C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same. And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.”-Luke 6:32-34.

Brethren in Christ, every word which proceeds out of our Master’s lips is precious to us. We make no distinction between his promises and his precepts, but prize every syllable above rubies. A doctrine from him we value beyond the much fine gold, and a command is equally high in our esteem. Whether his teaching be practical or doctrinal, whether it be intended to guide the feet or to encourage the heart, we are equally rejoiced at it.

“All his words are music, though they make us weep;

Infinitely tender, infinitely deep.”

All the discourses of Jesus are the words of God to our soul, whether they convey to us instruction, warning, rebuke, invitation, or consolation. As all his garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, so are all his words most sweet to our taste. We have not so learned Christ as to be pickers and choosers when the fruits of his lips are before us. Yet have I known professors of that sort, who would fain rend the Master’s vesture that they might have only the softest part of it to be a pillow for their idle heads. “That,” they say, “was a gospel sermon, sweet food for our souls,” because it happened to tell of what Christ has done for us; but on the next occasion they cry out, “That was not a gospel sermon; it was legal; it laid a burden upon our shoulders,” because it dared to tell of what Christ has commanded us to do for him. Such men, it seems to me, accept Christ for a servant rather than for a Master. They are glad that he shall do this or that for them-that he shall, in fact, gird himself and wait at their table while they sit down to meat; but if they had learned better they would have chosen Christ for a Master, and would have been willing to gird themselves at his command and wait on their Lord, counting it their honour to be servants of so divine a Prince. Feeling certain that you are not of that order of religious cavillers, but that you will accept anything that comes from Christ, I am glad to have a practical subject this morning. The Sermon on the Mount is as full of light to you as the Transfiguration on the Mount. You are as glad to hear what the Son of God has to say by way of precept as to hear what the Father had to say by way of recognition of his Son. As for this sermon in the plain, it was preceded by miracles, but it is as forcible to you as the signs and wonders could have made it had you seen them all. The sick touched his garment and were restored, and those who were possessed of devils were healed: you rejoice at the miracles of Christ, but you see him to be as mighty in word as in deed, and you adore him for his gracious teachings which remain to us after his miracles have ceased. Here you have certain of the words of Christ, and may his Spirit bless them to your hearts.

Brethren, in the matters of which I shall have to speak this morning in the name of the Lord, taken, as I am quite certain, from his own words, there will be some things strange and unusual which may possibly sound harshly in your ears. Be not astonished, for the gospel is one of those thoughts of God which are not our thoughts: the whole system which Christ has ushered in is foreign to men, being as far above them as the heavens are above the earth. Our Lord’s kingdom is not of this world, else would his servants do many things which now they forbear to do. The conduct of the subjects of that kingdom must not be measured by the manners of others; for they are a people as peculiar as the kingdom to which they belong. We have heard persons say, “I do not see it to be my duty to be so precise; it is not customary.” What have you and I to do with custom? If things are right, but not in fashion, let us start the fashion; and when it is the fashion to do wrong let us be desperately unfashionable. Our Master, evidently, from the verses before us, did not come into the world to teach us to conform to the ways of our fellow men; but he would have us go far beyond the ordinary conduct of our fellows. He asked in his sermon on the mount, “What do ye more than others?” He ordains a standard far above the common standard of mankind when he says again and again, “What thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.” “Oh,” one may say at the close of my sermon, “the preacher demands more of us than can reasonably be expected from flesh and blood.” Your charge is correct; but then the preacher is not addressing himself to you as to flesh and blood, but as to those who are possessed of a far higher principle, namely, the indwelling Spirit of God. True believers walk not after the flesh, nor do they mind the things of it, for they are clothed with the energy of the Spirit of God, and by his power their lives are lifted above the common walks of men. If so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ye are of another nature than the men of this world, and it is to be expected that ye should live after a nobler fashion. “What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness?” We live under a spirit whose law is perfection, and therefore a little fault causes us much self-condemnation. We judge ourselves by a severer rule than we would apply to others; for our privileges and responsibilities are exceptionally great. I allow in other men what I would denounce in myself. I could approve in some men actions which to me also would be lawful but would not be expedient, upon the higher rule of glorifying God in all things. When I have heard of certain deeds of unconverted and unenlighted men I have excused them, saying, “Poor souls, considering who they were, and where they were, their conduct is not so heavily to be blamed”; and yet if I had behaved one half as badly there would have been rebellion and presumption in the deed. For favoured children there is a different law from that which governs common subjects; that which is passed over in strangers is atrocious when it comes from a bosom friend. You are not under law, but under grace; and being under grace, you feel the force of a constraint even holier and higher than mere law could put upon you.

