The drowning of a guilty world was needful, but the saving of Noah was pleasant to the Lord our God. He destroyed the earth with his left hand, but with his right hand he shut in the only righteous ones he found. To save his people is ever his joy: he goes about it eagerly. He rode upon a cherub and did fly, yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind when he came to deliver his chosen. What noise he makes about his saving work at the Red Sea! The whole Scripture is full of allusions to the great salvation out of Egyptian bondage, and even in heaven they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb. The Old Testament seems to ring with the note, “Sing unto the Lord for he hath triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.” The Lord did greatly rejoice to make a way through the wilderness, and a path through the deeps for his own people, that he might work salvation for them in the midst of the earth. Afterwards in the Old Testament how well they keep the records of salvations! They tell us of the kings that oppressed the people, but how lovingly they linger over the way in which God redeemed Israel from her adversaries. What a note of joy there is about Goliath slain, and the son of Jesse bearing his gory head, and Israel delivered from Philistia’s vaunts! Well did they say, “He that is our God is the God of salvation.” He takes delight in deeds of grace: these are his enjoyments. These are his recreations. He comes out in his royal robes and puts on his crown jewels when he rises to save his people, and therefore his servants cry aloud, “O bless our God, ye people, and make the voice of his praise to be heard; which holdeth our soul in life, and suffereth not our feet to be moved.” This then is the God in whom is vested all sovereignty over the issues from death. He takes pleasure, not in the destruction, but in the salvation of the sons of men. Where could the prerogative be better laid up?

“He that is our God is the God of salvation,” also means that at this present time the God who is preached to us is the God of salvation. We live at this moment under the dispensation of mercy. The sword is sheathed, the scales of justice are put by. Those scales are not destroyed, and that sword is not broken, nor even blunted, but for a while it slumbereth in its scabbard. To-day over all our heads is held out the silver sceptre of eternal love. The angelic carol, first heard by shepherds at Bethlehem, lingers still in the upper air, if you have ears to hear it,-“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” The mediatorial reign of Christ is that of multiplied salvations. “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” is the saving proclamation of the reigning God. The God of the Christian age is the God of salvation. He is set forth before us as coming to seek and to save the lost. He dwells among us by his abiding Spirit, not as a Judge punishing criminals, but as a Father receiving his wandering children to his bosom, and rejoicing over them as once dead but now alive again. God in Christ Jesus, our God and Saviour Jesus Christ, is he, who quickeneth whom he will, and is ordained to give eternal life to as many as the Father hath given him. Where else could all power be more safely laid up?

Once more: “He that is our God is the God of salvation” means this, that to his covenanted ones, to those who can call him “our God” he is specially and emphatically the God of salvation. There is no destruction for those who call him “our God,” for “there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” Jesus came not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. “This God is our God for ever and ever, he will be”-our destroyer?-no, “he will be our guide even unto death.” This God is our sun and shield, and he will give grace and glory. Now, mark well this fact: we who believingly call the Lord our God this morning will tell you that we are saved entirely through the sovereign grace of God, and not through any natural betterness of our own, nor through anything that we have done to deserve his favour. It was because he looked upon us with pity and kindly regard when we were dead in sin that therefore we live. When we were lying in our blood, and in our filthiness, he passed by in the time of love, and he said to us, “Live.” If he had passed by, and left us to die, he would have been infinitely just in so doing, but his heart was otherwise inclined. He looked on us and said “Live,” and we lived, and we bless his name that we are living still, and praising his eternal and infinite mercy. He who saith “I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal,” is he who has quickened us, though we were dead in trespasses and sins. Surely, he who has exercised his prerogative so kindly towards us may be trusted to exercise it towards all who come to him according to his gracious invitation. If there be any man who saith, “I rejoice in the election of God, because, although he hath saved me, he hath left others to perish,” I desire to have no sympathy with his spirit. My joy is of a far different kind, for I argue that he who saved such an unworthy one as I am will cast out none that come to him by faith. His election is not narrow, for it comprehends a number that no man can number, yea, all that will believe in Jesus. He waiteth to be gracious, and him that cometh to him he will in no wise cast out. The wedding feast needs countless guests, and every seat must be filled. We wish that all the human race would come and accept the provisions of infinite love, and we are anxious to go into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in. We rejoice to know that if any man be shut out from Christ and hope he shuts himself out, though at the same time we feel that if any man be shut in he did not shut himself in, but undeserved grace wrought out his salvation. Justice rules in condemnation, but grace reigns in salvation. In salvation we must ascribe all to grace, absolutely and unreservedly. There must be no stammering over this truth. Some begin to say grace, but they do not out with the word: they stutter it into “free-will.” This will never do. This is not according to the teaching of Holy Scripture, nor is it in accordance with fact. If there is any man here who thinks that he has been saved as the result of his own will, apart from the powerful grace of God, let him throw his cap up, and magnify himself for ever. “Glory be to my own good disposition!” But as for me, I will fall at the foot of the throne of God, and say, “Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ. Hadst thou, O God, left me to my own free will, I had continued still to despise thy love, and to reject thy mercy.” Surely, all the people of God agree that this is the fact in their own case, however they may differ theoretically from the general statement.

Yes, the prerogative of life and death is in good hands, it is in the hands of him who is the God of our salvation, and I beseech every one here present who is not saved to be encouraged to bow before the throne of the great King, and sue for mercy of him who is so ready to save. Go home and try to merit salvation, and you will waste your efforts. Go about to fit yourself for mercy, and to fashion some good that may attract the regard of God, and you will befool yourselves, and insult the majesty of heaven: but come just as you are, all guilty, empty, meritless, and fall before the great King, whom you have so often provoked, and beseech him of his infinite mercy to blot out your transgressions, to change your natures, and to make you his own, and see if he will cast you away. Is it not written, “There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared”? And again, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” His throne is a throne of grace. Mercy is built up for ever before him. He is the Lord God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. Did ever a penitent sue for pardon at his sovereign feet to be rejected? Never; nor shall such a case happen while the earth remaineth. If you try to purchase his favour you shall be refused; if you claim it as a right you shall be rejected; but if you will come and accept salvation of the divine charity, and receive it through the atonement of Christ Jesus, the Lord will find for you an escape from death. Hear the witness of Jeremiah, and be encouraged to cast yourself before the Lord:-“I called upon thy name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon. Thou hast heard my voice: hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry. Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee: thou saidst, fear not. O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life.”

Our last duty is to hear the solemn warning of our sovereign Lord. A new god has been lately set up among men, the god of modern Christianity, the god of modern thought, a god made of honey or sugar of lead. He is all leniency, gentleness, mildness, and indifference in the matter of sin. Justice is not in him, and as for the punishment of sin, he knows it not. The Old Testament, as you are, no doubt, made aware by the wise men of this world, takes a very harsh view of God, and therefore modern wisdom sets it on one side. Forsooth, one half the word of God is out of date, and turned to waste paper. Although our Lord Jesus did not come “to destroy the law or the prophets,” but to fulfil them, yet the advanced thinkers of these enlightened times tell us that the idea of God in the Old Testament is a false one. We are to believe in a new god, who does not care whether we do right or wrong, for by his arrangement all will come to the same end in the long run. There may be a little twisting about for awhile for some who are rather incorrigible, but it will all come right at last. Live as you like, go and swear and drink, go and oppress the nations, and make bloody wars, and act as you will; by jingo you will be all right at last. This is roughly the modern creed which poisons all our literature. But let me say, by Jehovah this shall not be as men dream. Jehovah, the Judge of all the earth, must do right. The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob is the God of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: the God of the whole earth shall he be called. He hath not changed one whit in the stern integrity of his nature, and he will by no means spare the guilty. Read, then, the last verse of our text, and believe that it is as true to-day as when it was first written, and that if Jesus himself were here, the meek and lowly one would say it in tones of tearful solemnity, but he would utter it none the less. “God shall wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of such an one as goeth on still in his trespasses.”

It is clear from these words that God is not indifferent to human character. Our God knows his enemies, he does not mistake them for friends, nor treat them as such. He regards iniquity as a trespass, and therefore he has not broken down the bounds of law, nor the hedges of right: there are trespasses still, and God perceives them, and notes them down, and such as go on in their trespasses are trying his long-suffering and provoking his justice. God sleeps not, neither does he wink at human sin, but calls upon all men everywhere to repent.

And it is clear too that God has the power to smite those who rebel against him. Dream not of natural laws which will screen the wicked-“He shall wound the head of his enemies.” They may lift up those heads as high as they please, but they cannot be beyond the reach of his hand. He will not merely bruise their heels, or wound them on the back with blows which may be healed, but at their heads he will aim fatal blows, and lay them in the dust. He can do it, and he will. They may be very strong, and their scalp covered with hair may indicate unabated strength, but they cannot resist omnipotence. There may be no sign as yet of the baldness which comes of weakness, or of the scantiness of hair which is a token of old age, but vain are they who boast their vigour, for in their prime he can cause them to wither as the grass of the field. The proud may vaunt themselves of their beauty: their hairy scalp, like that of Absalom, may be their boast, but as the Lord made the hair of Absalom to be the instrument of his doom, so can he make the glory of man to be his ruin. Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. No man is out of the reach of God, and no nation either. The great ones stand on high upon their lofty places, and they talk about the “vulgar crowd,” and despise the godly of the land. As for foreign races, how lightly are they esteemed, though one God has made them all. Populations and nations, what are they? Mere food for powder when a proud nation is set upon its own aggrandizement. Overturn their kingdoms, slaughter their patriotic defenders, redden the earth with blood, burn their houses, starve their women and children. Doth God know, and is there judgment in the Most High? We are a great people, and have the men, the ships, and the money. Who shall call us to account? Yet let the still small voice be heard. Thus said the Lord to a great nation of old, “Thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me. Thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me. Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth: and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know.” From such chastisements good Lord deliver us.

When the Lord does put his hand to the work of vengeance his smiting will be terrible, even an utter overthrow, for it will be a smiting upon the head. If he doth not smite his enemies until the hour of death, what a blow will they then receive! They boasted of their self-righteousness, or of their greatness; but, oh, what terror will seize them when at the last moment, while they dream of heaven they are smitten down into the unfathomable deep, where woe shall be the everlasting reward of their daring rebellion against their King! Warriors of old times would when they went to battle often shave off all their hair, except those locks which are on the hinder part of the scalp; yet when they turned to flee it frequently happened they were grasped by their pursuers by their flowing hair. God does not often take the wicked by the forelock, for he has great patience, and bears with them. In special cases, as when young men through dissipated habits hasten on their doom, he takes them in front; but as a rule he waits in mercy, and yet he suffers them not to go unpunished, for at the last he seizes their hairy scalp. If for fourscore years infinite patience should permit a man to continue in his rebellion, yet if he goeth on in his trespasses at the very last God shall thrust his hand into his hairy scalp and grasp him to his destruction.

Turn ye, then, ye that know not God, turn ye at his rebuke this morning, for the rebuke is meant in love; and if I have used hard words it is because my heart is honestly anxious that you would repent and escape to him who hath in his power the issues from death. I am not like you flatterers who tell you that there is a little hell and a little God, from which you naturally infer that you may live as you like. Both you and they will perish everlastingly if you believe them. There is a dreadful hell, for there is a righteous God. Turn ye to him, I entreat you, while yet in Christ Jesus he sets mercy before you. He is the God of salvation, and entreats you to come and accept of his great grace in Christ Jesus.

The Lord bless this word according to his own mind, and unto him be praise for ever and ever. Amen.

your personal salvation

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, February 22nd, 1880, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gespel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.”-1 Peter 1:9-12.

“Let thy mercies come also unto me, O Lord, even thy salvation, according to thy word.”-Psalm 119:41.

These two texts will be to me as a bow and a sword: the first for shooting the arrows of truth, and the second for close quarters in dealing with individual consciences. You will see the reason for the pair of texts as we proceed. May the Holy Spirit make use of both according to his own mind.

Last Sabbath-day I discoursed upon the God of salvation: this morning our principal object is to speak of that salvation itself. I then tried to show that God is always the same, and that the God of the Old Testament, unto whom belongeth the issues from death, is the God of our salvation still. My first text runs upon the same line, for it teaches us that the prophets of old, who spoke by the power of the Holy Spirit, testified concerning the same salvation which has been reported to us by the apostles as actually accomplished. There has been no new salvation; there has been a change in the messengers, but they have all spoken of one thing; and, though their tidings have been more clearly understood in these latter days, the substance of the good news is still the same. The Old Testament and the New are one, inspired by the same Spirit, and filled with the same subject, namely, the one promised Messiah. The prophets foretold what the apostles reported. The seers looked forward, and the evangelists look backward: their eyes meet at one place; they see eye to eye, and both behold the cross.

I shall aim this morning at commending the salvation of God to those of you who possess it, that you may be the more grateful for your choice inheritance; and still more shall I labour to commend it to those who possess it not, that having some idea of the greatness of its value they may be stirred up to seek it for themselves. Ah, my unsaved hearers, how great is your loss in missing the salvation of God! “How shall you escape if you neglect so great salvation?” O that you might be rescued from such folly! Perhaps God the Holy Spirit will show you the preciousness of this salvation, and then you will no longer neglect, despise, or refuse it, but will offer the prayer which I have selected as a sort of second text, and entreat the Lord to let his mercies come to you, even his salvation. The prayer may be helpful in enabling you to take with you words and turn unto the Lord. God grant it may be so!

First, I shall in much simplicity, with a vehement desire for the immediate conviction and salvation of my hearers, try to commend the salvation of God by opening up what Peter has said in the verses before us.

Let me urge you to give earnest heed to the salvation of God, because it is a salvation of grace. The tenth verse says, “Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you.” Salvation is altogether of grace, grace which comes from God in his mercy to man in his helplessness. The gospel does not come to you asking something of you, but its hands are laden with gifts more precious than gold, which it freely bestows upon guilty men. It comes to us, not as a reward for the obedient and deserving, but as a merciful boon for the disobedient and undeserving. It treats with us, not upon the ground of justice, but upon terms of pure mercy. It asks no price and exacts no purchase; it comes as a benefactor, not as a judge. In the gospel God giveth liberally and upbraideth not. We are accustomed not only to say “grace,” but “free grace.” It has been remarked that this is a tautology. So it is, but it is a blessed one, for it makes the meaning doubly clear and leaves no room for mistake. Since it is evidently objectionable to those who dislike the doctrine intended, it is manifestly forcible, and therefore we will keep to it. We feel no compunction in ringing such a silver bell twice over-grace, free grace. Lest any should imagine that grace can be otherwise than free, we shall continue to say, not only grace, but free grace, so long as we preach. You are lost, my dear hearer, and God proposes your salvation, but not on any ground of your deserving to be saved, else would the proposal most assuredly fall to the ground in the case of many of you: I might have said in the cases of us all, though some of you think not so. The Lord proposes to save you because you are miserable and he is merciful; because you are necessitous and he is bountiful. Why, methinks every man who hears this good news should open both his ears, and lean forward, that he may not lose a word. Yes, and he should open his heart, too; for salvation by grace is most suitable to all men, and they need it greatly. Only give intimation that goods are to be had gratis, and your shop will be besieged with customers. Those who want us to notice their wares are often crafty enough to put at the head of their advertisement what is not true, “To be given away”: but salvation’s grand advertisement is true; salvation is everything for nothing: pardon free, Christ free, heaven free. “Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Our good Physician has none but gratis patients. Since the boons which the God of all grace grants to sinful men are beyond all price, he does not barter and chaffer with them, but makes his blessings free as air. I am sure that if you feel yourselves to be guilty, the very idea of being saved by grace will have a charm for you. To a thirsty man the sound of a rippling stream is music, and to a convinced conscience free pardon is as rivers of water in the wilderness. Oh, that all the world would listen when we have such a message to tell.

Again, your closest attention may well be asked to the salvation of God when you are told in the text that it is by faith. “Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.” Salvation is not obtained by penances, painful and humiliating: nor by despondency and despair; nor by any effort, mental or spiritual, involving a purchase by labour and pain; but entirely and alone by faith, or trust, in the Lord Jesus. Do you ask-is it so, that salvation is by believing, simply believing? Such is the statement of the word of God. We proclaim it upon the warrant of infallible Scripture. “All that believe are justified from all things from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses.” “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” “He that believeth in him is not condemned.” “He that believeth on him hath everlasting life.” These are a mere handful of proof texts gleaned from wide fields of the like kind. “Repent ye and believe the gospel,” is our one plain and simple message. We cry again and again, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” “Believe only,” and “Jesus only,” are our two watchwords. Now, it is singularly foolish that men should cavil at this which ought to please them. The very simplicity of faith they cavil at. What, shall it be so, that the gospel shall be regarded as too easy a thing? Will men quarrel with mercy for being too generous to them? If there be a condition, is it wisdom on our part to contend with God because that condition seems to be too slight? What would you have for a condition? Would you have it proclaimed that men must be saved by works? Which among you would then be saved? Your works are imperfect and full of evil. The law cannot justify you, it condemns you. As long as you are under the law hath not the Holy Spirit declared that you are under the curse? Ought ye not, ye sons of men, to bless God that salvation is of faith that it might be by grace, and that it might be possible to you, and sure to all the seed? The sinner cannot keep the law of God; he has already broken it most terribly, and he is himself enfeebled and depraved by the fall. Adam did not stand when he was in his perfection; what shall we do who are ruined by his fall, and full of evil? By the grace of God the sinner can believe in Jesus: this is ceasing from his own power and merit, and leaving himself in his Saviour’s hands. Salvation by faith thus sets an open door before those whom the law shuts out; it is in every way adapted to the case of the guilty and fallen, and such characters should hasten to accept salvation thus presented to them. O my God, how is it that this message does not at once arouse all who hear it to an eager acceptance of thy salvation? O that the Spirit of God would make these appeals powerful with you!

The gospel of salvation ought to be regarded by you, for it has engrossed the thoughts of prophets. The text says, “Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you.” Those great men, the choice spirits of the ages which they adorned, were delighted to preach of this salvation as a blessing to be hereafter revealed. They did not themselves altogether understand what they were called to reveal, for the Holy Spirit often carried them beyond themselves and made them utter more than they understood. The inspiration of the Bible is verbal inspiration. In some cases it must have been only verbal; in every case it must have been mainly so. The human mind is not able to understand and to express all the thoughts of God, they are too sublime; and therefore God dictated to the prophets the very language which they should deliver,-language of which they themselves could not see the far-reaching meaning. They rejoiced in the testimony of the Spirit within them, but they were not free from the necessity to search, and to search diligently if they would for themselves derive benefit from the divine revelation. I know not how this is, but the fact is clearly stated in the text, and must be true. Oh, my hearers, how diligently you ought to search the Scriptures and listen to the saving word! If men that had the Holy Ghost, and were called “seers,” nevertheless searched into the meaning of the word which they themselves spoke, what ought such poor things as we are to do in order to understand the gospel? It should be our delight to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the doctrines of grace. Surely it must be a crime of crimes to be living in utter neglect of a salvation which gained the attentive mind of Daniel, and Isaiah, and Ezekiel. O that the long list of great and holy men would have some weight with thoughtless ones. I would cause a noble line of prophets to pass before you this morning that you may see how many of them spake of Christ and his salvation. From Abel, whose blood cried from the ground, down to him who spake of the Sun of righteousness as near his rising, they all spoke in Jehovah’s name for your sakes. From Moses down to Malachi, all of these lived, and many of them died, that they might bear witness to “the grace which is come unto you.” They themselves were, no doubt saved; but, still, the full understanding and enjoyment of the truth was reserved for us. Unto them it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us, they did minister the things of God. They lighted lamps which shine for future ages; they told of a Christ who was actually to come in the latter days, to work out his redemption after they had all died in faith without a sight of his actual coming. You and I live in the light of a finished salvation. God has appeared in human flesh; Christ has borne the guilt of man; his atonement is completed. Jesus has risen from the dead and gone into the glory, pleading for believers. Surely that which prophets thought it worth their while to study by night and by day, though they knew that they should never see it, ought to be thought worthy of the devout attention of those immediately concerned in it. If Daniel set his face by prayer and study, in fasting and in loneliness, to search out the salvation of the future, we ought at once to seek for the salvation which is now present among us. If Isaiah spake with golden tongue, as the very Chrysostom of the old dispensation; if Jeremiah wept, like a Niobe, rivers of tears; if Ezekiel, despite the splendour of his princely intellect, was almost blinded by the splendour of his visions-if the whole goodly fellowship of the prophets lived and died to study and to foretell the great salvation, we ought to give most earnest heed to it. If they pointed us to the Lamb of God, and according to the best of their light foretold the coming of the Redeemer, then woe unto us if we trifle with heaven’s message, and cast its blessings behind our backs. By all the prophets whom the Lord has sent, I beseech you, give his salvation a hearty welcome, and rejoice that you have lived to see it.