If you are what you profess to be, my brethren, more is expected from you than from any other men beneath the sun, and therefore I shall throw aside all hesitancy in setting before you a supreme standard, and asking of you what we never can get from sinners, nor from men of the world. Know ye not that your Lord has said, “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven”? If I were called to address an ordinary company of men and women upon feats of valour, I might speak with bated breath if I exhorted them to heroism in war; but if I had lived some thousands of years ago, and had been called upon to talk to Spartan warriors, all equipped for battle, men graved and scored with the scars of conflict, I should set no bounds to my exhortations; I would bestir them as a lion arouses the young lions and urges them to the prey. I should tell them that their name and parentage should not be disgraced by the idea of defeat, but that they must expect victory, and seize it as their right. No orator would have spoken to Spartans as to Bœotians: it was their very life and business to fight, and deeds of prowess were therefore to be looked for from them. Is it not so with you, ye followers of the Crucified? Your martyrs and confessors call upon you to lead a life beyond that of common men. I say all this, because to certain of you a sort of apology may seem needful for the strong things that may be said before you at this time. May God’s Holy Spirit come upon you, and make you strong enough for all the strong things, glorifying himself in your weakness.

Our first observation in plunging into our discourse is this. Much that is naturally good may fall far short of Christian character. Do not make the mistake of saying that moral excellence is not good. Some have broadly declared that there is no good thing in an unconverted man; but this is scarcely true. It will generally be so understood that its meaning will be false, and this is a great pity; we must not utter falsehood in order to honour God: there is a great deal of good-good under certain senses and aspects of the term “good”-in many unconverted people. Many who are total strangers to the grace of God yet exhibit sparkling forms of the human virtues in integrity, generosity, kindness, courage self-sacrifice, and patience. I could wish that some who call themselves Christians were in certain respects as good as others whom I know of who have never borne the Christian name. It is always right to speak the truth, and truth obliges me to say as much as this. This ought to make professors very seriously in earnest to judge themselves, lest they should mistake natural amiability and morality for the fruit of the Spirit of God. If the question be whether our character is the offspring of nature or of grace, it will be a sad thing if the verdict should turn out to be that it is the dead child of nature finely dressed, but not the living child of grace divine. We may be decorated with gems which glitter and glow, and yet they may be mere paste, and none of them the work of God’s Spirit. We may be adorned from head to foot with that which is lovely and of good repute, and for all that we may come short of what God requires of us, because inwardly our heart is not in accordance with our outward array. The platter is clean, it could not be cleaner; but while the filth remains within, it cannot be acceptable with God.

Observe the three things mentioned in the text against which there is no law, but of which much is to be spoken in commendation. These acts are good, but they do not come up to Christ’s standard. The first is, “If ye love them which love you.” It is very proper and seemly that kindly feeling should awaken kindly feeling in return; that to those who are friendly to us we should be friendly also. We say “Love begets love,” and it is natural that it should do so. Yet I am sorry to say that, though this is no more than a natural excellence, it is not by any means so common as to be universal. There are children who do not love parents who toiled and slaved for them in their childhood, but who grow up to exhibit a strange hardness of heart to the authors of their existence. I know brothers who do not love the most affectionate and amiable of sisters, and it is grievous to have to add that there are many husbands, brutal husbands, who do not love their wives, who are sacrificing their lives out of love to them and their little ones. I blush to think of the many instances which I could quote, but there is no need; you know it is so.