Furthermore, when prophecy had ceased, the Holy Spirit came upon another set of men of whom our text speaks. Peter says of these things, that they “are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.” The apostles followed the prophets in testifying to this salvation, and with the apostles there was an honourable fellowship of earnest evangelists and preachers. I will not stay to point out to you the admirable character of these men, but I would beg you to observe that, having seen Christ Jesus for themselves personally, they were not deceived. Many of them had eaten and drank with him: all the apostles had done so: they had been with him in familiar intercourse, and they were resolute in bearing witness that they had seen him after he had risen from the dead. These men spake with the accent of conviction. If they were duped, there certainly never was another instance of such persons, and so many of them, being so utterly deluded. They continued throughout all their lives to bear hardships and to endure reproaches for the sake of bearing witness to what they had seen and heard, and all the apostles but one died a martyr’s death rather than allow the slightest suspicion to be cast upon the truth of their report. The text says that they reported these things when they preached the gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. I see them going everywhere preaching the word, dressed in no robes but those of poverty, having no distinctions but those of shame and suffering, no power but that of the Holy Spirit. I hear them fearlessly lifting up their voices among a warrior population, or gently testifying in peaceful homes: they evangelize the open country, they instruct the capital itself, Cæsar’s household hears of them. I see them far away among the Parthians and Scythians, telling the barbarians that there is salvation, and that Jesus has accomplished it. With equal joy I see them telling cultured Greeks that God was in Christ, a man among men, and that the incarnate God died in man’s stead that believing men might be delivered from the wrath of God, and from the plague of sin. These noble bearers of glad tidings continued to report this salvation till they had finished their missions and their lives, and therefore I feel that for us in these times to trifle with God’s word, and give a deaf ear to the invitations of the gospel, is an insult to their honoured memories. You martyr them a second time by contemptuously neglecting what they died to hand to you. From the dead they bear witness against you, and when they rise again they will sit with their Lord to judge you.

Nor have we merely prophets and apostles looking on with wonder, but our text says, “Which things the angels desire to look into.” We know very little of these heavenly beings: we know, however, that they are pure spirits, and that the elect angels have not fallen into sin. These beings are not concerned in the atonement of Christ so far as it is a ransom for sin, seeing they have never transgressed: they may, however, derive some advantage from his death, but of that we cannot now speak particularly. They take such an interest in us, their fellow creatures, that they have an intense wish to know all the mysteries of our salvation. They were pictured, you know, upon the ark of the covenant, as standing upon the mercy-seat, and looking down upon it with steady gaze. Perhaps Peter was thinking of this holy imagery. They stand intently gazing into the marvel of Propitiation by blood. Can you quite see the beauty of this spectacle? If we knew that a door was opened in heaven, would not men be anxious to look in and see heaven’s wonders; but the case is here reversed, for we see a window opened towards this fallen world, and heavenly beings looking down upon the earth, as if heaven, itself had no such object of attraction as Christ and his salvation. Watts sang not amiss when he gave us the verse-

“Archangels leave their high abode

To learn new mysteries here, and tell

The love of our descending God,

The glories of Immanuel.”

Paul tells us that to principalities and powers in the heavenly places shall be made known by the church the manifold wisdom of God. For men to be lessons to angels, books for seraphs to read, is a strange fact. Perhaps the angelic enquirers ask such questions as this: How is God just, and yet the justifier of the ungodly? At first it must have been, I think, a wonder that he who said, “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” could have permitted man to live on and to have a hope of eternal life. How could he who saith that he will by no means clear the guilty yet bestow his favours upon guilty men? Angels wonder as they see how, through the substitution of Jesus Christ, God can be sternly just and yet abundantly gracious; but while they learn this they long to discover more of the truth wrapped up in the one great sacrifice: they peer and pry, and search and consider, and hence the doctrines of the gospel are spoken of as “things which the angels desire to look into.” Now, think you if these glorious spirits who needed not to be redeemed, yet intently gaze upon the Redeemer, should not we also desire to look into the mysteries of his death? O men and women, is it nothing to you that the Son of God should give his life a ransom for many? If these spotless ones marvel at that sacred bath of blood by which sin is washed away, will not you, who are covered with defilement, stop a while to see the Lord whose flowing veins afford such purging? Methinks, if I saw an angel intently gazing upon any object, if I were a passer by, I should stop and look too. Have you never noticed in the streets that if one person stands still and looks up, or is occupied with gazing into a shop window, others become curious and look also? I would enlist that faculty of curiosity which is within every man, and prompt you to search with the angels as they pry into the underlying meaning of the fact and doctrine of atonement? They stand at the cross-foot ravished, astounded: yea, all heaven to this day has never ceased its amazement at the dying Son of God, made sin for men, and will none of you spare an hour to look this way and see your best Friend? Shall it be that time out of mind we must come into our pulpits and talk of Christ to deaf ears, and speak to our fellow men about the grace which is brought unto them, to find that they treat it as an old wives’ fable, or a story with which they have nothing to do? Ah, my careless hearer, I wish you were in the same plight as I was in once, when I was burdened with a sense of my transgressions. If you felt as I did, you would catch at that word “grace” right eagerly, and be delighted with the promise made to “faith.” You would make up your mind that if prophets searched out salvation, if apostles reported it, if angels longed to know it, you yourself would find it, or perish in searching after it. Do you forget that you must have eternal life, or you are undone for ever? Do not trifle with your eternal interests! Do not be careless where earth and heaven are in earnest! Prophets, apostles, angels, all beckon you to seek the Lord. Awake, thou that sleepest. Arise, O sluggish soul! A thousand voices call thee to bestir thyself, and receive the grace which has come unto thee.

We have already gone a long way with this text, rising step by step. We have stood where angels gaze; now behold another wonder: we rise beyond them to the angels’ Master. Christ is the substance of this salvation. For what saith the text? The prophets spake “beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.” Ah, there is the point. To save men Jesus suffered. The manhood and the Godhead of Christ endured anguish inconceivable. All through his life our Lord was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” His was the bravest heart that ever lived, and the gentlest spirit that ever breathed, but the most crushed and down-trodden. He went from one end of our heavens to the other like a cloud of sympathy, dropping showers of blessing. All the trials of his people he carried in his heart, and all their sins pressed heavily upon his soul: his daily burden of care for all his people was such as none can sympathize with to the full, even though like him they have kept the flock of God. I have sometimes had intense sympathy with Moses,-I hope I am not egotistical in comparing small things with great,-when he cried, “Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? and wherefore have I not found favour in thy sight, that thou layest the burden of all this people upon me? Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers? I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.” But what was the care of the tribes in the wilderness on Moses’ heart compared with the myriads upon myriads that lay upon the heart of Christ, a perpetual burden to his spirit?

The sufferings of his life must never be forgotten, but they were consummated by the agonies of his death. There was never such a death. Physically, it was equal in pain to the sufferings of any of the martyrs; but its peculiarity of excessive grief did not lie in his bodily sufferings: his soul-sufferings were the soul of his sufferings. Martyrs are sustained by the presence of their God, but Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” That cry never came up from the stakes of Smithfield, or from the agonies of the Spanish auto-da-fe, for God was with his witnesses: but he was not with Christ. Here was the depth of his woe. Now, I pray you, if you will manifest some sign of thought and softness, remember that if the Son of God became a man that he might suffer to the death for men, it is hard that men should turn deaf ears to the salvation which he accomplished. I hear from his cross his sad complaint, “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there was ever sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me.” Oh, if you are born of woman, and have a heart that has any flesh about it, think well of the salvation, “the grace, which is brought unto you,” by the sufferings of the Son of God.

One other step remains. It cannot be higher; it is on the same level, and I beseech you to stand upon it and think a while, you that have thought so little of yourselves and of your God. It is this. The Holy Ghost is the witness to all this. It was the Holy Ghost that spake in the prophets; it was the Holy Ghost who was with those who reported the gospel at the first; it is the same Holy Spirit who every day bears witness to Christ. Do you not know that we have miracles in the Christian church still? Scoffers come to us and say, “Work a miracle, and we will believe you.” We do work these miracles every day. Had you been present at a meeting held here last month you would have heard something not far short of one hundred persons one after another assert that by the preaching of the gospel in this place lately their lives have been completely changed. In the case of some of these the change is very obvious to all persons acquainted with them. How was this great change achieved? By the Holy Spirit through the gospel of your salvation. But I need not quote those special cases; there are many here who would tell you, if this were the time to speak, where they used to spend their Sabbaths, and what was their delight. All things have become new with them. They now seek after holiness as earnestly as they once pursued evil: though they are not what they want to be, they are not what they used to be. They never thought of purity or goodness, or anything of the kind, but they loved the wages of unrighteousness, and now they loathe the things they once loved. I have seen moral miracles quite as marvellous in their line as the healing of a leper or the raising of the dead. This is the witness of the Holy Ghost which he continues to bear in the church, and by that witness I entreat you to stop and think of the blessed salvation which can work the same miracle in you. From the first day in which man fell, when the Holy Ghost at the gates of Eden presented the gospel in the first promise, all down the prophetic ages, and then by Christ, and by his apostles, and onward by all the men whom God has sent since then to speak with power, the Holy Ghost entreats you to consider Christ and his salvation. To this end he convinces the world of sin and of righteousness, and of judgment to come, that men may turn unto the salvation of God and live for ever. By the Spirit of the living God I entreat you, dear hearers, no longer to neglect the great salvation which has won the admiration of all holy beings, and has the seal of the triune God upon its forefront.

So far have I commended my Lord’s salvation, and now I would desire you, with all this in your own minds, to turn to the prayer in the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm: “Let thy mercies come also unto me, O Lord, even thy salvation according to thy word.” Use the prayer with this intent:-Lord, I have been hearing what prophets and apostles and angels think of thy salvation, what thy Son and what thy Spirit think of it; now let me humbly say what I think of it: Oh that it were mine! Oh that it would come to me! This, then, is my second head.

I would recommend the prayer of the Psalmist.

I will say about it, first, that it is in itself a very gracious prayer, for it is offered on right grounds. “Let thy mercies come also unto me.” There is no mention of merit or desert. His entreaty is for mercy only. He pleads guilty, and throws himself upon the prerogative of the King, who can pardon offenders. Are you willing, my dear hearer, you who have never sought the Saviour, are you willing at this moment to stand on that ground, and to ask for salvation as the result of mercy? You shall have it on such terms, but you can never be saved until you will own that you are guilty and submit to justice. Observe the plural, “Let thy mercies come to me,” as if David felt that he needed a double share of it, ay, a sevenfold measure of it. Elsewhere he cried, “According unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.” Our sense of sin leads us to use similar language. Lord, I need much mercy, manifold mercy, multiplied mercy, I want mercy upon mercy; I want forgiving mercy, I want regenerating mercy, I want mercy for the present as well as for the past, and I shall want mercy to keep me in the future if I am to be saved at all. Friend, set your plea on that ground. Multiplied sins crave multiplied mercies. “Let thy mercies come also unto me, O Lord.”

It is a gracious prayer, because it asks for the right thing: “even thy salvation,” not a salvation of my own invention, but “thy salvation.” God’s salvation is one in which his divine sovereignty is revealed, and that sovereignty must be accepted and adored. Do not dispute against God’s salvation, but accept it in its entirety, just as it is revealed. Receive the salvation which the Lord planned in eternity, which he wrought out on Calvary, and which he applies to the heart by the Holy Spirit. You need salvation from sinning as well as salvation from hell, and that the Lord will give you. You want salvation from self to God, and that, too, he will bestow. Ask for all that the Lord intends by his salvation and includes in it. “Let thy mercies come also unto me, even thy salvation.”

You see, dear brethren, that the prayer is put in the right form, for it is added, “Even thy salvation according to thy word.” He wishes to be saved in the manner which the Lord has appointed. Dear hearer, where are you? Are you hidden away in the foggy corners? I wish I could get a hold of your hand, and speak as a brother to you. You do not want God to go out of the way of his word to save you: do you? You are willing to be saved in the Scriptural way, the Bible way. People nowadays will do anything but keep to the word of God, they will follow any book but the Bible. Now, do pray the Lord to give you the salvation of the Bible in the Bible’s own way. Lord, if thy word says I must repent, give me thy salvation, and cause me to repent; if thy word says that I must confess my sin, give me thy salvation in the confession of sin; if thou sayest I must trust to Christ, Lord, help me now to trust him; only grant me thy salvation according to thy word.

Observe that the whole prayer is conceived and uttered in a humble spirit. It is “Let thy salvation come also unto me.” He owns his helplessness. He cannot get at the mercy, he wants it to come to him. He is so wounded and so sick that he cannot put on the plaister nor reach the medicine, and therefore he seeks the Lord to bring it to him. He is like the man half dead on the road to Jericho and needs that one should pour in the oil and wine, for he cannot help himself by reason of his spiritual lethargy and death.

“Let thy mercies come to me, O Lord.” This implies that there is a barrier between him and the mercy; the road appears to be blocked up; the devil intervenes, and his fears hedge up the way, and he cries to God to clear the road. “Lord, let thy mercies come. Didst thou not say, Let there be light, and there was light? So let thy mercy come to me, a poor dying sinner, and I shall have it, Lord; but it must come to me by thy power. Lo, here I lie at hell’s dark door, and feel within my spirit as if the sentence of condemnation were registered in heaven against me; but let thy mercies come also unto me, O God, even thy salvation according to thy word.” That is a very gracious prayer.

In the second place this prayer may be supported by gracious arguments. May the Spirit of God help you to plead them. I will suppose some poor heart painfully longing to use this prayer. Here are arguments for you. Pray like this. Say, “Lord, let thy mercy come to me, for I need mercy.” Do not go on the tack of trying to show that you are good, because mercy will then pass you by. To argue merit is to plead against yourself. Whenever you say, “Lord, I am as good as other people; I try to do my best,” and so on, you act as foolishly as if a beggar at your door should plead that he was not very badly off, not half so needy as others, and neither scantily fed nor badly clothed. This would be a new method of begging, and a very bad one. No, no; tell out your case in all its terrible truthfulness. Say, “O Lord, I feel that nobody in all this world needs thy mercy more than I do: let my need plead with thee; give me thy salvation. I am no impostor, I am a sinner: let thy mercy and thy truth visit me in very deed.” Your soul’s wounds are not such as sham beggars make with chemicals: they are real sores; plead them with the God of all grace. Your poverty is not that which wears rags abroad and fine linen at home; you are utterly bankrupt, and this you may urge before the Lord as a reason for his mercy.

Next plead this: “Lord, thou knowest, and thou hast made me to know somewhat of what will become of me if thy mercy does not come to me: I must perish, I must perish miserably. I have heard the gospel, and have neglected it; I have been a Sabbath breaker, even when I thought I was a Sabbath keeper; I have been a despiser of Christ, even when I stood up and sang his praises, for I sang them with a hypocrite’s lips. The hottest place in hell will surely be mine unless thy mercy come to me. Oh, send that mercy, now.” This is good and prevalent pleading: hold on to it.

Then plead, “If thy mercy shall come to me it will be a great wonder, Lord. I have not the confidence to do more than faintly hope it may come; but, oh, if thou dost ever blot out my sin I will tell the world of it; I will tell the angels of it: through eternity I will sing thy praises, and claim to be of all the saved ones the most remarkable instance of what thy sovereign grace can do. Do you feel like that, dear hearer? I used to think if the Lord saved me he would have begun on a new line altogether, that his mercy would have sent up her song an octave higher than before. In every man’s case there will be a conviction that there is a something so special about his guilt that there will be something very special about the mercy which can put that guilt away. Plead then the peril of your soul, and the glory which grace will gain by your rescue. Plead the greatness of the grace needed, for Christ delights to do great marvels, and his name is Wonderful. “Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great. Lord, save me, for I am a nobody, and it will be a wonder indeed if thy grace shall visit me.”

Then you can put this to the good Saviour. Tell him if he will give you his salvation, he will not be impoverished by the gift. “Lord, I am a thirsty soul; but thou art such a river that if I drink from thee there will be no fear of my exhausting thy boundless supply.” They put up over certain little nasty, dirty ponds by the roadside, “No dogs may be washed here.” Pity the dogs if they were! But no one puts up such a notice on the banks of great, glorious Old Father Thames. You may wash your dogs if you like, and his flood will flow on; there is too much of it to be so readily polluted. So is it with the boundless mercy of God. God permits many a poor dog of a sinner to be washed in it, and yet it is just as full and efficacious as ever. You need not be afraid of enjoying too much sunlight, for the sun loses nothing by your basking in his beams. So is it with divine mercy, it can visit you, and bless you, and remain as great and glorious as ever. Out of the fulness of Christ millions may still receive salvation, and he will remain the same overflowing fountain of grace. Plead then, “Lord, if such a poor soul as I shall be saved, I shall be made supremely happy, but none of thine attributes or glories shall be one jot the less illustrious; thou wilt be as great and blessed a God as ever.” You may even say, “Lord, now that thy Son Jesus has died, it will not dishonour thee to save me. Before the atoning sacrifice it might have stained thy justice to pass by sin; but now the sacrifice is offered thou canst be just and yet the justifier. Lord, none shall say thou art unjust if thou savest even me, now that Jesus Christ has bled. Since thou thyself hast made my salvation possible without infringement of thy law, I beseech thee fulfil the design of the great sacrifice, and save even me.”