Thousands have never reached so high as this standard. “If ye love them which love you.” But even if we reach as high as that it is by no means a great attainment: is it? Our Lord says that sinners also love those that love them. Grace is not needed to make a man the loving husband of a tender wife; grace is not needed to make affectionate sons and daughters; we see them all around us. I am sure it does not require grace in the hearts of the bulk of you to make you feel kindly towards those who treat you in a friendly manner; “sinners also love those that love them.” You have all come as far as that, and such feeling is good, the more of it the better; yet it is not up to the mark of Christ’s teaching if it stands alone: it is not that for which the Holy Spirit has begotten us again: it is not that for which Christ has shed his precious blood. Higher virtue exists than that which loves them that love you; here it is-we are to love them that hate us, and despitefully entreat us. Can you love those who will not mention your name without grinding their teeth in envy, or sneering in scorn? Can you love those who have belied your character, who have done the best they can to ruin you, and who will do the same again? Can you feel towards them an earnest desire for their present and eternal welfare? If you could do them good would you delight to do it, and repeat the deed until you had made them too happy to be malicious, too much indebted to continue at enmity? This would be glorious indeed, especially if you could keep clear of all selfish motive in such a contest of love, and should do it all, not because you want to seem a hero or to be something great, but simply because you delight to do good, and feel it to be a pleasure to do that good where it is most needed, namely, where the spirit of enmity has the greatest power.

This is high, and I think I hear some one say, “I cannot attain unto it; I can love those that love me, but loving those that hate me is another business; I shall have to look at the matter two or three times before I attempt it.” I dare say you will, my friend, and hence it is that it needs the work of God himself to make us Christians; it needs Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to work miracles of grace within us ere we become Godlike. Godliness is Godlikeness, and this is not easy to attain.

The next thing, in the verses before us, is grateful return. “If ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye?” It is a very right thing that if persons have served us we should endeavour to repay the benefit. By common consent “one good turn deserves another.” I am sorry to say that though this is a very ordinary sort of virtue it is not the commonest thing in the world, for you may help others if you like, but I have heard that they do not always help you in return. I cannot speak from any painful experience here, for all have been kind to me, and I have had good measure, pressed down and running over, poured into my bosom; but I have met with men who have bitterly bewailed the ingratitude of those whom they had aforetime benefited. They claim to have helped others generously, but when their turn has come to need assistance they have not received it: I do not feel very sure about the aforesaid claim, but that is the way in which they talk. It is certainly a horrible thing that men should be ungrateful; but yet supposing that you. dear hearer, are grateful, and have lately taken special pains to do good to one who aforetime was good to you, what thank have you? You have done what you ought to have done, and no more; you have paid an old debt as every honest man should do, but this does not prove you to be a Christian, for Christianity includes this and rises above it, like an alp above the surrounding plain.

Followers of Jesus are called upon to do good to those who have done them harm. You know the old saying, evil for good is devil-like, evil for evil is beast-like, good for good is man-like, good for evil is God-like. Rise you to that God-like point. If a man has taken the bread out of your mouth, seize the first opportunity to help him to a livelihood. If he has bespattered you, be ready to forgive him, but say not a word against him. Watch for a time, when by great kindness, you may heap coals of fire on his head. “Hard teaching,” says one. I know it is, and harder doing, but it is blessed doing. It is sweet to render good for ill! There is a self-conquest about it which ennobles the soul more than the conquest of an empire: there is a getting near to Christ in such actions that hath about it more of heaven than all beside. That patient, persevering rendering of benefits for injuries, returning of favour for enmity, gives us fellowship with him who, when we were enemies, laid down his life for us. Oh, taste of this sweet grace of forgiveness, and see if it be not good. If you have hitherto never known Christian joy, you shall know it then. It is a high virtue; nevertheless, to this we must come if we are to be the followers of Christ.