There is another plea implied in the prayer, and a very sweet argument it is-“Let thy mercies come also unto me, O Lord.” It means: “It has come to so many before, therefore let it come also unto me. Lord, if I were the only one, and thou hadst never saved a sinner before, yet would I venture upon thy word and promise. Especially I would come and trust the blood of Jesus: but, Lord, I am not the first by many millions. I beseech thee, then, of thy great love, let thy salvation come unto me.” You notice in the parable of the prodigal that the forlorn feeder of swine was the only son that had gone astray, and consequently the first that ever tried whether his father would receive him. The elder brother had not gone astray, and was there at home, to grumble at his younger brother; but the poor prodigal son, though he had no instance before him of his father’s willingness to forgive, was bold to try by faith his father’s heart. None had trodden that way before, yet he made bold to explore it. He felt that he should not be cast out. But when we hear any of you say, “I will arise, and go to my Father,” scores of us are ready to leap out of our seats and cry, “Come along, brother, for we have come, and the gracious Father has received us.” I do not know whether the elder brother is here to murmur at a penitent sinner; I am happy to say I have none of his spirit. It will make my heart happy; the bells of my whole nature will ring for joy if I may only bring one of my poor, prodigal brothers back to my great Father’s house. Oh, come along with you, and let this be the plea: “Thou hast received so many, O receive me.” Cry, “Bless me, even me also, O my Father.” The Lord has not come to the end of his mercy yet. Jesus has not come to the end of his saving work yet. There is room for you, and there will be room for thousands upon thousands yet, until the Master of the house hath risen up and shut to the door. He has not risen up, nor closed the door as yet, and still his mercy cries, “Come to me, come to me, come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”

I will close by assuring you that this blessedly gracious prayer, which I have helped to back up with arguments, will be answered by our gracious God. Oh, be sure of this, he never sent his prophets to preach to us a salvation which cannot be ours; he never sent his apostles to report to us concerning a mere dream; he never set the angels wondering at an empty speculation; he never gave his Son to be a ransom which will not redeem; and he never committed his Spirit to witness to that which after all will mock the sinner’s need. No, he is able to save: there is salvation, there is salvation to be had, to be had now, even now. We are sitting in the light in this house while a dense fog causes darkness all around, even darkness which may be felt; this is an emblem of the state of those who are in Christ: they have light in their hearts, light in their habitations, light in Jesus Christ. O come to him and find salvation now. May God bring any that have been in darkness into his marvellous light, and bring them now, and unto his name shall be praise for ever and ever. Amen and amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-1 Peter 1.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-485, 106, 807.

the lily among thorns

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, February 29th, 1880, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.”-Solomon’s Song 2:2.

We shall not enter into any profitless discussion this morning. We take it for granted that the Song of Solomon is a sacred marriage song between Christ and his church, and that it is the Lord Jesus who is here speaking of his church, and indeed of each individual member, saying, “As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.” I will not even enter into any disquisition as to what particular flower is here intended by the word translated “lily,” for it would be very difficult to select a plant from the Holy Land about which travellers and botanists would agree. The lily, which we should most naturally fix upon, is, as I have gathered from books of travel, not at present found in that country, though we may not therefore be sure that it was never there, or may not yet be discovered. Several other fair and beautiful forms, according to the fancies of various travellers, have been preferred to occupy the place of the plant intended by the original Hebrew, but none of them quite come up to the ideal suggested to an English reader by our translation. I will for once take the liberty to clothe the Scripture in a western dress, if need be, and venture to do what Solomon would surely have done if his Song of songs had been written in England. I shall assume that he means one of our own lilies: either the lily of the valley, or one of those more stately beauties, matchless for whiteness, which so gloriously adorn our gardens. Either will do, and serve our turn this morning. “As the lily among the thorns, so is my love among the daughters.” It is of small moment to be precise in botany so long as we get the spirit of the text. We seek practical usefulness and personal consolation, and proceed at once in the pursuit, in the hope that it may be with us as with the great Bridegroom himself, of whom the golden canticle saith, “He feedeth among the lilies.”

Many are taking root among us now, newly transplanted from the world, and it is well that they should be rooted in a knowledge of their calling by grace and what it includes. They ought to know at the very commencement what a Christian is when he is truly a Christian, what he is expected to be, what the Lord means him to be, and what the Lord Jesus regards him as really being; so that they may make no mistakes, but may count the cost, and know what it is that they have ventured upon. Thinking over this subject carefully, and anxiously desiring to warn our new converts without alarming them, I could not think of any text from which I should be able, in the exposition of it, better to set forth the position, condition, and character of a genuine Christian. Jesus himself knows best what his own bride is like, let us hear him as he speaks in this matchless song. He knows best what his followers should be, and well may we be content to take the words out of his own mouth when in sweetest poetry he tells us, “As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.” Join me then, my brethren, at this time in considering our Lord’s lilies, how they grow.

Concerning the church of God, there are two points upon which I will enlarge: first, her relation to her Lord; and secondly, her relation to the world.

First, I think my text very beautifully sets forth the relation of the church, and of every individual to Christ. He styles her, “my love.” An exquisitely sweet name; as if his love had all gone forth of him, and had become embodied in her. The first point then of her relation to Christ is that she has his love. Think of it, and let the blessed truth dwell long and sweetly in your meditations. The Lord of life and glory, the Prince of the kings of the earth, has such a loving heart that he must have an object upon which to spend his affection; and his people, chosen from among men, whom he calls his church, these are they who are his “love,” the object of his supreme delight. “Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it.” He looked on his people and he exclaimed, “as the Father hath loved me even so have I loved you.” Every believer, separated from mankind, and called unto the fellowship of Christ, is also the peculiar object of his love. Not in name only, but in deed and in truth, does Jesus love each one of us who have believed on him. You may each one of you say with the apostle, “He loved me”; you may read it in any tense you please:-He loved me; he loveth me; he will love me, for he gave himself for me. This shall be your song in heaven, “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, to him be glory.” Let your hearts saturate themselves with this honied thought; heaven lies hid within it, it is the quintessence of bliss-Jesus loves me. It is not in the power of words to set forth the charming nature of this fact; it is a very simple proposition, but the heights and depths, the lengths and breadths of it surpass our knowledge. That such a poor, insignificant, unworthy being as I am should be the object of the eternal affection of the Son of God is an amazing wonder; yet wonderful as it is, it is a fact! To each one of his people he saith this morning by the Holy Spirit, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” Each one of us may rejoice in the title under which our Lord addresses us-“my love.”

This love is distinguishing love, for in its light one special object shines as a lily, and the rest, “the daughters,” are as thorns. Love has fixed on its chosen object, and compared with the favoured one all others are as nothing. There is a love of Jesus which goeth forth to all mankind, for “the Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works”; but there is a special and peculiar love which he beareth to his own. As a man loveth his neighbours but still he hath a special affection for his own wife, so is the church Christ’s bride, beloved above all the rest of mankind, and every individual believer is the favoured one of heaven. The saint is united to Christ by a mystical union, a spiritual marriage bond, and above all others Christ loves the souls espoused to him. He said once, “I pray for them. I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me;” thus indicating that there is a specialty about his intercession. We rejoice in the largeness and the width of Jesus’s love, but we do not therefore doubt its specialty. The sun shines on all things, but when it is focussed upon one point, ah, then there is a heat about it of which you little dreamed! The love of Jesus is focussed on those whom the Father hath given him. Upon you, my brother or sister, if indeed you are a believer in Jesus Christ, the Lord’s heart is set, and he speaks of you in the words of the text as “my love,” loved above all the daughters, precious in his sight and honourable, so that he will give men for you and people for your life.

Observe that this is a love which he openly avows. The bridegroom speaks and says before all men, “As a lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.” He puts it upon record in that book which is more widely scattered than any other, for he is not ashamed to have it published on the housetops. The love of Christ was at first hidden in his heart, but it soon revealed itself, for even of old his delights were with the sons of men, and he bent his steps downward to this world in divers forms or ever Bethlehem’s song was sung. And now, since the incarnate God has loved, and lived, and died, he has unveiled his love in the most open form, and astonished heaven and earth thereby. On Calvary he set up an open proclamation, writ in his own heart’s blood, that he loved his own even unto the end. He bids his ministers proclaim it to the world’s end, that many waters could not quench his love, neither could the floods drown it; and that neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. He would have it known, for he is not ashamed to call his people “the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” He declares it that his adversaries may know it, that he hath a people in whom his heart delights, and these he will have and hold as his own when heaven and earth shall pass away.

This love, wherever it has been revealed to its object, is reciprocated. If the Lord has really spoken home to your soul and said, “I have loved thee,” your soul has gladly answered, “This is my Beloved and this is my Friend; yea, he is altogether lovely.” For what saith the spouse in another place? “My Beloved is mine and I am his.” I am his beloved, but he is my beloved too. By this, dear hearer, shall you know whether this text belongs to you or not. What sayest thou when Jesus asks of thee, “Lovest thou me?” Is your heart warmed at the very mention of his name? If you can truly say with Peter, “Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee,” then rest assured you love him, because he first loved you. Doubt not the fact, but be well assured of it, that love in your heart towards Jesus is the certain and infallible pledge of his infinite, eternal, and immutable love to you. If his name is on your heart, then be sure of this, that your name is on his breast, and written on the palms of his hands. You are espoused unto him, and the bands of the mystical wedlock shall never be snapped. This is the first point of the relation of the church to her Lord: she is the object of his love.

Next, she bears his likeness. Notice the first verse of the chapter, wherein the bridegroom speaks-“I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.” He is the lily, but his beloved is like him; for he applies his own chosen emblem to her-“As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.” Notice that he is the lily, she is as the lily, that is to say, he has the beauty and she reflects it; she is comely in his comeliness which he puts upon her. If any soul hath any such beauty as is described here Christ has dowered that beloved soul with all its wealth of charms, for in ourselves we are deformed and defiled. What is the confession of this very spouse in the previous chapter? She says “I am black,”-that is the opposite of a lily; if she adds, “but comely,” it is because her Lord has made her comely. There is no grace but what grace has given, and if we are graceful it is because Christ has made us full of grace. There is no beauty in any one of us but what our Lord has wrought in us.

Note, too, that he who gave the beauty is the first to see it. While they are unknown to the world Jesus knows his own. Long before anybody else sees any virtue or any praise in us, Jesus descries it, and is pleased therewith. He is quick to say, “Behold, he prayeth,” or “Behold, he repenteth.” He is the first to say, “I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself.” Love’s eyes are quick, and her ears are open. Love covers a multitude of faults, but it discovers a multitude of beauties. Can it be so, O my soul, can it be so that Christ hath made thee comely in his comeliness? Hath he shed a beauty upon thee, and does he himself look complacently upon it? He whose taste is exquisite, and whose voice is the truth, who never calls that beautiful which is not beautiful, can he see a beauty in thy sighs and tears, in thy desires after holiness, in thy poor attempts to aid his cause, in thy prayers and in thy songs, and in thy heart’s love towards him,-can he see a beauty in these? Yes, assuredly he can, or he would not speak as he does in this text. Let his condescending discernment have all honour for this generous appreciation of us. Let us bless and love him because he deigns to think so highly of us who owe every thing to him. “Thou art,” saith he, “my love, as the lily.”

It is evident that the Lord Jesus takes delight in this beauty which he has put upon his people. He values it at so great a rate that he counts all rival beauties to be but as thorns. He looks upon the court of an earthly monarch, and sees my lords and ladies, but makes small account of them compared with his poor saints. If in that court he spies out one that loves him, one who wears a coronet and prays, he marks that one, and counts him or her “as the lily among thorns.” There is a wealthy household, honoured and famous among the old county families, but in it there is no lover of the Saviour except one, and she perhaps is a little maid whose service is among the pots, yet shall she be as the wings of a dove covered with silver. “As the lily among thorns” shall she be. All the kingdoms of the earth are but thornbrakes to the Lord Jesus compared with his church. Be they Roman, German, French, or English, all empires, with all their splendours, are mere gorse and furze upon the common, bramble-bushes and thorn coverts, the haunts of wild and noxious creatures in the view of the King of kings; but his church, and those that make up the body of the faithful, are as lilies in his discerning eyes. He delights in them, he finds a sweet content in gazing on them.

So you see the Lord has given to his people his likeness, and that likeness he looks upon and loves.

Bringing out still further the relationship between Christ and his church, I want you to notice that her position has drawn out his love. “As the lily,” saith he, “among thorns, so is my love.” He spied her out among the thorns. She was at the first no better than a thorn herself; his grace alone made her to differ from the briars about her; but as soon as ever he had put his life and his grace into her, though she dwelt among the ungodly, she became as the lily, and he spied her out. The thorn-brake could not hide his beloved. Christ’s eye towards his people is so quick because it is cleared by love. There may at this time be in a Popish convent one truly seeking Jesus in spirit and in truth. He spies out the believer among the trusters in themselves, and calls her his love among thorns. There may be at this moment in the most godless haunt in London a poor, trembling heart that loves Jesus in secret: the Lord knows that heart, and it is to him as a lily among thorns. You, perhaps, are the only serious working man in the shop in which you earn your daily bread, and the whole band hold you in derision. You may hardly know yourself whether you are really a Christian, for you are sometimes staggered about your own condition; and yet the enemies of Christ have made up their minds as to whose you are, and treat you as one of the disciples of the Nazarene. Be of good courage, your Lord discerns you and knows you better than you know yourself. Such is the quickness of his eye that your difficult and perilous position only quickens his discernment, and he regards you with the more attention. The thorns cannot hide you, thickly as they cluster around you: in your loneliness you are not alone, for the Crucified is with you.

“As the lily among thorns” wears also another meaning. Dr. Thompson writes of a certain lily, “It grows among thorns, and I have sadly lacerated my hands in extricating it from them. Nothing can be in higher contrast than the luxuriant, velvety softness of this lily, and the withered, tangled hedge of thorns about it.” Ah, beloved, you know who it was that in gathering your soul and mine, lacerated not his hand only, but his feet, and his head, and his side, and his heart, yea, and his inmost soul. He spied us out, and said, “Yonder lily is mine, and I will have it”; but the thorns were a terrible barrier; our sins had gathered round about us, and the wrath of God most sharply stopped the way. Jesus pressed through all, that we might be his; and now when he takes us to himself he does not forget the thorns which girded his brow, and tore his flesh, for our sakes. This then is a part of our relationship to Christ, that we cost him very dear. He saw us where we were, and he came to our deliverance; and now, even as Pharaoh’s daughter called the young child’s name “Moses,” “because,” said she, “I drew him out of the water,” so doth Jesus call his chosen “the lily among thorns,” because such she was when he came to her rescue. Never will he forget Calvary and its thorns, nor should his saints allow the memory thereof to fade.

Yet once more I think many a child of God may regard himself as still being a lily among thorns, because of his afflictions. Certainly the church is so, and she is thereby kept for Christ’s own. If thorns made it hard for him to reach us for our salvation, there is another kind of thorn which makes it hard for any enemy to come at us for our hurt. Our trials and tribulations, which we would fain escape from, often act as a spiritual protection: they hedge us about and ward off many a devouring foe. Sharp as they are, they serve as a fence and a defence. Many a time, dear child of God, you would have been an exposed lily, to be plucked by any ruthless hand, if it had not been that God had placed you in such circumstances that you were shut up unto himself. Sick saints and poor saints and persecuted saints are fair lilies enclosed by their pains, and wants, and bonds that they may be for Christ alone. I look on John Bunyan in prison writing his “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and I cannot help feeling that it was a great blessing for us all that such a lily was shut up among the thorns that it might shed its fragrance in that famous book, and thereby perfume the church for ages. You that are kept from roaming by sickness or by family trials need not regret these things, for perhaps they are the means of making you more completely your Lord’s. How charmingly Madame Guyon wrote when she was immured in a dungeon. Her wing was closely bound, but her song was full of liberty, for she felt that the bolts and bars only shut her in with her Beloved, and what is that but liberty? She sang:-

“A little bird I am,

Shut from the fields of air;

And in my cage I sit and sing

To him who placed me there;

Well pleased a prisoner to be,

Because, my God, it pleaseth thee.

“Nought have I else to do,

I sing the whole day long;

And he whom most I love to please

Doth listen to my song;

He caught and bound my wandering wing,

But still he bends to hear me sing.”

“As the lily among thorns,” she lived in prison shut in with her Lord, and since the world was quite shut out, she was in that respect a gainer. O to have one’s heart made as “a garden enclosed, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.” So let my soul be, ay, so let it be even if the enclosure can only be accomplished by a dense growth of trials and griefs. May every pain that comes and casts us on our bed, and lays us aside from public usefulness; may every sorrow which arises out of our business, and weans us from the world; may every adversary that assails us with bitter, taunting words only thicken the thorn hedge which encases us from all the world, and constrains us to be chaste lilies set apart for the Well-beloved.

Enough upon this point, I think; only do let me entreat all of you who have lately come to know the Lord to think much of your relationship to him. It is the way by which you will be supported under the responsibilities of your relationship to the world. If you know that you are his, and that he loves you, you will be strong to bear all burdens; nothing will daunt you if you are sure that he is for you, that his whole heart is true to you, that he loves you specially, and has set you apart unto himself, that you may be one with him for ever. Dwell much, in your meditations, upon what this text and other Scriptures teach of the relationship of the renewed heart to Christ, and know him of whom you are so well known. May the Holy Spirit teach us all this lesson so that it may be learned by our hearts.

But now, secondly, our text is full of instruction as to the relationship of the church, and each individual believer to the world,-“The lily among thorns.”

First, then, she has incomparable beauty. As compared and contrasted with all else she is as the lily to the thorn-brake. Did not our Lord say of the natural lilies-“Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these”? and when I think of Christ’s lilies, adorned in his own righteousness, and bearing his own image, I feel that I may repeat my Master’s words and say with emphasis, “Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these!” In Christ’s esteem his church bears the bell for beauty; she is the fairest among women. She is not to be compared, she has to be contrasted with the rest of mankind. Our Lord means that if you take worldlings at their best and in their bravest attire, in their pomp, and glory, and parade, they are but as thorns in contrast with his church. Though the church may seem to be little, and poor, and despised, yet is she better than all the princes, and kingdoms, and glories of the earth. He means that true Christians are infinitely superior to ungodly men. These ungodly men may make a fair show of virtue, and they may have much prudence and wit, and count themselves wise and great, but Jesus calls all unconverted ones “thorns,” while his own believing ones he compares to “lilies.” The thorns are worthless, they flourish, and spread, and cumber the ground, but they yield no fruit, and only grow to be cut down for the oven. Alas, such is man by nature, at his best. As for the lily, it is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever; it lives shedding sweet perfume, and when it is gathered its loveliness adorns the chamber to which it is taken. So does the saint bless his generation while here, and when he is taken away he is regarded with pleasure even in heaven above as one of the flowers of God. He will ere long be transplanted from among the thorns to the garden enclosed beyond the river, where the King delights to dwell, for such a flower is far too fair to be left for ever amid tangled briars.

There are among worldly people some who are very fair to look upon in many respects: philanthropic, kind, and upright, they have many virtues; but since these virtues have no bearings towards God, and no reference to Christ, he counts the bearers of them to be but thorns. What virtue can there be in him whose principle in life is disregard of his Maker, and disbelief in his Saviour? He is an avowed rebel and yet would be commended by the Lord whom he rejects. How can it be? Acts done from other motives than those of obedience to God or love to Christ are poor things. There may be a great inward difference between actions which outwardly are the same. The apple of nature hath never the flavour of the pomegranate of grace. It may seem even to excel the fruit of grace, but it is not so. Two babes before us may appear alike as they seem to sleep side by side, but the child of nature, however finely dressed, is not the living child, and the Lord will not own the dead thing as belonging to his family. Ah, you that are struggling after holiness for Christ’s sake, you that are seeking after virtue in the power of the Holy Ghost, you have the beauty of the lily, while all else are still to Christ but as a thicket of thorns.