Again, you note in the thirty-fourth verse that mention is made of helping others in a neighbourly way with the expectation of their returning the friendly deed. “If ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye?” Temporary help is often rendered in the expectation that, if ever we are in the same need, we shall only need to ask, and receive like aid. I lend you an axe, and you will one day lend me a saw. You borrow my pail, and you will lend me your flatiron: a neighbourly sort of barter, which goes on all around, and ought to go on; but there is nothing very wonderful in it, for, after all, it is a sort of laying by in store, making your neighbour your banker for awhile. I help you and you help me,-a very proper thing to do, and the more of such brotherly and neighbourly co-operation the better, but still there is nothing so very virtuous in it. “What thank have ye, for sinners also lend to sinners to receive as much again.” You as a Christian are to rise to something higher than this-namely, to be ready to help without the expectation of being helped again ready to aid those who, you are certain, could not help you, who are too poor ever to to come to your rescue; ay, and ready to help those who would not help you if they could, who may even return your kindness with words of falsehood and acts of unkindness. Can you rise to this? for this is to be a Christian, this is to be like your heavenly Father, who sendeth his rain upon the just and upon the unjust, who causeth his sun to shine upon the field of the churl as well as upon the garden of the liberal; who gives, and gives, and gives, and receives nothing in return. It is the glory of God that he is too great, too full, too glorious to be dependent upon us; an ever-flowing fountain, pouring forth incalculable torrents of infinite blessing upon the sons of men. After our measure we are to be the same: we are to aspire to the higher happiness of which our Lord said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Here is the dignity, the heavenliness of happiness, not to be receiving from others, but to be freely distributing to them. May God help us to imitate our God in doing good, hoping for nothing again.

Thus, brethren, I think I have shown you that there are certain good things in the world which, nevertheless, do not reach to the standard of Christian virtue. This holds good of all religious actions. You go to the house of God; so do the heathens go to the house of their god. You spend certain times in prayer; so do the Mahommedans. You are very devout; so are Parsees. You are known to be a religious man; so were a great many who have turned out to be rogues. You are a deacon, or other church officer; yes, so were certain bank directors, who were none the more honest for that. But you are a preacher, yes, and so was Judas, who hanged himself, and so went to his own place. Religious acts count for nothing unless there is a true heart at the back of them. These things ought we to have done, but if we leave heart work undone nothing is done. Sinners also perform their religious acts, and besides these, some of them exhibit many external virtues, and yet they manifestly fail to approach the standard of Christian virtue. The road is the same, and men may travel in it apparently in the same direction, and yet they may be journeying with totally different motives: the first may be on the King’s business, the next may be a footpad, and the third an escaped convict running from justice. The same thing may be done by a hundred different men, and apparently done in the selfsame way, and yet only one of them may be doing it in God’s way, and doing it with the sincere motive of honouring and glorifying God: the ninety-nine, though studiously aiming to make the outward action correct, may, nevertheless, fail as to acceptance with God, because their motive and spirit are altogether wrong.

Oh, it shames me when I sit down and look over my life and enquire, “Is this a life a Christian ought to live?” Does not the same question arise in your minds? Do you not feel in many points that even unconverted men have excelled you? Do you not know some persons who are no Christians who are, nevertheless, more patient than you in the endurance of pain? Do you not know unbelievers who are generous to a high degree, and show much of self-sacrifice in helping their poor neighbours? Do you not know men whose devotion to science is greater than your devotion to Christ? Are there not within your knowledge persons who have loved their country better than you have loved your Lord? Do not these thoughts provoke you to something better? They make me blush, and cause my heart to weep. What manner of person ought I to be, when those who do not profess to know the mysteries of everlasting love rise to such courage in battle, such endurance in pushing over seas of ice? What ought I to become when my Lord calls me to be his disciple indeed? Where are the fruits of my discipleship? What am I doing to bring him honour? If even a text like this staggers me, and I say it is a hard lesson, where, where must I be in the sight of God, who sees all my failures?

Secondly, dear friends, I want you to notice that Christian virtue is in many respects extraordinary, and might be called heroic. To illustrate this, I will confine myself to the gospel according to Luke. In the passage that we have been reading we have evidently a form of virtue which is quite out of the ordinary range of men’s thoughts. It concerns love. “Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.” In the point of love, kindness, consideration for men’s needs, and desire to do good, the Christian life is to rise above every other, till it becomes sublime. Heathen moralists recommended kindness, but they did not suggest its being lavished upon enemies. I have been somewhat amused by the caution of Cicero. He says, “Kindness must not be shown to a youth, nor to an old man: not to the aged, because he is likely to die before he can have an occasion to repay you the benefit; and not to the young man, for he is sure to forget it.” Those of us who are middle-aged may value the orator’s generosity as we like, but we may reflect that he only recommends its exercise towards us because we are likely to be good debtors, and pay back what we receive, perhaps, with interest. That gentle laugh which ripples over the congregation is the best refutation of such barefaced selfishness. Our Lord bids us seek no reward from men, and he assures us that then a greater reward will come. We shall by shunning it secure it. We shall find a reward in being unrewarded. See how our Lord puts it: “When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours: lest they also bid thee again, and a recompence be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind: and thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.”

Next, read Luke 9:54, 55, and you will see that the Christian is to rise above human passion in the matter of gentleness. James and John, when Christ was not received by the Samaritan villagers, said, “Wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But Jesus rebuked them and said, “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. And they went to another village.” A Christian should be ready to give way; he should be quiet, peaceable, gentle. If in trying to do good, he wishes to bless certain people, and they refuse to hear him, let him not grow indignant and denounce the offenders, but let him change the scene and carry his message to those who perhaps are hungering for it. He may go round again very shortly to those who repulsed him and find them in a better mind. Be gentle, brother; soft words are hard to answer. They refused you at first, try them again; at any rate, be not provoked, for then they will have conquered you. Christians ought to be the gentlest beings under heaven; they are sent forth as lambs among wolves, and they are called to be harmless as doves. Such meekness will astonish and amaze their adversaries, and crown the religion of Jesus with honour.

In the elevation of his joy the Christian is also to rise above all other men. He may rejoice as they do in the common bounties of providence, but that joy is to hold very secondary rank. Even in his own success as a Christian worker he takes but measured satisfaction. Read Luke 10:20, and see what is the source of his truest delight: “Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather, rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” Is not a believer a wonderful being, since even spiritual power and victory over the devil do not excite him, but he finds his joy in a fact which is quite out of himself and fixed by the unchangeable decree of God?

The Christian is heroic, next, in his fearlessness. Turn to the twelfth chapter, verse 4, and there find Christ saying to his disciples: “Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell.” The genuine Christian stands not in fear of public opinion, and dreads not the frown of those whom God frowns upon.

The true believer is to be willing to bear reproach; ay, and to bear much more than reproach, as saints of God have done time out of mind. So far from flinching from suffering, we are not even to give it a thought as to how we shall speak if we are brought before kings and rulers, for a part of the Christian’s heroism is to lie in his calm self-possession. See how the Lord puts it in the eleventh verse: “When they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say: for the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.” The same man who is so gentle that if men will not listen to him he goes elsewhere, is so steadfast that he cannot be silenced: bold as a lion he stands before his accusers, and he is not troubled as to how he shall put his words together, for he relies upon the indwelling Spirit whom the world cannot receive because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him. Relying upon that Spirit he speaks when the time comes to speak, and it is the right word, as his adversaries are compelled to confess; or he is silent while it is time to be silent, and even in that silence there is an awe which is felt by those round about him. After this fashion is he to play the man.

See how far the true believer is lifted up above the world, as you turn to Luke 12:22, where the Lord bids us cultivate a holy ease of heart as to all temporal things. The rich man finds his wealth in his bursting barns, but the believer finds his treasure in the all-sufficiency of his God. The Saviour says, “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on. The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment. For all these things do the nations of the world seek after: and your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.” See, brethren, the Spirit of God is to lift us up above all fretful cares: we are to feel that the Father will provide for us in this world, and that Jesus will never leave us comfortless. Because he is our Shepherd, and we cannot want, we are to dwell at ease, and lie down in green pastures, like a peaceful, restful flock. Covetousness is not to approach us, for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. The desire to heap together a vast mass of wealth prevents the enjoyment of that which is already gained, and this must not come near an heir of heaven. As to temporal things, we are to be constantly calm, content, grateful, and trustful, relying upon the bounty of our God. This freedom from anxiety constitutes a main part of the Christian character, and is so uncommon as to lift its possessor far above men of the world.