Ay, and let me say, what I am sorry to add,-a real Christian is as superior even to a professing Christian as a lily is to thorns. I know churches in which there are many who make a profession, but, ah me, it is a pity that they should, for their life does not adorn their doctrine, their temper is not consistent with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. They live like worldlings, to amass money, or to carry on business, or to enjoy good eating and drinking, or to dress and go to parties: they are as much for this world as if they were never renewed, and it is to be feared they never were. It will often grieve those who really love the Lord to see how mere professors pretend to do what saints labour to perform. Saints are mimicked, I had almost said mocked and mimicked, by empty professors, and this is a standing source of sorrow. Their cold words often vex the zealous heart and pierce it as with thorns. When you are full of zeal their want of consecration almost kindles indignation in the minds of those who are willing to give their last penny, ay, and their last breath, for their Master’s honour. Do not, however, be at all astonished, for it must be so; he who is full of the grace of God will always be as the lily among thorns, even in the professing church. Do not marvel, young brother, if older professors damp your ardour, and count your warm love to be a mere fanaticism. God give you grace to keep up your first love, and even to advance upon it, though the thorny ones wound and hinder you. May you be distinguished above your fellow-professors, for I fear that unless it be so your life will be a poor one.

This then is the relationship of the church to the world, and of Christians to the world, that they are as much superior to the unregenerate in moral and spiritual beauty as the lily is to the thorns among which it finds itself.

Secondly, in the comparison of the saint to the lily we remark that he has, like the lily, a surpassing excellence. I point not to its beauty just now, but to its intrinsic excellence. The thorn is a fruit of the curse: it springs up because of sin. “Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee.” Not so the lily: it is a fair type of the blessing which maketh rich without the sorrow of carking care. The thorn is the mark of wrath and the lily is the symbol of divine providence. A true believer is a blessing, a tree whose leaves heal and whose fruit feeds. A genuine Christian is a living gospel, an embodiment of goodwill towards men. Did not the old covenant blessing run, “In thee and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed”? I cannot refrain from quoting a metrical meditation of one who loved the Song of Solomon, and drank into its spirit. He says of the church. She is

“A radiant thing, where all is gloomy else,

Florescent where all else is barrenness;

A blossom in the desert, that proclaims

Man is no friendless outcast, hopeless doomed

To traverse scenes of wickedness and grief,

But, pilgrim as he is, has One who plans,

Not only to protect but cheer his way.

Oh, ever testifying desert flower,

Still holding forth the story of God’s love,

How wonderful it is that busy throngs

Pause not to look on thee! That few reflect

On the strange fact of thine existence still,

A lily among thorns-a life in death,

Distinct from, yet in contact with, the world;

Burning, yet unconsumed; though cumbered, free

With glorious liberty!”

Yes, the church is a blessing, a blessing abiding and scattering its delights in the midst of the curse; and each particular believer is in his measure a blessing too, “as the lily among thorns.”

A true Christian knows not how to harm his fellow men. He is like the lily which stings no one, and yet he lives among those who are full of sharpness. He aims to please, and not to provoke, and yet he lives among those whose existence is a standing menace. The thorn tears and lacerates: it is all armed from its root to its topmost branch, defying all comers. But there stands the lily, smiling, not defying; charming, and not harming. Such is the real Christian, holy, harmless, full of love and gentleness and tenderness. Therein lieth his excellence. The thorn pierces, but the lily soothes: the very sight of it gives pleasure. Who would not stop and turn aside to see a lily among thorns, and think he read a promise from his God to comfort him amid distress? Such is a true Christian: he is a consolation in his family, a comfort in his neighbourhood, an ornament to his profession, and a benediction to his age. He is all tenderness and gentleness, and yet it may be he lives among the envious, the malicious, and the profane, a lily among thorns. The thorn saith, “Keep away; no one shall touch me with impunity.” The lily cries, “I come to you, I shed my soul abroad to please you.” The sweet odours of the lily of the valley are well known; perhaps no plant has so strong a savour about it of intense and exquisite sweetness as that lily of the valley which is found in Palestine. Such is the sanctified believer. There is a secret something about him, a hallowed savour which goeth out from his life, so that his graciousness is discovered; for grace, like its Lord; “cannot be hid.” Even if the regenerate man be not known as a professor, yet doth he discover himself by the holiness of his life, “his speech bewrayeth him.” When I was resting in the south I wandered by the side of a flowing stream, gathering handfuls of maiden-hair fern from the verdant bank-and as I walked along I was conscious of a most delicious fragrance all around me. I cast my eye downward, and I saw blue eyes looking up from among the grass at my feet. The violets had hidden themselves from sight, but they had betrayed themselves by their delicious scent. So doth a Christian reveal his hidden life; his tone and temper and manners bespeak his royal lineage, if indeed the Spirit of God be in him. Such are the people of God; they court no observation, but are like that modest flower of which the poet says:-

“She ne’er affects

The public walk, nor gaze of midday sun;

She to no state nor dignity aspires,

But silent and alone puts on her suit,

And sheds a lasting perfume, but for which

We had not known there was a thing so sweet

Hid in the gloomy shade.”

I want you, dear Christian people, to be just like this: to have about you a surpassing wealth of blessing, and an unrivalled sweetness of influence by which you shall be known of all men. Is it so with you, or are you as rough, and stern, and repellant as a thorn bush? Are you as selfish and as quarrelsome as the unregenerate? Or do you shed yourself away in sweet odours of self-denying kindness in your families, and among your neighbours? If you do so, then doth Jesus say of you, “As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.”

The last point with regard to our relationship to the world is that the church and many individual Christians are called to endure singular trials, which make them feel “as the lily among thorns.” That lovely flower seems out of place in such company, does it not? Christ said, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep among sheep-no, no, that is my mistake, “as sheep among wolves.” It is a very blessed thing to be as sheep among sheep: to lie down with them under the shadow of the great rock, and feed with them in green pastures under the Shepherd’s eye. This is our privilege, and we ought to value it greatly, and unite with the church and frequent its ordinances; but even then we shall, some of us, have to go home to an ungodly family, or to go out into the world to win our bread, and then we shall be as sheep among wolves. Grow in the church and you will be lilies in the garden; still, you cannot always live in the Tabernacle, and so you will have to go back to the ungodly world, and there you will be lilies among thorns.

The lily startles you if you find it in such a position. Often you come upon one of God’s elect ones in a most unexpected manner, and are as much amazed as if an angel crossed your path. This is the wonder of the lily among thorns. You are making your way over a wild heath and come to a tangled thorn-brake through which you must force your way. As you are driving through the dense mass, rending and tearing your garments, suddenly you stand still as one who has seen a vision of angels, for there among the most rugged brambles a lily lifts its lovely form and smiles upon you. You feel like Moses at the back of the desert when he saw the bush which burned with fire and yet was not consumed. So have you met in a back slum, where blasphemy abounded, a beauteous child of God, whom all recognized as such, and you have felt amazed. So have you in a wealthy family full of worldliness and vanity come upon a humble man or patient woman living unto Christ, and you have asked, how came this grace to this house? So, too, in a foreign land, where all bowed down to crucifix and image, you have casually met with a confessor who has stood his ground among idolaters, protesting for his God, not by his speech so much as by his holy walk. The surprise has been great. Expect many such surprises. The Lord has a people where you look not for them. Think not that all his lilies are in his garden, there are lilies among thorns, and he knows their whereabouts.

Many saints reside in families where they will never be appreciated any more than the lily is appreciated by the thorns. This is painful, for the sympathy of our fellows is a great comfort. Lilies of the valley love to grow in clusters, and saints love holy company, and yet in some cases it must not be; they must live alone. Nor need we think that this loneliness is unrelieved, for God goeth out of the track of men, and he visits those whom his own servants are passing by. The poet saith-

“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

But the poet forgot that God is in the wilderness, and the solitary place, and the sweetness of lonely flowers is his. He who planted the lily among thorns sees its beauty. It is God’s flower, and does it waste its sweetness because no human nostril smells thereat? It were blasphemous to count that wasted which is reserved for the great King. The Lord understandeth the incense of nature better than we do, and as he walks abroad he rejoices in his works. Grace struggling in loneliness is very choice in God’s esteem. If man sees thee not, O lonely believer, thou mayest nevertheless sing, “Thou God seest me.” The flower which blooms for God alone has a special honour put upon it, and so hath the saint whose quiet life is all for Jesus. If you are unappreciated by those around you, do not therefore be distressed, for you are honourable in the sight of God.

The lily is altogether unassisted too by its surroundings,-“the lily among thorns” borrows nothing from the growth which gathers about it. A genuine Christian is quite unhelped by ungodly men; what is worse, he is cumbered by them. Yet through divine grace he lives and grows. You know how the good seed could not grow because of the thorns which sprang up and choked it, but here is a good seed, a choice bulb, which flourishes where you could not have looked for it to do so. God can make his people live and blossom even among the thorns, where the ungodly by their evil influences would choke and destroy it. Happy it is when the gracious one can overtop the thorn-thicket, which would check his growth, and make his influence to be known and felt above the grossness of surrounding sin.

We should not do justice to this text if we failed to see in it a reminder of the persecution to which many of the best of God’s people are subjected. They live all their lives long like the lily among thorns. Some of you, dear friends, are in this condition. You can hardly speak a word but what it is picked up and made mischief of; you cannot perform an action but what it is twisted, and motives imputed to you which you know not of. Nowadays persecutors cannot drag men to the stake, but the old trial of cruel mockings is still continued; in some cases it rages even more fiercely than ever. God’s people have been a persecuted people in all times, and you only fare as they fare. Bear well the burden common to all the chosen! Make no great wonder of it; this bitter trial has happened to many more before; and you may well rejoice that you are now in fellowship with apostles and prophets and honourable men of all ages. The lily among thorns should rejoice that it is a lily and not a thorn, and when it is wounded it should consider it a matter of course, and bloom on.

But why doth the Lord put his lilies among thorns? It is because he works transformations, singular transformations, by their means. He can make a lily grow among thorns till the thorns grow into lilies. Remember how it is written, “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.” He can set a Christian in a godless family till first one and then another shall feel the divine power, and shall say, “We will go with you, for we perceive that God is with you.” It cannot happen in nature, but it does happen in grace perpetually, that the sweet perfume of the lily believer, shed abroad upon the thorn-brake of the ungodly, turns it into a lily-garden. Such holy work among ungodly people is the truest and best “Flower Mission.” They do well who give flowers to cheer the poor in their dreary habitations, but they do better still who are themselves flowers in the places where they live. Be lilies, my dear brethren, preach by your actions, preach by your kindness, and by your love; and I feel quite sure that your influence will be a power for good. If the Holy Spirit helps all of you to stand among your associates as lilies among the thorns, the day will come when thorns will die out, and lilies will spring up on every side: sin will be banished, and grace will abound. An Australian gentleman told me yesterday that in his colony the arum lily abounds as much as weeds do with us. When will this happen spiritually on our side the globe? Ah, when! Blessed Lord, when wilt thou remove the curse? When wilt thou bring the better days? These are ill times, wherein the thorns grow thicker and more sharp than ever; protect thy lilies, increase their number, preserve their snowy whiteness, and delight thyself in them; for Jesus’ sake, Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Matthew 10.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-63, 123, 753.

the fair portrait of a saint

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, March 7th, 1880, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept, and not declined. Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips; I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.”-Job 23:11, 12.

Thus Job speaks of himself, not by way of vaunting, but by way of vindication. Eliphaz the Temanite and his two companions had brought distinct charges against Job’s character: because they saw him in such utter misery they concluded that his adversity must have been sent as a punishment for his sin, and therefore they judged him to be a hypocrite, who under cover of religion had exercised oppression and tyranny. Zophar had hinted that wickedness was sweet in Job’s mouth, and that he hid iniquity under his tongue. Eliphaz charged him with hardness of heart to the poor, and dared to say, “Thou hast taken a pledge from thy brother for nought, and stripped the naked of their clothing.” This last from its very impossibility was meant to show the extreme meanness to which he falsely imagined that Job must have descended-how could he strip the naked? He was evidently firing at random. As neither he nor his companions could discover any palpable blot in Job upon which they could distinctly lay their finger, they bespattered him right and left with their groundless accusations. They made up in venom for the want of evidence to back their charges. They felt sure that there must be some great sin in him to have procured such extraordinary afflictions, and therefore by smiting him all over they hoped to touch the sore place. Let them stand as a warning to us never to judge men by their circumstances, and never to conclude that a man must be wicked because he has fallen from riches to poverty.

Job, however, knew his innocence, and he was determined not to give way to them. He said, “Ye are forgers of lies, physicians of no value. O that ye would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your wisdom.” He fought the battle right manfully; not, perhaps, without a little display of temper and self-righteousness, but still with much less of either than any of us would have shown had we been in the same plight, and had we been equally conscious of perfect integrity. He has in this part of his self-defence sketched a fine picture of a man perfect and upright before God. He has set before us the image to which we should seek to be conformed. Here is the high ideal after which every Christian man should strive; and happy shall he be who shall attain to it. Blessed is he who in the hour of his distress, if he be falsely accused, will be able to say with as much truth as the patriarch could, “My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept, and not declined. Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips; I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.”

I ask you, first, to inspect the picture of Job’s holy life, that you may make it your model. After we have done this, we will look a little below the surface, asking the question, “How was he enabled to lead such an admirable life as this? Upon what meat did this great patriarch feed that he had grown so eminent?” We shall find the answer in our second head, Job’s holy sustenance-“I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.” May he, who wrought in Job his patience and integrity, by this our meditation teach us the like virtues by the power of the Holy Ghost.

Let us sit down before this sketch of Job’s holy life: it will well repay a meditative study.

Note, first, that Job had been all along a man fearing God and walking after the divine rule. In the words before us he dwells much upon the things of God-“his steps,” “his way,” “the commandment of his lips,” “the words of his mouth.” He was pre-eminently one that “feared God and eschewed evil.” He knew God to be the Lord, and worthy to be served, and therefore he lived in obedience to his law, which was written upon his instructed conscience. His way was God’s way; he chose that course which the Lord commanded. He did not seek his own pleasure, nor the carrying out of his own will: neither did he follow the fashion of the times, nor conform himself to the ruling opinion or custom of the age in which he lived: fashion and custom were nothing to him, he knew no rule but the will of the Almighty. Like some tall cliff which breasts the flood, he stood out almost alone, a witness for God in an idolatrous world. He owned the living God, and lived “as seeing him who is invisible.” God’s will had taken the helm of the vessel, and the ship was steered in God’s course according to the divine compass of infallible justice and the unerring chart of the divine will. This is a great point to begin with; it is, indeed, the only sure basis of a noble character. Ask the man who seeks to be the architect of a great and honourable character this question-Where do you place God? Is he second with you? Ah, then, in the judgment of those whose view comprehends all human relationships you will lead a very secondary kind of life, for the first and most urgent obligation of your being will be disregarded. But is God first with you? Is this your determination, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”? Do you seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness? If so, you are laying the foundation for a whole or holy character, for you begin by acknowledging your highest responsibility. In this respect you will find that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Whether the way be rough or smooth, uphill or down dale, through green pastures or burning deserts, let God’s way be your way. Where the fiery cloudy pillar of his providence leads be sure to follow, and where his holy statutes command, there promptly go. Ask the Lord to let you hear his Spirit speak like a voice behind you saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it.” As soon as you see from the Scriptures, or from conscience, or from providence, what the will of the Lord is, make haste and delay not to keep his commandments. Set the Lord always before you. Have respect unto his statutes at all times, and in all your ways acknowledge him. No man will be able to look back upon his life with complacency unless God has been sitting upon the throne of his heart and ruling all his thoughts, aims, and actions. Unless he can say with David, “My soul hath kept thy testimonies and I love them exceedingly,” he will find much to weep over and little with which to answer his accusers.

We must follow the Lord’s way, or our end will be destruction; we must take hold upon Christ’s steps, or our feet will soon be in slippery places; we must reverence God’s words, or our own words will be idle and full of vanity; and we must keep God’s commands, or we shall be destitute of that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. I set not forth obedience to the law as the way of salvation; but I speak to those who profess to be saved already by faith in Christ Jesus, and I remind all of you who are numbered with the company of believers that if you are Christ’s disciples you will bring forth the fruits of holiness, and if you are God’s children you will be like your Father. Godliness breeds God-likeness. The fear of God leads to imitation of God, and where this is not so, the root of the matter is lacking. The scriptural rule is “by their fruits ye shall know them,” and by this we must examine ourselves.

Let us now consider Job’s first sentence. He says: “My foot hath held his steps.” This expression sets forth great carefulness. He had watched every step of God, that is to say, he had been minute as to particulars, observing each precept, which he looked upon as being a footprint which the Lord had made for him to set his foot in; observing, also, each detail of the great example of his God; for in so far as God is imitable he is the great example of his people, as he saith-“Be ye holy, for I am holy”: and again, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Job had observed the steps of God’s justice, that he might be just; the steps of God’s mercy, that he might be pitiful and compassionate; the steps of God’s bounty, that he might never be guilty of churlishness or want of liberality; and the steps of God’s truth, that he might never deceive. He had watched God’s steps of forgiveness, that he might forgive his adversaries; and God’s steps of benevolence, that he might also do good and communicate, according to his ability, to all that were in need. In consequence of this he became eyes to the blind and feet to the lame; he delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless and him that had none to help. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon him, and he caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.

“My foot,” he saith, “hath held his steps”: he means that he had laboured to be exact in his obedience towards God, and in his imitation of the divine character. Beloved, we shall do well if we are to the minutest point hourly observant of the precepts and example of God in all things. We must follow not only the right road, but his footprints in that road. We are to be obedient to our heavenly Father not only in some things, but in all things: not in some place but in all places, abroad and at home, in business and in devotion, in the words of our lips and in the thoughts of our hearts. There is no holy walking without careful watching. Depend upon it, no man was ever good by chance, nor did anyone ever become like the Lord Jesus by a happy accident. “I put gold into the furnace,” said Aaron, “and there came out this calf,” but nobody believed him. If the image was like a calf it was because he had shaped it with a graving tool; and if it is not to be believed that metal will of itself take the form of a calf, much less will character assume the likeness of God himself, as we see it in the Lord Jesus. The pattern is too rich and rare, too elaborate and perfect, ever to be reproduced by a careless, half-awakened trifler. No, we must give all our heart, and mind, and soul, and strength to this business, and watch every step, or else our walk will not be close with God, nor pleasing in his sight. O to be able to say, “My foot hath held his steps.”

Notice here that the expression has something in it of tenacity, he speaks of taking hold upon God’s steps. The idea needs to be lit up by the illustration contained in the original expression. You must go to mountainous regions to understand it. In very rough ways a person may walk all the better for having no shoes to his feet. I sometimes pitied the women of Mentone coming down the rough places of the mountains barefooted, carrying heavy loads upon their heads, but I ceased to pity them when I observed that most of them had a capital pair of shoes in the basket at the top; and I perceived as I watched them that they could stand where I slipped, because their feet took hold upon the rock, almost like another pair of hands. Barefooted they could safely stand, and readily climb where feet encased after our fashion would never carry them. Many Orientals have a power of grasp in their feet which we appear to have lost from want of use. An Arab in taking a determined stand actually seems to grasp the ground with his toes. Roberts tells us in his well-known “Illustrations” that Easterns, instead of stooping to pick up things from the ground with their fingers, will take them up with their toes; and he tells of a criminal condemned to be beheaded, who, in order to stand firm when about to die, grasped a shrub with his foot. Job declares that he took hold of God’s steps, and thus secured a firm footing. He had a hearty grip of holiness, even as David said, “I have stuck unto thy testimonies.” That eminent scholar Dr. Good renders the passage,” in his steps will I rivet my feet.” He would set them as fast in the footprints of truth and righteousness as if they were riveted there, so firm was his grip upon that holy way which his heart had chosen. This is exactly what we need to do with regard to holiness: we must feel about for it with a sensitive conscience, to know where it is, and when we know it we must seize upon it eagerly, and hold to it as for our life. The way of holiness is often craggy, and Satan tries to make it very slippery, and unless we can take hold of God’s steps we shall soon slip with our feet, and bring grievous injury upon ourselves, and dishonour to his holy name. Beloved, to make up a holy character there must be a tenacious adherence to integrity and piety. You must not be one that can be blown off his feet by the hope of a little gain, or by the threatening breath of an ungodly man: you must stand fast and stand firm, and against all pressure and blandishment you must seize and grasp the precepts of the Lord, and abide in them, riveted to them. Standfast is one of the best soldiers in the Prince Immanuel’s army and one of the most fit to be trusted with the colours of his regiment. “Having done all, still stand.”