Another point in which Christian heroism is seen is in humility and in delight in service. Turn to the fourteenth chapter and see our Lord’s directions to his disciples not to seek out the highest, but rather the lowest room, for, saith he, “whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased: and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Habitually a Christian man is to have a modest esteem of himself. He is never to be known as one who is forward, self-seeking, self-asserting. Men who are highly esteemed by themselves are seldom justified by the verdict of their fellow-men. No, a Christian man is to be one who is ready to do anything for the good of others, however lowly the service. He will wash the saints′ feet. He will be a door-keeper in the house of the Lord, if he may but serve his brethren and glorify his Master. “Where are these Christian people?” asks a hearer. “Where are these good and humble people? I cannot find them.” Are you not one of them yourself? If you are not, make the confession, and go before God and ask him to set you right, and when you are of a lowly, loving spirit yourself you will find others of a like mind. I must admit that they are not easy to come at, but when you are meek and lowly you will find them, on the principle that like draws to like, and birds of a feather flock together. That is not the Christian spirit which turns even the kingdom of heaven into an arena for ambition, but that man has the mind of Christ who becomes the servant of all for Christ’s sake. That is not the Christian spirit which, under pretence of seeking liberty in the church, craves after lordship and self-display. Those who are under this influence will have no rule in the church of God except their own rule: they are too heady and high-minded to submit themselves to those who are over them in the Lord. The spirit of Christianity is lowly, yielding, easily to be entreated, seeking not itself. This is a chief point in the peculiarity of the peculiar people.

Furthermore, there should be about the Christian a faith which there is not in any other. (See Luke 17:6.) He should have an eye to see that which is invisible, and an arm to lean on that which he cannot feel. He should act upon facts which others may accept as theories but would never dream of risking a shilling upon it. Believers, ye are to be the men who can say to mountains, “Become plains,” and to sycamine trees, “Be ye plucked up by the roots.” Ye are to work miracles, not physical and material, but spiritual and mental, which are not less, but even more marvellous than wonders of healing or resurrection.

The next verse of this seventeenth chapter shows us that Christians are to be men of service. They are not to think that they came into the world to sit at a banquet, but they are to wait on their Master while he sits at the table. Too many appear to consider that the services of the sanctuary are intended merely to feed them: they never look upon the house of God as a barracks for soldiers, or a place where workmen come together to sharpen their tools; they only regard it as a sacred buttery, a spiritual larder, or a heavenly refectory, where much is to be received and little or nothing returned. O brothers and sisters, we must get out of the cramping influence of the spirit which makes even religion a selfish provision for ourselves, and we must scorn that skulking away from trouble and fatigue which creeps over men of growing years and increasing wealth. We are to serve, not to recline at our ease. What are we at that we are so anxious to rest ourselves and benefit ourselves? The Lord Jesus Christ would not have us always be asking. “How can I be happy? How can I obtain spiritual enjoyment?” Servants are not supposed to spend their time in doing their own pleasure and seeking their own profit. A man-servant whose whole time was taken up with watching his own health would be of small value to his employer. Even so we have something else to do beyond watching over our own inward feelings. To snatch a brand from the burning is better than to warm your own hands; to feed a hungry soul with the bread of heaven is a far higher deed than to eat the fat and drink the sweet yourself. There is more joy in plunging your arm up to the elbow in the mire to find a jewel for Christ than in washing one’s idle hands with the scented soap of respectable propriety. Oh, to get clean away from all idea of self-seeking in religion. We are first of all saved by grace like drowning mariners snatched from the deep, but afterwards we are taught to man the life-boat ourselves for the rescue of others from destruction. Christianity finds me a soldier wounded in battle, and it heals my wounds, but it does far more than that: it girds me with armour, it gives me a sword, it teaches me to fight, and it makes a hero of me if I yield myself to its full power. God grant it may do this for every one of us.

I will now close with the reflection that the Christian religion supplies due nourishment for the most heroic life. Bear with me while I show you this in a few sentences. First, the economy of grace requires it. You and I must have been chosen to lead a life higher than that of ordinary men, or else why all this noise and stir at all? We see heaven and earth and hell in motion; God vacates his throne and becomes a man; immortality puts on flesh and blood and dies; the Holy Ghost comes to dwell in these bodies of clay, while angels look on and wonder; surely here is the groundwork and argument of something supremely good. See you that angel bright and sparkling like a flame of fire, what trouble did it cost the Creator to make him? A thought sufficed to do it; God willed it, and there stood the helmed cherubim and sworded seraphim before him in all their glittering ranks. What will that creature be, which has been the subject of eternal purposes, which has cost the Father the heart-pang of giving up his only Son, cost the Son a bloody sweat, cost the Spirit the exercise of his omnipotence? Such a creature you and I shall yet become. We are on the road to it. Great things ought to come of us if that is what we are, and are growing to. May this thought nourish us to the highest life.