To make a holy character we must take hold of the steps of God in the sense of promptness and speed. Here again I must take you to the East to get the illustration. They say of a man who closely imitates his religious teacher, “his feet have laid hold of his master’s steps,” meaning that he so closely follows his teacher that he seems to take hold of his heels. This is a blessed thing indeed, when grace enables us to follow our Lord closely. There is his foot, and close behind it is ours; and there again he takes another step, and we plant our feet where he has planted his. A very beautiful motto is hung up in our infant class-room at the Stockwell Orphanage, “What would Jesus do?” Not only may children take it as their guide, but all of us may do the same, whatever our age. “What would Jesus do?” If you desire to know what you ought to do under any circumstances, imagine Jesus to be in that position, and then think, “What would Jesus do? for what Jesus would do that ought I to do.” In following Jesus we are following God, for in Christ Jesus the brightness of the Father’s glory is best seen. Our example is our Lord and Master, Jesus the Son of God, and therefore this question is but a beam from our guiding star. Ask in all cases-“What would Jesus do?” That unties the knot of all moral difficulty in the most practical way, and does it so simply that no great wit or wisdom will be needed. May God’s Holy Spirit help us to copy the line which Jesus has written, even as scholars imitate their writing master in each stroke, and line, and mark, and dot. Oh, when we come to die, and have to look back upon our lives, it will be a blessed thing to have followed the Lord fully. They are happy who follow the Lamb whither-soever he goeth. Blessed are they in life and death of whom it can be said,-as he was so were they also in this world. Though misunderstood and misrepresented, yet they were honest imitators of their Lord. Such a true-hearted Christian can say, “He knoweth the way that I take. He tried me, and I came forth as gold. My foot hath held his steps.” Many a sorrow will you avoid if you keep close at your Master’s heel. You know what came of Peter’s following afar off; try what will come of close walking with Jesus. Abide in him, and let his words abide in you, so shall you be his disciples. You dare not trust in your works, and will not think of doing so, yet will you bless God that, being saved by his grace, you were enabled to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit, by a close and exact following of the steps of your Lord.

Three things, then, we get in the first sentence,-an exactness of obedience, a tenacity of grip upon that which is good, and a promptness in endeavouring to keep touch with God, and to follow him in all respects. May these things be in us and abound.

We now pass on to the second sentence. I am afraid you will say, “Spare us, for even unto the first sentence we have not yet attained.” Labour after it then, beloved; forgetting the things that are behind except to weep over them, press forward to that which is before. May God give you those sensitive grasping feet which we have tried to describe: feet that take hold on the Lord’s way, and may you throughout life keep that hold; for “blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord.”

The next sentence runneth thus: “His way have I kept”; that is to say, Job had adhered to God’s way as the rule of his life. When he knew that such-and-such a thing was the mind of God, either by his conscience telling him that it was right, or by a divine revelation, then he obeyed the intimation and kept to it. He did not go out of God’s way to indulge his own fancies, or to follow some supposed leader: to God’s way he kept from his youth, even till the time when the Lord himself said of him, “Hast thou considered my servant Job, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” The Lord gave him this character to the devil, who could not deny it, and did not attempt to do so, but only muttered, “Doth Job serve God for nought? Hast thou not set a hedge about him and all that he hath?” When he uttered our text Job could have replied to the malicious accuser that, even when God had broken down his hedges and laid him waste, he had not sinned nor charged God foolishly. He heeded not his wife’s rash counsels to curse God and die, but he still blessed the divine name even though everything was taken from him. What noble words are those: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Though bereft of all earthly comfort, he did not forsake the way of holiness, but still kept to his God.

Keeping to the way signifies not simply adherence, but continuance and progress in it. Job had gone on in the ways of God year after year. He had not grown tired of holiness, nor weary of devotion, neither had he grown sick of what men call straight-laced piety. He had kept the way of God on, and on, and on, delighting in what Cover-dale’s version calls God’s “high street”-the highway of holiness. The further he went the more pleasure he took in it, and the more easy he found it to his feet, for God was with him and kept him, and so he kept God’s way. “Thy way have I kept.” He means that notwithstanding there were difficulties in the way he persevered in it. It was stormy weather, but Job kept to the old road; the sleet beat in his face, but he kept his way: he had gone that path in fair weather, and he was not going to forsake his God now that the storms were out; and so he kept his way. Then the scene changed, the sun was warm, and all the air was redolent with perfume, and merry with the song of birds, but Job kept his way. If God’s providence flooded his sky with sunshine he did not forsake God because of prosperity, as some do, but kept his way-kept his way when it was rough, kept his way when it was smooth. When he met with adversities he did not turn into a bye-road, but travelled the King’s highway, where a man is safest, for those who dare to assail him will have to answer for it to a higher power. The high street of holiness is safe because the King’s guarantee is given that “no lion shall be there, neither shall any ravenous beast go up thereon.” The righteous shall hold on his way, and so did Job, come fair, come foul. When there were others in the road with him, and when there were none, he kept his way. He would not even turn aside for those three good men, or men who thought themselves good, who sat by the wayside and miserably comforted, that is to say, tormented him; he kept. God’s way, as one whose mind is made up and whose face is set like a flint. There was no turning him, he would fight his way if he could not have it peaceably. I like a man whose mind is set upon being right with God, a self-contained man by God’s grace, who does not want patting on the back and encouraging, and who on the other hand does not care if he is frowned at, but has counted the cost and abides by it. Give me a man who has a backbone; a brave fellow who has grit in him. It is well for a professor when God has put some soul into him, and made a man of him, for if a Christian man is not a man as well as a Christian, he will not long remain a Christian man. Job was firm: a well-made character that did not shrink in the wetting. He believed his God, he knew God’s way, and he kept to it under all circumstances from his first start in life even until that day when he sat on a dunghill and transformed it into a throne, whereon he reigned as among all mere men, the peerless prince of patience. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and of this as one part of it, that he kept the way of the Lord.

Now, dear brethren, on this second clause let me utter this word of self-examination. Have we kept God’s way? Have we got into it and do we mean to keep it still? Some are soon hot and soon cold; someset out for the New Jerusalem like Pliable, very eagerly, but the first slough of despond they tumble into shakes their resolution, and they crawl out on the homeward side and go back to the world again. There will be no comfort in such temporary religion, but dreadful misery when we come to consider it on a dying bed. Changeful Pliables will find it hard to die. O to be constant even to the end, so as to say, “My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept.” God grant us grace to do it, by his Spirit abiding in us.

The third clause is, “And not declined,” by which I understand that he had not declined from the way of holiness, nor declined in the way. First, he had not declined from it. He had not turned to the right hand nor to the left. Some turn away from God’s way to the right hand by doing more than God’s word has bidden them do; such as invent religious ceremonies, and vows, and bonds, and become superstitious, falling under the bondage of priestcraft, and being led into will-worship, and things that are not Scriptural. This is as truly wandering as going out of the road to the left would be. Ah, dear friends, keep to the simplicity of the Bible. This is an age in which Holy Scripture is very little accounted of. If a church chooses to invent a ceremony, men fall into it, and practise it as if it were God’s ordinance. Ay, and if neither church nor law recognise the performance, yet if oertain self-willed priests choose to burn candles, and to wear all sorts of bedizenments, and bow, and cringe, and march in procession, there are plenty of simpletons who will go whichever way their clergyman chooses, even if he should lead them into downright heathenism. “Follow my leader” is the game of the day, but “Follow my God” is the motto of a true Christian. Job had not turned to the right.

Nor had he turned to the left. He had not been lax in observing God’s commandments. He had shunned omission as well as commission. This is a very heart-searching matter; for how many there are whose greatest sins lie in omission. And remember, sins of omission, though they sit very light on many consciences, and though the bulk of professors do not even think them sins, are the very sins for which men will be condemned at the last. How do I prove that? What said the great Judge? “I was an hungered and ye gave me no meat, I was thirsty and ye gave me no drink, sick and in prison and ye visited me not.” It was what they did not do that cursed them, more than what they did do. So look ye well to it, and pray God that you may not decline from the way of his precepts, from Jesus who, himself, is the one and only way.

Furthermore, I take it Job means that he had not even declined in that way. He did not begin with running hard and then get out of breath, and sit by the wayside and say, “Rest and be thankful;” but he kept up the pace, and did not decline. If he was warm and zealous once he remained warm and zealous; if he was indefatigable in service, he did not gradually tone down into a sluggard, but he could say, “I have not declined.” Whereas we ought to make advances towards heaven, there are many who are, after twenty years profession, no forwarder than they were, but perhaps in a worse state. Oh, beware of a decline. We were accustomed to use that term years ago to signify the commencement of a consumption, or perhaps the effects of it; and indeed, a decline in the soul often leads on to a deadly consumption. In a spiritual consumption the very life of religion seems to ebb out by little and little. The man does not die by a wound that stabs his reputation, but by a secret weakness within him, which eats at the vitals of godliness and leaves the outward surface fair. God save us from declining. I am sure, dear friends, we cannot many of us afford to decline much, for we are none too earnest, none too much alive now; but this is one of the great faults of churches, so many of the members are in a decline that the church becomes a hospital instead of a barracks. Many professors are not what they were at first: they were very promising young men, but they are not performing old men. We are pleased to see the flowers on our fruit-trees, but they disappoint us unless they knit into fruit, and we are not satisfied even then unless the fruit ripens to a mellow sweetness. We do not make orchards for the sake of blossoms, we want apples. So is it with the garden of grace, our Lord comes seeking fruit, and instead thereof he often finds nothing but leaves. May God grant to us that we may not decline from the highest standard we have ever reached. “I would,” said the Lord of the church of Laodicea, “that thou wert either cold or hot.” Oh, you lukewarm ones take that warning to heart. Remember, Jesus cannot endure you; he will spue you out of his mouth; you make him sick to think of you. If you were downright cold he would understand you; if you were hot he would delight in you; but being neither cold nor hot he is sick at the thought of you, he cannot endure you; and indeed, when we think of what the Lord has done for us, it is enough to make us sick to think that any one should drag on in a cold, inanimate manner in his service, who loved us, and gave himself for us.

Some decline because they become poor: they even stay from worship on that account. I hope none of you say, “I do not like to come to the Tabernacle because I have not fit clothes to come in.” As I have often said, any clothes are fit for a man to come here in if he has paid for them. Let each come by all manner of means in such garments as he has, and he shall be welcome. But I do know some very poor professors who, in the extremity of their anxiety and trouble, instead of flying to God, fly from him. This is very sad. The poorer you are, the more you want the rich consolations of grace. Do not let this temptation overcome you, but if you are as poor as Job, be as resolved as he to keep to the Lord’s way and not decline. Others fly from their religion because they grow rich. They say that three generations never will come on wheels to a dissenting place of worship, and it has proved to be sadly true in many instances, though I have no cause to complain of you as yet. Some persons when they rise in the world turn up their noses at their poor friends. If any of you do so you will be worthy of pity, if not of contempt. If you forsake the ways of God for the fashion of the world you will be poor gainers by your wealth. The Lord keep you from such a decline. Many decline because they conform to the fashion of the world, and the way of the world is not the way of God. Doth not James say, “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” Others wander because they get into ill company, among witty people, or clever people, or hospitable people, who are not gracious people. Such society is dangerous. People whom we esteem, but whom God does not esteem, are a great snare. It is very perilous to love those who love not God. He shall not be my bosom friend who is not God’s friend, for I shall probably do him but little service, and he will do me much harm. May the grace of God prevent your growing cold from any of these causes, and may you be able to say, “I have not declined.”

One more sentence remains: “Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips”: that is to say, as he had not slackened his pace, so much less had he turned back. May none of you ever go back. This is the most cutting grief of a pastor, that certain persons come in among us, and even come to the front, who after awhile turn back and walk no more with us. We know, as John says, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us”; yet what anguish it causes when we see apostates among us and know their doom. Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. Let Lot’s wife be a warning. Season your souls with a fragment of salt from that pillar, and it may keep you from corruption.

Remember that you can turn back, not only from all the commandments, and so become an utter apostate, but there is such a thing as backing at single commandments. You know the precept to be right, but you cannot face it; you look at it, and look at it, and look at it, and then go back, back, back from it, refusing to obey. Job had never done so. If it was God’s command he went forward to perform it. It may be that it seems impossible to go forward in the path of duty, but if you have faith you are to go on whatever the difficulty may be. The negro was right who said, “Massa, if God say, ‘Sam, jump through the wall’; it is Sam’s business to jump, and God’s work to make me go through the wall.” Leap at it, dear friends, even if it seem to be a wall of granite. God will clear the road. By faith the Israelites went through the Red Sea as on dry land. It is ours to do what God bids us, as he bids us, when he bids us, and no hurt can come of it. Strength equal to our day shall be given, only let us cry “Forward!” and push on.

Here just one other word. Let us take heed to ourselves that we do not go back, for going back is dangerous. We have no armour for our back, no promise of protection in retreat. Going back is ignoble and base. To have had a grand idea and then to turn back from it like a whipped cur, is disgraceful. Shame on the man who dares not be a Christian. Even sinners and ungodly men point at the man who put his hand to the plough and looked back, and was not worthy of the kingdom. Indeed, it is fatal; for the Lord has said, “If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.” Forward! Forward! though death and hell obstruct the way, for backward is defeat, destruction, despair. O God, grant us of thy grace that when we come to the end of life we may say with joy, “I have not gone back from thy commandment.” The covenant promises persevering grace, and it shall be yours, only look ye well that ye trifle not with this grace.

There is the picture which Job has sketched. Hang it up on the wall of your memory, and God help you to paint after this old master, whose skill is unrivalled.

Secondly, let us take a peep behind the wall to see how Job came by this character. Here we note Job’s holy sustenance, “I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.”

First, then, God spoke to Job. Did God ever speak to you? I do not suppose Job had a single page of inspired writing. Probably he had not even seen the first books of Moses; he may have done so, but probably he had not. God spoke to him. Did he ever speak to you? No man will ever serve God aright unless God has spoken to him. You have the Bible, and God speaks in that book and through it; but mind you do not rest in the printed letter without discerning its spirit. You must try to hear God’s voice in the printed letter. “God hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son”; but oh, pray that this divine Son may speak by the Holy Ghost right into your heart. Anything which keeps you from personal contact with Jesus robs you of the best blessing. The Romanist says he uses a crucifix to help him to remember Christ, and then his prayers often stop at the crucifix, and do not get to Christ; and in like manner you can make an idol of your Bible by using the mere words as a substitute for God’s voice to you. The book is to help you to remember God, but if you stick in the mere letter, and get not to God at all, you misuse the sacred word. When the Spirit of God speaks a text right into the soul, when God himself takes the promise or the precept and sends it with living energy into the heart, this is that which makes a man have a reverence for the word: he feels its awful majesty, its divine supremacy, and while he trembles at it he rejoices, and goes forward to obey because God has spoken to him. Dear friends, when God speaks be sure that you have open ears to hear, for oftentimes he speaketh and men regard him not. In a vision of the night when deep sleep falleth upon men God has spoken to his prophets, but now he speaks by his word, applying it to the heart with power by his Spirit. If God speaks but little to us it is because we are dull of hearing. Renewed hearts are never long without a whisper from the Lord. He is not a dumb God’ nor is he so far away that we cannot hear him: they that keep his ways and hold his steps, as Job did, shall hear many of his words to their soul’s delight and profit. God’s having spoken to Job was the secret of his consistently holy life.

Then note, that what God had spoken to him he treasured up. He says in the Hebrew that he had hid God’s word more than ever he had hidden his necessary food. They had to hide grain away in those days to guard it from wandering Arabs. Job had been more careful to store up God’s word than to store up his wheat and his barley; more anxious to preserve the memory of what God had spoken than to garner his harvests. Do you treasure up what God has spoken? Do you study the Word? Do you read it? Oh, how little do we search it compared with what we ought to do. Do you meditate on it? Do you suck out its secret sweets? Do you store up its essence as bees gather the life-blood of flowers, and hoard up their honey for winter food? Bible study is the metal that makes a Christian; this is the strong meat on which holy men are nourished; this is that which makes the bone and sinew of men who keep God’s way in defiance of every adversary. God spake to Job, and Job treasured up his words.

We learn from our version of the text that Job lived on God’s word: he reckoned it to be better to him than his necessary food. He ate it. This is an art which some do not understand-eating the word of the Lord. Some look at the surface of the Scriptures, some pull the Scriptures to pieces without mercy, some cut the heavenly bread into dice pieces, and show their cleverness, some pick it over for plums, like children with a cake; but blessed is he that makes it his meat and drink. He takes the word of God to be what is, namely, a word from the mouth of the Eternal, and he says, “God is speaking to me in this, and I will satisfy my soul upon it; I do not want anything better than this, anything truer than this, anything safer than this, but having got this it shall abide in me, in my heart, in the very bowels of my life, it shall be interwoven with the warp and woof of my being.

But the text adds that he esteemed it more than his necessary food. Not more than dainties only, for those are superfluities, but more than his necessary food, and you know that a man’s necessary food is a thing which he esteems very highly. He must have it. What, take away my bread? says he, as if this could not be borne. To take the bread out of a poor man’s mouth is looked upon as the highest kind of villainy: but Job would sooner that they took the bread out of his mouth than the word of God out of his heart. He thought more of it than of his needful food, and I suppose it was because meat would only sustain his body, but the word of God feeds the soul. The nourishment given by bread is soon gone, but the nourishment given by the word of God abideth in us, and makes us to live for ever. The natural life is more than meat, but our spiritual life feeds on meat even nobler than itself, for it feeds on the bread of heaven, the person of the Lord Jesus. Bread is sweet to the hungry man, but we are not always hungry, and sometimes we have no appetite; but the best of God’s word is that he who lives near to God has always an appetite for it, and the more he eats of it the more he can eat. I do confess I have often fed upon God’s word when I have had no appetite for it, until I have gained an appetite. I have grown hungry in proportion as I have felt satisfied: my emptiness seemed to kill my hunger, but as I have been revived by the word I have longed for more. So it is written, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled:” and when they are filled they shall continue to enjoy the benediction, for they shall hunger and thirst still though filled with grace. God’s word is sweeter to the taste than bread to a hungry man, and its sweetness never cloys, though it dwells long on the palate. You cannot be always eating bread, but you can always feed on the word of God. You cannot eat all the meat that is set before you, your capacity is limited that way, and none but a glutton wishes it otherwise; but oh, you may be ravenous of God’s word, and devour it all, and yet have no surfeit. You are like a little mouse in a great cheese, and you shall have permission to eat it all, though it be a thousand times greater than yourself. Though God’s thoughts are greater than your thoughts, and his ways are greater than your ways, yet may his ways be in your heart, and your heart in his ways. You may be filled with all the fulness of God, though it seems a paradox. His fulness is greater than you, and all his fulness is infinitely greater than you, yet you may be filled with all the fulness of God. So that the word of God is better than our necessary food: it hath qualities which our necessary food hath not.