Think again, brethren, we are helped to holy heroism by the reward which it brings: for our blessed Master, though he bids us spurn the thought of reward on earth, yet tells us that there is a reward in the thing itself. Just follow my text in the thirty-fifth verse: “Love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great.” What reward? Why, the reward of having done good. This is quite enough. If you go to your brother who has treated you so badly, and say, “Brother, we are going to be friends,” and you manage to heal all wounds, you will not want any other reward. You will sleep sweetly at night, and the music that awakes you in the morning will be sweet as the bells of heaven. Suppose you have an enemy, and persistently do him all the good you can, you will not wish to be paid for it; it is such a grand thing to have acted like a Christian that you will be blessed in the deed. I believe that martyrs at the stake when they stood and burned for Christ felt in every pang a thousand times rewarded by possessing the grace which enabled them to endure to the end. They felt, “We are doing the right thing, we are testifying to the truth of our beloved Lord,” and if they had possessed a thousand lives they would cheerfully have laid all down for Jesus. Therefore, do not be so mercenary as to expect to be paid in dirty bronze and tarnished silver, but ask to find your recompense in the spirit by which you are led to do good, and in the smile of your heavenly Father.

Then, mark you this to fire your ambition: you shall be children of the Highest. Those who can rise into the heroic life shall be as God. The gentle, patient, peaceable, kind, loving, forgiving, affectionate, these shall be known to be the sons of God; and is this nothing? Oh, if there is a grain of nobility in your natures you will make this the highest ambition of your lives, to be like God. What is more than that?

We are expected to be like God because we are his children. “Ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.” We expect to see something of the father in the child. If we are children of God we ought to do what others never think of.

If you are the children of God remember what a Brother you have, and what an example he has set you. He disdained to live unto himself, for he left the throne of glory to come down to Bethlehem’s manger, to a carpenter’s shop, and to a servant’s life. The other night I heard read at family prayer the story of our Lord at the supper table: Jesus knowing that he came from God, and went to God, took a towel and girded himself and began to wash his disciples’ feet. Ah, when I thought of him whom all heaven worships, our blessed, blessed Master, actually coming round with a basin to wash the disciples’ feet, I felt my eyes fill with tears, and I sympathised with Peter when he cried, “Dost thou wash my feet?” It seemed a stoop too great for our Lord and King thus to act a menial’s part. Is there anything which can seem too mean for you and me after beholding such condescension? If that sight touch you not, let me remind you of a further scene: he went into Gethsemane, and there he knelt and prayed for you and me until he was covered with a gory sweat, and great drops of blood followed each other to the ground. Is there any pain that we would not face, is there any reproach we could not bear after this for his dear sake? Does not that rouse you? Will you after this be proud and claim honour of your brethren, and grow angry if it be refused? Come with me once again, for he goes to the cross, and there he hangs. It is your Lord, remember! See, the iron passes through his hand: it is your Lord who is thus maimed! The nails tear through his feet: the feet of your Lord! He wears a diadem as monarch, but it is a coronet of thorns: it is your Lord who is thus crowned! He wears crimson, too; but it is his own blood; and he is your own Lord! He has not a rag else, for they have stripped him; yes, stripped and scourged your Lord! And they are hissing at him, jesting at his prayers, and scoffing at his cries:-all this at your Lord! And what of you? The other day you were ashamed to own that you were his disciple. Are you not disgusted at such cowardice? You were silent the other day when sinners were blaspheming him: you were niggardly when his poor people needed help; you refused to give when his church and his cause knocked at your door. You would not forgive a fellow Christian the other day, and you parted company with one who had been your friend for years, and all for a hot word; and yet you call yourself a Christian! Yes, and I, too, am a Christian, and have my own private cause for self-humiliation; and that is our Master bleeding there. How can we bear to look him in the face? What sorry disciples we are! O blessed Master, let thy blood drop on us till thou hast blotted out these many faults of ours and made us like thyself. Amen and amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Luke 6:12-49.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-909, 262, 263.

TRUTHFULNESS

A Sermon

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“O Lord, are not thine eyes upon the truth?”-Jeremiah 5:3.