No more, except it be this: you cannot be holy, my brethren, unless you do in secret live upon the blessed word of God, and you will not live on it unless it comes to you as the word of his mouth. It is very sweet to get a letter from home when you are far away: it is like a bunch of fresh flowers in winter time. A letter from the dear one at home is as music heard over the water; but half a dozen words from that dear mouth are better than a score pages of manuscript, for there is a sweetness about the look and the tone which paper cannot carry. Now, I want you to get the Bible to be not a book only but a speaking trumpet, through which God speaks from afar to you, so that you may catch the very tones of his voice. You must read the word of God to this end, for it is while reading, meditating, and studying, and seeking to dip yourself into its spirit, that it seems suddenly to change from a written book into a talking book or phonograph; it whispers to you or thunders at you as though God had hidden himself among its leaves and spoke to your condition; as though Jesus who feedeth among the lilies had made the chapters to be lily beds, and had come to feed there. Ask Jesus to cause his word to come fresh from his own mouth to your soul; and if it be so, and you thus live in daily communion with a personal Christ, my brethren, you will then with your feet take hold upon his steps; then will you keep his way, then will you never decline or go back from his commandments, but you will make good speed in your pilgrim way to the eternal city. May the Holy Ghost daily be with you. May every one of you live under his sacred bedewing, and be fruitful in every good word and work. Amen and amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Psalm 119:9-40.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book.”-84, 112, 649.

perfect sanctification

A Sermon

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”-Hebrews 10:10.

Dear friends, ever since the Lord has quickened us by his grace we have begun to look into ourselves and to search our hearts to see our condition before God. Hence many things which once caused us no disquietude now create in us great anxiety. We thought that we were all right, and felt it to be enough to be quite as good as others. We dreamed that if we were not quite as good as we should be we should certainly grow better, though we did not stop to enquire how or why. We took stock of our condition and concluded that we were rich and increased with goods, and had need of nothing. A change has come over the spirit of the scene; the grace of God has made us thoughtful and careful. We dare not take things at haphazard now. We test and prove things, for we are very anxious not to be deceived. We look upon eternal realities as being of the utmost consequence, and we dare not take them for granted as being certain to be right. We are afraid of being presumptuous; we long to be sincere. We hold an assize within our spirits, and we are so afraid that we may be partial, as probably we shall be, that we ask the Lord to search us and try us, to see if there be any wicked way in us, that he may lead us out of such a way into the way everlasting. This is all very wise and very proper, and I would not for a moment try to take off the people of God from a proper measure of this state of heart; and yet let it never be forgotten that we are in the sight of God other in some respects than we shall ever see ourselves to be if we look through the glass of feeling and consciousness. There are other matters to be taken into consideration, matters which our anxiety may lead us to overlook, and our inward search may cause us to forget.

Faith reveals to us another position for the people of God besides that which they occupy in themselves. Some call it an evangelical fiction, and the like; but, thank God, it is a blessed fact that, sinners as we are in ourselves, yet believers are saints in God’s sight, and that sinful as they feel themselves to be, yet they are washed, cleansed, and sanctified in Jesus Christ. Notwithstanding all that we mourn over, the very fact that we do mourn over it becomes an evidence that we are no longer what we once were, and do not stand now where we once stood. We have passed from death unto life. We have escaped from under the dominion of law into the kingdom of grace. We have come from under the curse, and we dwell in the region of blessing. We have believed on him that justifieth the ungodly, and our faith is counted for righteousness. (Romans 4:5). There is therefore now no condemnation to us, for we are in Christ Jesus our Lord, and walk no longer after the flesh but after the Spirit. That your hearts may be gladdened, I want you to think of the noble position into which the grace of God has lifted all believers-the condition of sanctification which is spoken of in the text-for by the “will of God we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

We shall, first, speak of the eternal will; secondly, of the effectual sacrifice by which that will has been carried out; and, thirdly, of the everlasting result accomplished by that will through the sacrifice of the body of Christ. May the Holy Spirit who has revealed the grand doctrine of justification now enable us to understand it and to feel its comforting power.

First, then, the eternal will-“By the which will we are sanctified.”

This will must, first of all, be viewed as the will ordained of old by the Father-the eternal decree of the infinite Jehovah, that a people whom he chose should be sanctified and set apart unto himself. The will of Jehovah stands fast for ever and ever, and we know of it that it is altogether unchangeable, and that it has no beginning. It is an eternal will, we have no vacillating deity, no fickle God. He wills changes, but he never changes his will. “He is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth.” The will of God is invincible as well as eternal. We are told in the Ephesians that he worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. “Who can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” The good pleasure of his will is never defeated: there cannot be such a thing as a vanquished God. “His purpose shall stand, and he will do all his pleasure.” In fact, the will of God is the motive force of all things. “He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.” His word is omnipotent because his will is at the back of it, and it puts force into it. He said “Light be,” and there was light, because he willed that there should be light. He bade creatures come forth, numerous as the drops of dew, to people the world that he had made, and forth they came, flying, leaping, swimming, in varied orders of life, because of his own will he did create them. His will is the secret power which sustains the universe, and threads the starry orbs, and holds them like a necklace of light about the neck of nature. His will is the Alpha and the Omega of all things. It was according to this eternal, invincible will of God that he chose, created, and set apart a people that should show forth the glory and riches of his grace, a people that should bear the image of his only-begotten Son, a people that should joyfully and willingly serve him in his courts for ever and ever, a people who should be his own sons and daughters, to whom he would say, “I will dwell in them and walk in them, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” Thus stood the eternal will of old. “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.”

But the people concerning whom this will was made were dead in sin, defiled with evil, polluted by transgression. The old serpent’s venom was in their veins. They were fit to be set apart for the curse, but not to be set apart for the service of the thrice holy God. And the question was, how then should the will of the Immutable Invincible ever be carried out? How shall these rebels become absolved? How shall these fountains of filth become clear as crystal, pouring forth floods of living water and divine praise? How shall these unsanctified and defiled ones become sanctified unto the service of God? It must be,-but how shall it be? Then came the priests, with smoking censers, and with basins full of blood, steaming as it came fresh from the slaughtered victims, and they sprinkled this blood upon the book and upon the people, upon the altar, and upon the mercy-seat, and upon all the hangings of the tabernacle, and all the ground whereon the worshippers walked, for almost all things under the law were sanctified by blood. Everywhere was this blood of bulls and of goats. Fresh every morning and renewed every evening. Still, God’s will was not done, the chosen were not thus sanctified, and we know they were not, because it is written, “Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not.” His will was not fulfilled in them. It was not his will that they should sanctify the people. They were inefficacious to such an end, for, as the Holy Ghost has said, it was “not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins:” and so, if these offerings had been all, centuries of the house of Aaron and of the priests of the tribe of Levi might have come and gone, and yet the will decreed by the eternal Father would not have been an accomplished fact.

Thus we are landed at our second point, which is, that this will by which we are sanctified was performed of the ever blessed Son. It was the will of God the Father, but it was carried out by the divine Son when he came into the world. A body was prepared for him, and into that body, in a mysterious manner which we will not attempt even to conceive of, he entered, and there he was the incarnate God. This incarnate God, by offering his own blood, by laying down his own life, by bearing in his own body the curse, and in his own spirit enduring the wrath, was able to effect the purpose of the everlasting Father in the purging of his people, in the setting of his chosen apart, and making them henceforth holiness unto the Lord. Do you not see what the will of the Father was-that he should have a people that should be sanctified unto himself? But that will could not be carried out by the blood of bulls and of goats, it must be achieved by the offering up of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Our Lord Jesus Christ has done whatsoever that will of the Father required for its perfect achievement. This is our satisfaction. We will not enter at this time into a detailed account of our Lord’s active and passive obedience by which he magnified the law and set apart his people. I pray you, however, never fall into the error of dividing the work of Christ as some do, and saying, “Here he made atonement for sin, and there he did not.” In these modern times certain brethren have invented refinements of statement of so trivial a character that they are not even worth the trouble of thinking over, and yet, like babes with a new rattle, they make a noise with them all day long. It is amusing how these wise professors make grave points out of mere hair-splitting distinctions, and if we do not agree with them they give themselves mighty airs, pitying our ignorance, and esteeming themseves as superior persons who have an insight into things which ordinary Christians cannot see. God save us from having eyes which are so sharp that we are able to spy out new occasions for difference, and fresh reasons for making men offenders for mere words. I believe in the life of Christ as well as in his death, and I believe that he stood for me before God as much when he walked the acres of Palestine as when he hung on the cross at Jerusalem. You cannot divide and split him in sunder and say, “He is so far an example, and so far an atonement,” but you must take the entire Christ, and look at him from the very first as the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. “Oh, but,” they say, “he made no atonement except in his death,” which is, let me tell you, an absurdity in language. Listen a minute. When does a man die? I cannot tell you. There is the minute in which the soul separates from the body; but all the time that a man may be described as dying he is alive, is he not? A man does not suffer when actually dead. What we call the pangs of death are truly and accurately pangs of life. Death does not suffer; it is the end of suffering. A man is in life while he suffers; and if they say, “It is Christ’s death that makes an atonement, and not his life,” I reply that death, alone and by itself, makes no atonement. Death in its natural sense, and not in this modern non-natural severance from life, does make atonement; but it cannot be viewed apart from life by any unsophisticated mind. If they must have distinctions we could make distinctions enough to worry them of such an unprofitable business, but we have nobler work to do. To us our Lord’s death seems to be the consummation of his life, the finishing stroke of a work which his Father had given him to do among the sons of men. We view him as having come in a body prepared for him to do the will of God once, and that “once” lasted throughout his one life on earth. We will not, however, dwell on any moot point, but unfeignedly rejoice that whatever was wanted to make God’s people wholly sanctified unto God, Christ has wrought out. “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once.” It is finished. Does the divine law require for our acceptance perfect submission to the will of the Lord? He has rendered it. Does it ask complete obedience to its precepts? He has presented the same. Does the fulfilled will of the Lord call for abject suffering, a sweat of blood, pangs unknown, and death itself? Christ has presented it all, whatever that “all” may be. As, when God created, his word effected all his will; so, when God redeemed, his blessed and incarnate Word has done all his will. In every point, as God looked on each day’s work and said “It is good,” so, as he looks upon each part of the work of his dear Son, he can say of it, “It is good.” The Father joins in the verdict of his Son, that it is finished: all the will of God for the sanctification of his people is accomplished.

Beloved, this work must be applied to us by the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Ghost who brings us to know that Jesus Christ has sanctified us, or set us apart, and made us acceptable with God. It is the Holy Spirit who has given us the New Testament, and shed a light upon the Old. It is the Holy Spirit who speaks to us through the ministers of Christ when he blesses them to our conversion. Especially is it the Holy Ghost who takes away from us all hope of being sanctified before God by any means of our own, brings us to see our need of cleansing and reconciliation, and then takes of the things of Christ and reveals them unto us. Not without the going forth of his sacred power are we made to take the place of separation, and dedication, to which the Lord of old ordained us.

Thus it is by the will of the Father, carried out by the Son, and applied by the Holy Spirit, that the church of God is regarded as sanctified before God, and is acceptable unto him.

I do not tarry longer on any one point, because these great things are best spoken of with few words: they are subjects better fed upon by quiet thought than exhibited in speech.

I invite you, dear friends, in the second place, to consider the effectual sacrifice by which the will of God with regard to the sanctity of his people has been carried out. “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ.”

This implies, first, his incarnation, which of course includes his eternal deity. We can never forget that Jesus Christ is God. The church has given forth many a valiant confession to his deity; and woe be to her should she ever hesitate on that glorious truth! Yet sometimes she has great need earnestly to insist upon his humanity. As you bow before your glorious Lord, and adore him with all the sanctified, yet remember that he whom you worship was truly and really a man. The gospel of his incarnation is not a spiritual idea, nor a metaphor, nor a myth. In very deed and truth the God that made heaven and earth came down to earth, and hung upon a woman’s breast as an infant. That child, as he grew in stature and wisdom, was as certainly God as he is at this moment in glory. He was as surely God when he was here hungering and suffering, sleeping, eating, drinking, as he was God when he hung up the morning stars and kindled the lamps of night, or as he shall be when sun and moon shall grow dim at the brightness of his coming. Jesus Christ, very God of very God, did certainly stoop to become such as we are, and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh. It is a truth you all know, but I want you to grasp it and realize it. It will help you to trust Christ if you clearly perceive that, divine as he is, he is bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh-your kinsman, though the Son of God.

All this is implied in the text, because it speaks of the offering of the body of Christ. But why does it specially speak of the body? I think to show us the reality of that offering; his soul suffered, and his soul’s sufferings were the soul of his sufferings, but still, to make it palpable to you, to record it as a sure historical fact, he mentions that there was an offering of the body of Christ.

I take it, however, that the word means the whole of Christ-that there was an offering made of all of Christ, the body of him, or that of which he was constituted. It is my solemn conviction that the deity co-worked with his humanity in the wondrous passion by which he has sanctified his elect. I am told that deity cannot suffer. I am expected to subscribe to that because theologians say so. Well, if it be true, then I shall content myself with believing that the deity helped the humanity by strengthening it to suffer more than it could otherwise have endured: but I believe that deity can suffer, heterodox as that notion may seem to be. I cannot believe in an impassive God as my Father. If he pities and sympathizes, surely he must have some sensibilities. Is he a God of iron? If he wills it he can do anything, and therefore he can suffer if he pleases. It is not possible for God to be made to suffer, that would be a ridiculous supposition; yet if he wills to do so he is certainly capable of doing that as well as anything else, for all things are possible to him. I look upon our Lord Jesus as in his very Godhead stooping down to bear the weight of human sin and human misery, sustaining it because he was divine, and able to bear what else had been too great a load. Thus the whole of Christ was made a sacrifice for sin. It was the offering, not of the spirit of Christ, but of the very body of Christ-the essence, subsistence, and most manifest reality and personality of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Most High.

And this was wholly offered. I do not know how to bring out my own thought here; but to accomplish the will of God in sanctifying all his people Christ must be the offering, and he must be wholly offered. There were certain sacrifices which were only presented to God in part, so far as the consumption by fire was concerned. A part was eaten by the priest or by the offerer, and so far it was not a whole burnt-offering. In this there was much precious truth set forth, of which we will not speak at this present; but as our sin-offering, making expiation for guilt, our blessed Lord and Master gave himself wholly for us, as an atoning sacrifice and offering for sin: and that “himself” sums up all you can conceive to be in and of the Christ of God; and the pangs and griefs which like a fire went through him did consume him, even to the uttermost of all that was in him. He bore all that could be borne, stooped to the lowest to which humility could come, descended to the utmost abyss to which a descent of self-denial could be made. He made himself of no reputation: he emptied himself of all honour and glory. He gave up himself without reserve. He saved others, himself he could not save; he spares us in our chastisements, but himself he spared not. He says of himself, in the twenty-second Psalm, “I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.” You do not know, you cannot imagine, how fully the sacrifice was made by Christ. It was not only a sacrifice of all of himself, but a complete sacrifice of every part of himself for us. The blaze of eternal wrath for human sin was focussed upon his head! The anguish that must have been endured by him who stood in the place of millions of sinners to be judged of God and smitten in their stead is altogether inconceivable. Though himself perfectly innocent, yet in his own person to offer up such a sacrifice as could honour the divine justice on account of myriads of sins of myriads of the sons of men was a work far beyond all human realization. You may give loose to your reason and your imagination, and rise into the seventh heaven of sublime conception as with eagle wing, but you can never reach the utmost height. Here is the sum of the matter-“Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift,” for unspeakable, inconceivable it certainly is when we view the Lord Jesus as a sacrifice for the sins of men.

This offering was made once, and only once. The pith of the text lies in the finishing words of it, “through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Those words “for all” are very properly put in by the translators; but you must not make a mistake as to their meaning. The text does not mean that Christ offered himself up once for all,-that is, for all mankind. That may be a doctrine of Scripture, or it may not be a doctrine of Scripture, but it is not the teaching here. The passage means “once for all” in the sense of-all at once, or only once. As a man might say, “I gave up my whole estate once for all to my creditors, and there was an end of the matter,” so here our Lord Jesus Christ is said to have offered himself up as a sacrifice once for all-that is to say, only once, and there was an end of the whole matter. His sacrifice on behalf of his people was for all the sins before he came. Think of what they all were. Ages had succeeded ages, and there had been found amongst the various generations of men criminals of the blackest dye, and crimes had been multiplied; but the prophet said in vision concerning Christ, as he looked on all the multitude, “All we like sheep have gone astray: we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” That was before he came. Reflect that there has been no second offering of himself ever since, and never will be, but it was once, and that once did the deed. Let your mind conceive of this, nearly two thousand years have passed since the offering, and if the prophet were to stand here to-night and look back through those eighteen hundred years and more, he would still say, “All we like sheep have gone astray: we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Oh! it is a wonderful conception-the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus was the reservoir into which all the sin of the human race ran, from this quarter, and that, and that, and that, and that. All the sin of his people rolled in a torrent unto him, and gathered as in a great lake. In him was no sin, and yet the Lord made him to be sin for us. You may have seen a deep mountain tarn which has been filled to the brim by innumerable streamlets from all the hillsides round about. Here comes a torrent gushing down, and there trickles from the moss that has overgrown the rock a little drip, drip, drip, which falls perpetually: great and small tributaries all meet in the black tarn, which after the rain is full to the brim, and ready to burst its banks. That lone lake pictures Christ, the meeting-place of the sin of his people. It was all laid on him, that from him the penalty might be exacted. At his hands the price must be demanded for the ransom of all this multitude of sins.

And it is said that he did this once for all. I have no language with which to describe it: but I see before me the great load of sin, the huge, tremendous world of sin. No, no, it is greater than the world. Atlas might carry that, but this is a weight compared with which the world is but as a pin’s head. Mountains upon mountains, alps on alps, are nothing to the mighty mass of sin which I see before my mind’s eye: and lo, it all falls upon the Well-beloved. He stands beneath it, and bows under it till the bloody sweat starts from every pore, and yet he does not yield to its weight so as to get away from the burden. It presses more heavily, it bows him to the dust, it touches his very soul, it makes him cry in anguish, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” and yet at the last he lifts himself up and flings it all away, and cries, “It is finished!” and it is gone. There is not a wreck of it left: no, not an atom of it left. It is all gone at once, and once for all. He has borne the immeasurable weight and cast it off from his shoulders for ever; and as it lies no more on him so also it lies no more on them. Sin shall never be mentioned against his people any more for ever. Oh, wondrous deed of deity! Oh, mighty feat of love accomplished once for all. The Redeemer never offered himself to death before. He never will do it again.

Look this way, my brethren, the reason why it never will be done again is because there is no need for it. All the sin that was laid upon Jesus is gone: all the sin of his people is for ever discharged. He has borne it: the debt is paid. The handwriting of ordinances against us is nailed to his cross: the accuser’s charge is answered for ever. What, then, shall we say of those who come forward and pretend that they perpetually present the body of Christ in the unbloody sacrifice of the mass? Why, this-that no profane jest from the lip of Voltaire ever had even the slightest degree of God-defiant blasphemy in it compared with such a hideous insult as this horrible pretence. It is infernal. I will say no less. There can be nothing more intolerable than that notion: for our Lord Jesus Christ has offered himself for sin once, and once for all; and he who dares to think of offering him again insults him by acting as if that once were not enough. I cannot believe any language of abhorrence to be too strong if the performers and attendants at the mass really knew what is implied in their professed act and deed. In the judgment of Christian charity we may earnestly pray, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Our words fail and our conceptions faint at the thought of the great Substitute with all the sins of his people condensed into one black draught and set before him. How shall we think of him as putting that cup to his lip, and drinking, drinking, drinking all the wrath till he had drained the cup to the bottom and filled himself with horror? Yet see, he has finished the death-drink and turned the cup upside down, crying, “It is finished.” At one tremendous draught the loving Lord has drained destruction dry for all his people, and there is no dreg nor drop left for any one of them; for now is the will of God accomplished-“by the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Glory be to God! And yet again, glory be to God!

“He bore on the tree the sentence for me,

And now both the Surety and sinner are free.

In the heavenly Lamb thrice happy I am;

And my heart doth rejoice at the sound of his name.”

Now I close with our third head, and that is the everlasting result.

The everlasting result of this effectual carrying out of the will of God is that now God regards his people’s sin as expiated, and their persons as sanctified. Our sin is removed by expiation. Atonement has been offered, and its efficacy abides for ever. There is no need of any other expiation. Believers repent bitterly, but not in the way of expiation. There is no penance to be exacted of them by way of putting away guilt. Their guilt is gone; their transgression is forgiven. The covenant is made with them, and it runs thus: “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more for ever.” Their sins have, in fact, been ended, blotted out, and annihilated by the Redeemer’s one sacrifice.

Next, they are reconciled. There is no quarrel now between God and those who are in Christ Jesus. Peace is made between them twain. The middle wall that stood between them is taken away. Christ by his one sacrifice has made peace for all his people, and effectually established an amity which never shall be broken.

“Lord Jesus, we believing

In thee have peace with God,

Eternal life receiving,

The purchase of thy blood.

Our curse and condemnation

Thou bearest in our stead;

Secure is our salvation

In thee, our risen Head.”

Moreover, they are not only accepted and reconciled, but they are purified; the taint that was upon them is taken away. In God’s sight they are regarded no more as unclean; they are no longer shut without the camp, they may come to the throne of the heavenly grace when they will. God can have communion with them. He regards them as fit to stand in his courts and to be his servants, for they are purified, reconciled, expiated through the one offering of Christ. Their admission into the closest intimacy with God could never be allowed if he did not regard them as purged from all uncleanness, and this has been effected not at all by themselves, but alone by the great sacrifice.

“Thy blood, not mine, O Christ,

Thy blood so freely spilt,

Has blanched my blackest stains,

And purged away my guilt.

“Thy righteousness, O Christ,

Alone does cover me;

No righteousness avails

Save that which is in thee.”

Now, what has come of it? That is the point. I want you now just to let me leave the doctrine and try and bring out the experience arising from it. What Christ has done in the carrying out of the great will of God has effected salvation for all his chosen; but this is applied to them actually and experimentally by the Holy Ghost’s dwelling in them, by which indwelling they know they are now God’s people. The Israelites were God’s people, after a fashion; the Levites were more peculiarly so, and the priests were still more especially so, and these had to present perpetual sacrifices and offerings that God might be able to look upon them as his people, for they were a sinful people. You and I are not typically, but truly and really his people. Through Jesus Christ’s offering of himself once for all we are really set apart to be the Lord’s people henceforth and for ever, and he says of us-I mean, of course, not of us all, but of as many as have believed in Jesus, and to whom the Holy Ghost has revealed his finished work-“I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” You, believers, are sanctified in this sense, that you are now the set-apart ones unto God, and you belong wholly to him. Will you think that over? “I am now not my own. I do not belong now to the common order of men, as all the rest of men do. I am set apart. I am called out. I am taken aside. I am one of the Lord’s own. I am his treasure and his portion. He has through Jesus Christ’s death made me one of those of whom he says-‘They shall dwell alone, they shall not be numbered among the people.’ ” I want you to feel it so that you may live under the power of that fact; that you may feel, “My Lord has cleansed me. My Lord has made expiation for me. My Lord has reconciled me unto God, and I am God’s man, I am God’s woman. I cannot live as others do. I cannot be one among you. I must come out. I must be separate. I cannot find my pleasure where you find yours. I cannot find my treasure where you find yours. I am God’s, and God is mine. That wondrous transaction on the cross of which our minister has tried to speak, but of which he could not speak as he ought,-that wondrous unspeakable deed upon the cross, that wonderful life and death of Jesus, has made me one of God’s people, set apart unto him, and as such I must live.”

When you realize that you are God’s people, the next thing is to reflect that God in sanctifying a people set them apart for his service, and he made them fit for his service. You, beloved, through Christ’s one great offering of his body for you, are permitted now to be the servants of God. You know it is an awful thing for a man to try and serve God until God gives him leave: there is a presumption about it. Suppose that one of the Queen’s enemies, who has sought her life, and has always spoken against her, were to say,“I mean to be one of her servants, I will go into her palace and I will serve her,” having all the while in his heart a rebellious, proud spirit; his service could not be tolerated, it would be sheer impudence. Even so, “Unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes?” A wicked man, pretending to serve God, stands in the position of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, trying to offer incense; because he is not purified and not called to the work, and has no fitness for it. But now, beloved, you that are in Christ are called to be his servants. You have permission and leave to serve him. It ought to be your great joy to be accepted servants of the living God. If you are only the Lord’s shoeblack you have a greater privilege than if you were an emperor. If the highest thing you ever will be allowed to do should be to loose the latchet of your Master’s shoe, or to wash his servants’ feet, if that master be Christ, you are favoured above the mightiest of the mighty. Men of renown may envy you: their orders of the Garter or the Golden Fleece are nothing compared with the high dignity of being servitors of King Jesus. Look upon this as being the result of Christ’s death upon the cross, that such a poor, sinful creature as you are, that were once a slave of the devil, are now suffered to be the servant of God. On the cross my Master bought for me the privilege to preach to you at this time; and he bought for you, dear mother, the privilege to go home and train your little child for the great Father in heaven; in fact, he bought for us a sanctification which has made us the Lord’s people, and has enabled us to engage in his service. Do we not rejoice in this?

Next to that we have this privilege, that what we do can now be accepted. Because Jesus Christ by the offering of his body once has perfected the Father’s will, and has sanctified us, therefore what we do is now accepted with God. We might have done whatever we would, but God would not have accepted it of a sinner’s hands-of the hands of those that were out of Christ. Now he accepts anything of us. You dropped a penny into the box: it was all that you could give, and the Lord accepted it. It dropped into his hand. You offered a little prayer in the middle of business this afternoon because you heard an ill word spoken; and your God accepted that prayer. You went down the street and spoke to a poor sick person; you did not say much, but you said all you could: the great God accepted it. Acceptance in the Beloved, not only for our persons, but for our prayers and our work, is one of the sweetest things I know of. We are accepted. That is the joy of it. Through that one great, bloody sacrifice, once for all offered, God’s people are for ever accepted, and what his people do for him is accepted too; and now we are privileged to the highest degree, being sanctified-that is to say, made into God’s people, God’s servants, and God’s accepted servants. Every privilege which we could have had, if we had never sinned, is now ours, and we are in him as his children. We have more than would have come to us by the covenant of works; and if we will but know it, and live up to it, even the very privilege of suffering and the privilege of being tried, the privilege of being in want, should be looked upon as a great gift, for methinks an angel spirit, seated high alone there, meditating and adoring, might say within himself, “I have served God: these swift wings have borne me through the ether on his errands, but I never suffered for him. I was never despised for him. Drunkards never called me ill names. I was never misrepresented as God’s servant. After all, though I have served him, it has been one perpetual joy. He hath set a hedge about me and all that I have.” If an angel could envy anybody, I think he would envy the martyr who had the privilege of burning quick to the death for Christ, or such as Job, who, when stripped of everything and covered with sores, could sit on a dunghill and yet honour his God; because such as these achieved a service unique within itself, which has sparkling diamonds of the first water glittering about it, such as cannot be found in an unsuffering ministry be it as complete as it may. You are favoured sons of Adam, you who have become sons of God. You are favoured beyond cherubim and seraphim in accomplishing a service for the manifestation of the riches of the grace of God, which unfallen spirits never could accomplish. Rejoice and be exceeding glad that this one offering has put you there.

And now you are eternally secure. No sin can ever be laid to your door, for it is all put away, and sin being removed every other evil has lost its fang and sting. Now you are eternally beloved for you are one with him who can never be other than dear to the heart of Jehovah. That union never can be broken, for nothing can separate us from the love of God, and hence your security can never be imperilled. Now are you in some measure glorified, for “the spirit of glory and of Christ doth rest upon you,” and our conversation is in heaven, from whence we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus, who hath already raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenlies. Heaven is already ours in promise, in price, and in principle, and the preparation for it has also begun. I feel at this hour that-

“All that remains for me

Is but to love and sing,

And wait until the angels come

To bear me to their King.”

In such a spirit would I always live. Brethren and sisters, are you dispirited at this time? Have you a great trouble upon you? Are you alone in the world? Do others misjudge you, or does the iron of scandal pierce your very soul? Do fierce coals of juniper await those vicious tongues that wrong you? Do you feel bowed into the dust? Yet, what art thou at to be despairing? Child of God, and heir of all things, why art thou cast down? Joint heir with Christ, why grovellest thou? Why liest thou among the pots when thou hast already angels’ wings about thee? Up, man, up. Thy heritage is not here among the dragons and the owls. Up! Thou art one of God’s eagles, born for brighter light than earth could bear-light that would blind the blear-eyed sons of men if they were once to get a veiled glimpse of it. Thou, a twice-born man, one of the imperial family, one that shall sit upon a throne with Christ as surely as Christ sits there, what art thou at to be moaning and groaning? Wipe thy eyes and smooth thy brow, and in the strength of the Eternal go to thy life-battle. It will not be long. The trumpet of victory almost sounds in thy ears. Wilt thou now beat a retreat? No. Play the man and win the day. “Trust in the Lord and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed,” till he comes to catch thee away where thou shalt see what Jesus did for thee when he made his body once for all a sacrifice, that he might fulfil the will of the eternal Father, and sanctify thee and all his people unto God for ever and ever. May the best of blessings rest upon all who are in Christ Jesus.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Hebrews 10:1-22.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-395, 406, 593.

“They were tempted”

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, March 14th, 1880, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“They were tempted.”-Hebrews 11:37.

Last Lord’s-day I tried to draw the fair portrait of a believing man, putting his feet into God’s steps, and keeping God’s way even unto the end. This morning we shall show in what circumstances such men were produced. We shall discover that they were not nursed upon the lap of ease, but were born, and reared, and perfected amid storms of opposition. We shall again see “the lily among thorns.” The gracious characters of which we read in Scripture were not created by favourable circumstances: they owed nothing to their position, or age, their character was formed from within. Their faith was not produced by the tenderness of providence, they were not put into a conservatory like fair flowers which cannot endure the frost: rather might we say that they were helped to their robustness by the rough winter-blasts which swept over them. They were warriors of peace: pilgrims who travelled armed to the teeth, making no holiday march, but contending with giants and dragons. Whoever else may find life a sport, the saints have found it to be real and earnest; their path has been no mere parade, but grim and grisly dangers have beset them; “they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were slain with the sword.” One form of the opposition which they encountered is the subject of this morning’s meditation-“they were tempted.”

Do not forget that the leading principle of a godly man is faith, and according to this chapter faith is the force by which brave deeds are done, and great sufferings are endured. All the world appears to be in arms against the man of faith. Ishmael, the child of human strength, mocks Isaac, who is born by the power of faith according to promise. Yet faith is able to bear all attacks, and to flourish under them, even as the Israelites in Egypt multiplied the more as their oppressions were increased. The sufferings of believers, which are mentioned by Paul, are very varied and exceedingly intense; and this is one of them: “they were tempted.” The speedy weapon of stone, or sword, or saw, gratified the malice which sought their death, but tempting them satisfied a more subtle hate, which stabbed at their character and their faith. In temptation there is for the soul all the deadliness which the slaughter weapon brings to the body. It is blessed to observe that the faithful survived this danger also. A torrent roared against them, and they stemmed it with resolute confidence; they did not drift with the current, nor drown in its floods.

Dealing with this one form of opposition, “they were tempted,” I shall be able to say a great many more practical things than if I were preaching upon “they were stoned,” or “they were sawn asunder,” for those things happen but now and then, but this record that “they were tempted” is repeated in us all, and especially in you who have lately set out on the heavenly pilgrimage. You have got far enough to discover that you are not to be allowed to go to heaven if Satan can prevent it, nor suffered to remain a Christian if by any means the men of this world can cast you down. You are being tempted: may the practical word I shall be able to speak be applied with power by the Holy Spirit to your comfort and help.

First I will call attention to the universal truth of the statement now before us. It is not true that all the saints were scourged, nor all imprisoned, neither were all stoned, nor all slain with the sword, but it is true of the whole cloud of witnesses that they were all tempted. The word “tempted” bears two meanings; first of all, that of being tried or afflicted; and secondly, that of being persuaded or enticed to sin.

In the first aspect of it God did tempt Abraham, that is, he tried him; and this he does with all his people. God had one Son without sin, but he never had a son without trial. “What son is there whom the Father chastened not?” “Whereof ye are all partakers,” says Paul, when he speaks of chastening. “For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.” His own elect are made to feel his refining fires, for he declares of each one “I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.” All the sheep of Christ bear his private mark; he sets the cross of affliction upon them all. “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” Before you shall find me a man who has never known trouble I think you will have ridden many a horse lame and searched far and wide; for “man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward;” but I will guarantee that this wonderful untried person is as much a stranger to God as he is to affliction. Within the sacred enclosure of the elect of God you shall not be able to discover one whom the Lord has not in some way or at some time afflicted in love. Count it not therefore a strange thing, my dear brother, that you should have a cross to carry. Do not begin to kick against the pricks as though some unusual suffering were laid upon you when the Lord touches you with the goad of sorrow. You are one among many, and among the many there are worthy ones who bear heavier loads than yours. Envy none, but feel a brotherhood with all the faithful, for they too “were tempted.”

As for the other sense of the word “tempt,” the bad and hard one, in that sense also the statement is universally true. All the people of God have been tempted to sin. Satan no sooner perceives a child of God renewed in heart and cleansed from defilement than he endeavours if he can to mar the work of the Holy Spirit, to ruin the happiness of the believer, and to weaken his usefulness by leading him into sin. The prince of the power of the air, though he cannot be everywhere himself, manages with his host of underlings to be so nearly omnipresent that he tempts us all in turns, and some of us very fiercely. Woe unto the man who is beset by the arch enemy himself, if he is not abiding in fellowship with the Lord Jesus. If the Lord be away from the believer it will go hard with him when Apollyon himself meets him in deadly duel. The fiend is stronger and craftier than we are, and unless the Lord cover our head in the day of battle we shall find his fiery darts too terrible. This, however, is some comfort, that every believer now with God has crossed swords with the devil; he has not suffered one to pass unmolested-“they were tempted.”

Nor is it Satan alone who tempts the saints. The world is always tempting God’s people, and there is no position in life which is free from peril. A man sick of the fever dreams that if he can be placed in another bed he shall feel better: it is but a dream. He turns and tosses to and fro upon his pillow, but as Watts well says,

“It is a poor relief we gain

To shift the place but keep the pain.”

In this mortal life we may change our position, but we shall never get away from temptation. Temptations are with kings upon their thrones, and with peasants at the plough: they come of plenty and they come of poverty, they are born of success and they are born of defeat. Whether our path be rough or smooth we are liable to be tripped up unless a hand unseen shall hold us up. This is true of all who have gone before us-“they were tempted.”

At times providence permits those who are in authority to exercise great power of temptation. So it was with the saints of old: those who were in power accounted them as sheep for the slaughter. The rulers of the synagogues, and then the magistrates, rulers, and emperors set themselves against God and against his Christ, and those who held the reins of government were determined that they would put down the reign of Christ, and utterly destroy his people. Princes and potentates became the willing servitors of Satan, threatening and bribing those who had espoused the faith. So far as open, legalized persecution by the State is concerned, we are happily free from it; but of those who in the martyr days bore high the banner of the cross it may be said with emphasis-“they were tempted.”

But, brethren, if there were no devil and if there were no wicked world it would still be true that the saints are tempted, for every man is tempted when he is “drawn away of his own lust, and enticed”; and there is that within the best of men which might make them into the worst of men if the grace of God did not prevent. O child of God, thou art on one side fair as an angel, and the grace of God gleams upon thee, and makes thee bright as thy transfigured Master: and yet on the other side of thee thou art black as a devil, and if the grace of God were taken from thee thou wouldst as much dishonour the name and cross of Christ as ever did the false apostate who took the thirty pieces of silver. Every good man is two men: he finds an I fighting against his real I; the old man, according to its corruptions and lusts, daily warring with the new-born man within him, which cannot sin, because it is born of God. Now it is true, not only of you and me, but it has been true of all the people of God, that they have had inward conflicts and spiritual contests within themselves of the most painful kind.

The saints were tempted: they were persuaded to sin by Satan, by the world, and by the propensities of their nature, and of all the blood-redeemed host it must be said, “they were tempted.”

Ought not this fact to restrain every man from a self-indulgent despair. Do you know what I mean? I mean this: a man says, “Well, I cannot help it; I am in such a place of temptation that if I give way I may well be excused.” Not so, sir; “they were tempted,” and yet they did not fall, but held fast their integrity. They who today are waving the palm of victory were tempted even as you are, and it is idle for you to say that victory is impossible, seeing they have proved the reverse. Using the same weapons, and helped by the same Spirit, your temptations, which are the same as theirs, will be overcome by you, even as theirs were vanquished by them. Up and fight like men; dream no longer of impossibilities which might excuse you: what has been done by one by the help of God can be done by another.

This leaves us without any excuse for yielding to temptation. I know we commonly think that if we can prove that we are tempted there is not much blame attached to us; but it is not so. It is most true that those who tempt others are guilty of the greater sin; but the sin of those who are tempted, and yield to the temptation, is great enough-great enough to crush them into eternal destruction unless they repent of it. Other people have been tempted as you have been, and yet they have resisted the temptation, and have remained in obedience to God, and therefore if you yield to the evil influence you are without excuse. The multitude of holy men and women who are now before the throne of God are all witnesses against you, for they show what can be done, and what can be done in you too, the grace of God being with you.

This fact that all the saints have been tempted should put an end to all murmuring upon that score. Somebody says, “Mine is a hard lot; I have to follow Christ under great disadvantages. My foes are those of my own household.” Yes, your lot may be hard, but if you could just peep within the pearly gates and see that brilliant company, who are the peers of the realm of heaven, you would see none but those who once were tempted. Dare you demand a better lot than theirs? Remember your Master was tempted, and shall the disciple wish to be above his Master, or the servant above his Lord? Is there to be some easy bye-road to heaven made for you, turfed from end to end, and rolled every morning?

“Must you be carried to the skies

On flowery beds of ease;

While others fought to win the prize,

And sail’d through bloody seas?”

You must not expect it; you must fight if you would reign; you must carry the cross as others carried it, if you are like them, to wear the crown. The temptations which were endured by saints in all ages must for ever prevent our complaining if hooks are baited for us and snares laid for our destruction.

One sweet thought arises here; since the best of saints were tempted this prevents our conceiving that to be tempted is in itself a sin. I have known feeble-minded Christians bemoan themselves and cry, “If I were not exceedingly sinful I should not have these hideous thoughts and dreadful suggestions: if my heart were not full of evil I should not have these blasphemous ideas forced into my poor unwilling brain.” Beloved, it is not so. If your heart were wholly the devil’s he might not care to worry you, and indeed you would not be worried, but would love sin. It is because you are not his, because you are desperately struggling towards holiness and virtue that, therefore, he tempts you. It is no sin to be tempted, the sin is in yielding to temptation. Your Lord was tempted, and yet in him was no sin. Thrice did Satan assail our Lord: three evil courses did he plausibly suggest, but he found nothing in him to work upon; there was no tinder for his sparks to light upon. Be, therefore, greatly comforted you who find evil thoughts rushing through your minds like a torrent. You try to fight against these temptations, and yet they return again and again till your heart is well-nigh broken with them: do not, therefore, condemn yourself for them so long as you abhor them. You are not a castaway because you are tempted, for all the saints in glory were tempted too.

Yea, I think, dear friends, if any of us here present meet with great trials in life, and with very strong temptations to turn back to the world, if God gives us grace to keep towards the New Jerusalem, we may even glory in these trials. We ought to pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” for temptation is not to be sought for but to be looked upon as an evil, seeing that flesh is frail; but when it assumes the form of persecution, and our Lord helps us to endure it, steadfast in the faith, we may even rejoice and leap for joy. If your name is slandered, or you become a loser in wage, or in estate, or in comfort for Christ’s sake, you may greatly rejoice; for now you have fellowship with Jesus and his suffering followers. You are entering the confederacy of the bravest of the brave. Now shall you share in “that lordlier chivalry” which belongs not to mailed knights, but to spirits purified and ennobled by the Holy Ghost. These are the blessed ones who endure temptation, who when they are tried shall receive the crown of life which fadeth not away.

Forget not, then, the universal truth of the statement before us-“They were tempted.”

Secondly, let us consider the unlimited breadth of the statement. “They were tempted”: it does not say how. If one form of temptation had been mentioned, we should have surmised that they did not suffer in other ways, but when the statement is, “they were tempted,” we shall not be wrong in concluding that they were tried in any and every form. Whatever form temptation may take, in some or in all the saints, that temptation has been endured. We may say of Christ’s mystical body as we may say of Christ’s self-“tempted in all points like as we are.”

Brethren, the saints who are in heaven were tempted in all ways. They were tempted by threats, but they were equally tempted by promises. They were put into prison, or they were banished. They were deprived of their goods and of their good names, but they stood fast and firm, and would not yield up Christ, threaten as men might. Then they were tried by bribes: if they would forsake Christ, and turn from the truth, they should be rich and honourable, they should be restored to their families, they should have in some cases every indulgence which the monarch could grant. They were equally deaf to either form of solicitation: they could not be driven, and they could not be drawn: however the net might be spread they could not be taken in it. Standing at the stake, with the flames kindling, and the faggots beginning to burn, the tempting monk has held up the crucifix, and said, “Kiss it, kiss it, and your life shall be given you, and you shall have great honours”; but they put away the idol from them, and would not dishonour God by worshipping any material substance, whatever it might be. Or else the martyr, on his way to die, has been confronted by his wife and children, kneeling down, and praying their father to have pity upon them, if none upon himself, and not to die and leave a widow and fatherless children. But though natural love struggled in their hearts, they overleaped that temptation, for they loved Christ better than the dearest relatives. They have been tempted in subtlest fashion: reason and rhetoric, threat and scorn, bribe and blandishment, have all been used, and used in vain. Against them the enemy has sent forth the arrow which flieth by day, and the pestilence which walketh in darkness, but the Lord has kept their soul alive, and they have glorified his name. Yet very sorely “they were tempted.”

They were tempted both with trials peculiar to themselves, and with trials common to us all. We are apt sometimes to say that this age is not congenial to the strength of grace, and I think there is truth in the remark. We are a set of dwarfs, and it seems hard to grow to the stature of a man in Christ Jesus in the atmosphere which daily surrounds us. We have fallen upon an evil age, in which principle is treated like a football in the streets, and bluster rules the hour; but then the ages in which saints lived long ago had their peculiar temptations too, and they were tempted. Every period since the world began has had its own form of spiritual danger; as weapons of war have changed so have temptations, but the old enmity remains. Not always does the swordsman make his cut at the head, sometimes he stabs at the heart, or at another time he drives at the feet: always aiming to wound, but not always aiming at the same part of the man. One age is dark, and ignorance would chill the heart; another is philosophical, and by its false wisdom would overlay the gospel. The points from which the wind blows may differ, but it always blows against the servants of God who are voyaging to heaven. Say not therefore, O child of God, that others who lived before thee were not tempted as thou art, for they endured temptations which to them were as keen and as powerful as any which have fallen to thy share.

They had also special temptations arising out of their individual constitutions. We have every one of us some weak point. One man is not readily made angry, but he is too cold; another is sensitive, but he is too speedily wrathful. One man is full of love and affection, but he lacks decision; another is resolute, but fails in tenderness. Side by side with the special excellence of any character we usually discover a remarkable weakness, calling for great watchfulness; and of all those who are now in heaven it may be said they were tempted, tempted in some characteristic point, and with some besetting sin. Beloved, if you have to endure the same, mark well that you follow a well-trodden path.

As they had their peculiar temptations so they had the common trials of the most ordinary life. Look at Abraham; not only does he stand alone in the sacrifice of Isaac, but he stands with us in our common afflictions. He is tried in his relatives: his nephew Lot is ungrateful to him and leaves him; tried in his servants, the family is set by the ears by Hagar; tried in his wife, for she complains against him wrongfully; tried in his children, for Ishmael mocks Isaac. His dwelling in tents brought with it quite as much of discomfort and trial as our dwelling in houses. Flocks and herds involve as much care as shops and workrooms. Just such domestic troubles as you and I experience were known to Jacob and David. One man is very like another, and nothing can be more unwise than to set up saintly men who lived ages ago upon a sort of shelf, as if they were unapproachable and inimitable, and belonged to a different race. These heroes are our brothers, their battles are our battles, their victory shall be ours.

Our divine Master himself when he was assailed by the devil in the wilderness, was attacked by those same temptations which have been used against us,-we too have been tempted to use wrong means to supply our pressing needs, to presume upon the providence of God, and to commit idolatry in order to gratify ambition. These are arrows which have rattled on the harness of many soldiers of the cross. Our Lord Jesus, the captain of our salvation, bore the brunt of the battle, and in the matter of temptation he condescended to fight upon the same level with ourselves. “He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin.” So that the text standeth good in all its length and breadth that all those who have won the everlasting victory were tempted, even as we are now.

Thirdly, let us notice the special point of the trial. All these temptations, according to the connection of our text, were aimed at the faith of these holy men. Paul is writing of the victories and sufferings of faith, and therefore we are sure that these temptings were a test and trial of their faith. It is wonderful how God takes care that the victories of faith shall somehow or other be kept in mind. There was a period after the prophets had ceased to prophecy, and before Christ came, in which the Israelitish church had to contend against antichrist and other enemies. In the Apocrypha you have the account of some few of the martyrdoms of those who held fast to God and to his truth. They are not put in canonical Scripture, they neither belong to the Old Testament nor to the New; but here Paul immortalizes them, for the Lord will have them remembered. Those who were stoned and sawn asunder for the truth’s sake, shall not be forgotten. If the details be not given they shall yet be recorded in the gross, on the sacred page. Since that time, dear friends, as if Paul had been writing prophecy rather than history, the people of God have had to pass through sufferings which if I were to repeat them now would break your hearts with grief, because of the horrors of cruelty which human ingenuity has invented. Man has seemed to turn into a devil, and sink below a fiend in the barbarities which he has perpetrated against the servants of God. All this has been aimed at the destruction of faith. The Jews were tempted to worship idols: they must offer incense to a false god; but they would not. In after years Christians must pay homage to the image of the emperor; this they would not do, they would die a thousand deaths sooner than worship a false god. By-and-by they were called upon to deny the deity of Christ, and by tens of thousands they perished sooner than deny that fact. In later years it came to this-that they must submit to superstition; they must assert that they believed in transubstantiation, which they could not believe in, nor thus insult their God. They must submit themselves to men who said they were priests and could forgive their sins, which they felt was a forsaking of the great High Priest to think of doing; and so they died rather than deny the faith. The story of the lives of these heroes is recorded in such half-inspired books as Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs,” and the like. Read it, and let your children read it, till both they and you have learned fidelity to Christ.

The main point of the adversary’s attack was always their faith; therefore let us learn where to set our guard. Let us see to it that we become strong in faith, for that is true strength. Feed your faith well. Know the truth, and know it thoroughly. Read the Scriptures, and understand them. Make sure of the eternal verities. Live much upon the promises of future bliss. A sight of the unfading crown will make you cheerfully forego the withering flowers of earth. The sorrows of the way will grow light as the eternal weight of glory is revealed. You will think less of the commendation or censure of men if your ear already hears the great Master saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

I cannot dwell long on this point, though I had wished to do so, but must now call your attention, in the fourth place, to the intensity of this trial. That I gather from the position of our text, which is very strange. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with sword. It has seemed to commentators to be so singular that to be “tempted” should be as it were sandwiched in between “sawn asunder” and being “slain with the sword,” that they have thought there must be an error in the text. Certainly at the first blush the words look rather out of place, but they are not so. Some learned men have imagined another Greek word to be the correct one, since it involves a very slight alteration, and then the passage would run-“They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were burnt, they were slain with the sword.” I do not see any reason for desiring an alteration; it seems to me to be plain that the original is, “they were tempted,” and what is written must stand. The more we think of it the more we shall see that being tempted is worthy to be put side by side with being sawn asunder, and being slain with the sword; for many of those who are daily tormented with temptations will tell you that it is as painful to bear as any form of death. If you live in a place where you hear little else but blasphemy from morning to night you will soon say, “I think I should prefer being in a prison to this. The cut of a whip or the wound of a sword would scarcely cause more pain than to hear the name of Jesus Christ profaned, and to see every holy and precious thing trampled on. When the ungodly persecute cruelly, as they can do even now without violating the law of man, they can tease and worry your very soul; they can embitter every morsel that you eat, make home to be a torture-chamber, and the work-room an inquisition. They will maliciously track you in all your steps with jests, and jeers, and slanders, and hard speeches, and make you live like Marcus Arethusa, among the bees, which at last stung him to death. Believe me, some of God’s people have found that to be tempted in that sense has been as bad as to be stoned, or to be slain with a sword: in fact, there are times when they have said, “If we could be taken out, and our heads could be smitten off at one stroke with a sword, it would be a happy release from this life-long agony.” Alas for gentle, timid, loving spirits who have to endure such temptation.

I think Paul did well to put this here, not only because of the painfulness of it, but because of the danger of it, for it is certain that under temptation of the more insidious kind more professed Christians have been led away than ever were frightened from the faith by racks, or torments, or fear of death. It is a very sad fact that when Queen Mary died there were persons lying in prison condemned for heresy, who had some of them been great sufferers for the faith, and bold confessors of it, and yet when released they did not abide in their steadfastness. Queen Mary died and Elizabeth ascended the throne, and they obtained their liberty, and, alas, some of them, returning to the comforts of home, became altogether worldly persons, and forsook the faith for which once they would have even dared to die. I have known some unhappy cases of the same kind, where persons have been persecuted by their families for following Christ, and have stood up for him right manfully, so that I have felt great admiration for them for their consistent courage. I have lived to see these very individuals delivered from the yoke of bondage, able to start in life for themselves and to do exactly as they pleased, and, alas, soon after persecution ceased they have grown cold, and have forsaken the ways of God. What a strange creature is man! Lord, what a deceitful heart I have! O that thou wouldst search it and try it, lest it be so that I follow thee in stormy weather, but leave thee when the south wind blows. I think the apostle put in this clause just where we find it because more deadly to the church have been the blandishments of the world’s wealth than all the ragings of her cruelty. Her stakes, her racks, her gibbets have never injured the church so much as her witcheries, her smiles, her fashions, and her patronage. Yet this was borne by saints of old, for “they were tempted.”

Well, says one, you describe these Christian people as having had very hard times of it, for they were tempted, and tempted very severely too. Yes, it is true; but we do not pity one of them. If you saw those gallant men who wear the Victoria cross for valour, and you were told of their perils and sufferings, you would not pity them. They could not have worn the coveted cross given them by their Queen if they had not bravely endured hardship and peril. We do not pity men who have performed daring exploits, nor may we pity those servants of God who suffered the utmost cruelties, but now rest from their labours, and wear their honours in heaven. The question is-Can you aspire to take a place among them? To be a true Christian is no small thing, and before you pretend to be a follower of Jesus count the cost. Are you willing to endure temptation without yielding? Can you scorn the world’s bribe, and defy its threat? Will you set your face like a flint for Christ and holiness? Has grace made you a lion-like man? Have you a strong determination wrought in you by the Holy Ghost? If not, you may run well for a time, but you will turn back, and prove an apostate. I pray God that you may be of that noble stock which the Lord has chosen, and may have in you that noble nature which the Holy Spirit alone can impart, so that, though you shall be tempted, you shall hold out till life’s latest hour, invincible through the grace of God.

I want, in conclusion, to answer the question which naturally arises-Why then does God permit his people to encounter so much temptation? Why is the road to heaven so beset with foes? I answer that there are a great many replies to that question, for the Lord answers many designs at one and the same time.

First, persecution and temptation are a sort of sieve, to sift the church of God. As it is, we have enough hypocrites among us, and if the way to heaven were strewn all along with loaves and fishes, we should have the devil himself going on pilgrimage. There must be these fiery persecutions, that the drossy hypocrites may be purged out. I warrant you there were not many hypocrites in the catacombs of Rome, when to be a Christian involved almost certain death. They crept into their assemblies at the dead of night, and there gathered to sing hymns to the name of Jesus, and few were the traitors’ tongues which joined in the singing. When in our own country any man who had a Bible must die for it, and therefore men hid their Bibles behind the wainscot, or under the floor-boards, few were very eager for Bible-reading. The mocking, the jesting, the jeering which goes on in the world is the sieve constantly moving to shake off the chaff and let the good wheat remain. If we could stop that winnowing fan we should hardly wish to do so. I am sure if I could give some of you new converts a pass from here to heaven, so that nobody should ever laugh at you, and you should never suffer anything for Christ, I would not do it. I feel I should be doing you a serious injury if I could secure you against every trial. Think of a soldier when he enlists. Suppose he should say to the sergeant, “Sergeant, will you give me a guarantee that I shall never fight?” I think the officer would reply, “You had better not enlist.” Even so I say to you, we cannot guarantee you that you shall not be tempted, and if you want such a guarantee as that you are not the kind of man we want: you are not the sort of man that is ever likely to win the crown unfading.

Trial and temptation also discover the reality of conversion. Look at this. Here is a man ridiculed for his religion and for his sobriety. He will not touch a drop of the drink which formerly cast him down to his destruction, and therefore his fellow-workmen laugh at him. All sorts of epithets are hurled at him while he is at work. He goes to a place of worship on the Sunday, and for this he must be jeered at to the last degree. Who is this man that bears this so patiently? Why, the very man who, twelve months ago, could drink as much as any of them, and used to jeer at others; the very man who for twenty years before never entered the house of God. Now, the fact that he can stand against temptation is one of the very best evidences that he is born again and made a new creature in Christ Jesus; and those who see such a change confess that this is the finger of God. What else could have changed him so completely as to make him stand against the very thing which he himself took part in so short a time ago? We may thank God for the temptation, since it helps to evidence the reality of the conversion.

Again, it is by this that men are left without excuse, inasmuch as they refuse the light. I sometimes wonder why ungodly men cannot let Christian people alone. We do not interfere with you. Have we not as much right to do as we like as you have to do what you like? But no; the moment a Christian appears among working men they are all upon him as though they were so many dogs worrying a hare. What does this show but that they know the truth and hate it? They know the light, but would fain quench it, and therefore they put from them the candle which God sends to them. They treat his blessing as if it were a curse. Did you ever read in the Scriptures of God’s thinking better of men than they deserved? No, say you, that cannot be. Yes, but there is a case, a parabolical case, of course, where the Lord is represented as judging men too easily. “Last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, they will reverence my son.” But they did not reverence him, they took the heir and slew him and cast him out of the vineyard.

There are people of God who are naturally so amiable, kind, and good that you feel sure all must love and esteem them, and yet because of their religion even such must be persecuted. The beloved brother cannot escape without sarcasm, the dear sister that was everything before must now be made the subject of jeers, and the husband or the wife however much beloved is not spared. This leaves the ungodly altogether without excuse; it is God’s purpose that it should do so.

Meanwhile, it does saints good; for painful as it is to them, it drives them to prayer. Many a man lives near to God in prayer who would not have done so if he had enjoyed an easier position. His prayerfulness strengthens him; his having to summon divine aid to sustain him under trial makes him grow in faith and in every grace, and he becomes a better Christian.

I believe that persecution is overruled by God for displaying the work of the divine Spirit. Men see in Christian patience, in Christian fortitude, in Christian courage, and in Christian zeal what the Holy Ghost can work even in such poor raw material as our human nature is. God is magnified by the successful struggling of his people out of love to his name.

Moreover, brethren, the life of the church is the life of Christ extended and drawn out in his people. He was “holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners,” yet he “endured such contradiction of sinners against himself,” and if we keep close to Christ we must expect to share his lot. Ours should be the prolonged echoes of the music of Christ’s life, “linked sweetness long drawn out.” Oh that God would help us till Christ himself shall come to keep up the blessed strain!

It seems to me the trials and the temptations of this life are all making us fit for the life to come-building up a character for eternity. You have been in a piano manufactory: did you ever go there for the sake of music? Go into the tuning room, and you will say, “My dear sir, this is a dreadful place to be in; I cannot bear it; I thought you made music here.” They say, “No, we do not produce music here, we make the instruments, and tune them here, and in the process much discord is forthcoming.” Such is the church of God on earth. The Lord makes the instruments down here, and tunes them, and a great deal of discord is easily perceptible, but it is all necessary to prepare us for the everlasting harmonies up yonder. Have you thought what a wonderful creature a man is-a perfect man, made fit to dwell in heaven-he is the last product of divine wisdom, the noblest work of God. There is an angel, he is perfectly holy, but he never knew what sin was, and there is little wonder that he clings to that which has been his nature these many centuries: besides, he is not encumbered by a body of dust, full of passions and appetites, which are the inlets of sin. But here is a being with a soul encumbered with materialism, and it has known sin, known it terribly, and yet it is for ever bound to do right beyond fear of turning aside. How is this to be achieved? Take away its free agency, says one. No, that would spoil it; it would be no longer a man if free agency were destroyed. This being is perfectly free to do whatever he pleases throughout eternity, and yet he will never wish to do a wrong thing again. It is a wonderful work for God to fashion such a creature. He begins to do it in regeneration, and continues the work in sanctification; and all the endurance of trial, and all the patience manifested by the tried ones, work together to prepare a character which can endure the strain of everlasting bliss, and perform the holy service incident thereto. I speak for every Christian man here: I am to stand one day so near to God that between him and me there will be but one person, and that person the Lord Jesus Christ, my Lord and Mediator. I am in Christ to have dominion over all the works of God’s hands, and to be crowned with glory and honour. Angels are to be my servants, and heaven my inheritance. Shall I never grow proud? Shall no self-exaltation creep in? No; the character will be fixed for holiness as though graven in eternal brass, and yet the man will be free. It may be that all the afflictions and temptations which God permits to pass over us here below are forming us for eternal bliss. Thus is the corn ripening for the garner, the fruit mellowing for the basket. Here the graving-tool and the hammer bring out the beauties which shall shine in the courts of the Lord for ever, when of us also the record will be written, “they were tempted.”

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Hebrews 11.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-176, 674, 852.