The allusion is not to doctrinal truth, or truth in the abstract, but to practical truth as it should exist in the hearts and lives of men. It might be read “O Lord, are not thine eyes upon truthfulness?” or “upon faithfulness?” The Lord bade them produce a single truthful man in all Jerusalem, and Jeremiah answers that if truth were to be found the Lord himself best knew where it was, for his eyes were ever upon it.

In this chapter you must have noticed when I was reading it that we have a fearful description of the condition of things in the days of the prophet Jeremiah. We have also a most melancholy set of pictures of untruthful men, which are drawn to the life, with a grimly graphic touch which strangely reminds me of the series of Hogarth’s sketches known as “the Rake’s Progress.” They hold the mirror up not only to the life, but to the heart of the men of the times. Jerusalem was rotten at the core: the nation was deceitful through and through. In the twenty-seventh verse we read, “As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit.” They had schemes without number, plots without end, and tricks without limit, moving about in their minds like birds herded together in a little cage. What worse could be said? When a heart is untruthful, and crooked, when uprightness has gone from it, then is it prepared to be the seed-plot of every evil thing. Any crime is possible to a liar. He who is rotten with falsehood will rend at the touch of temptation. A man of bold, outspoken vice, is far more hopeful than a sly, cunning hypocrite.

These untruthful people began with acting untruthfully towards their fellow-men. God challenges them to run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem and see whether they could find a man that executed judgment and sought the truth. He says that they were not even commonly honest towards those persons whose necessities generally plead for favour. “They judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, and the right of the needy do they not judge.” They were not upright in cases where they should have been charitable, but they cheated even the widow and the orphan: when a man has once become a rogue all will be fish that comes to his net, and he will as soon rob the fatherless as anybody else. Greed destroys common humanity. Cheating of men is a very common form of deceit, both in the open puffery of trade and the more quiet deceptions of daily life; traders frequently think it useless to tell the honest truth to one another, and so society becomes a network of craft and falsehood. It is a dreadful thing when men are not to be trusted, when their word is but wind, when without its being to their advantage they would as soon lie as not.

God save us from that form of untruthfulness, since it leads on to something worse: for in the second verse it is said that these people were faithless even to their oaths. “They say ‘Jehovah liveth,’ but surely they swear falsely.” They dared to take that most sacred of all names upon their lips, and call God to witness to a lie. He who has gone as far as falsehood will not always stop at perjury. That which makes our blood run cold to think of may yet be perpetrated by us if we take the first steps in deceit. This being so-that they could perjure themselves-it is little wonderful that they were not faithful to their marriage vows. I need not read the strong expression in which the prophet sets forth the fornication and adultery which abounded in his day, when they did not hesitate to bring grief into their houses and the utmost sorrow and misery to their wives by indulging their passions; for he that is traitorous to God will soon be treacherous to all domestic ties. What can we expect when a man is irreligious but that he will soon be impure, if he is not that already? I have marked it often, that when men who profess to be religious decline from the ways of God it often happens that, if you track them home-not to the home of their wife and children-but to their favourite haunts, you will discover a corruption of life of which the external observer little dreamed. The judgment day alone will reveal how many hearths have been desolated, how many hearts have been broken by the cruel unfaithfulness of husbands who have crushed those whom they vowed to cherish. This is one of the meanest forms of falsehood.

False to their marriage ties as well as to everything else, it is small wonder that they were false to the plain teachings of providence, for it is written that “they have belied the Lord and said, It is not he.” When God had been chastening they said, “It is not God. It is bad luck: it is fate: time and chance happen unto all.” They would not see the hand of God. Do you wonder that when men have corrupt and crooked hearts they should not be able to see God’s plain and truthful proceedings, or that when they do see them they deny them? “There is no God,” say they; “or if there be a God, he does not meddle with the things of daily life.” “It is cant and hypocrisy,” they say, “to talk about our troubles coming from God; he does not interfere with human affairs. The laws of matter, the principles of nature-these govern all things. God has set the world going like a clock, and left it to its own wheels and pendulum; or, better still, he has wound it up like a watch, and put it under his pillow, and has gone to sleep. How doth God know? And is there knowledge in the Most High?” These men were liars, I say, and all who talk in their fashion are liars too. These wretches hesitated not to lie against the eternal light of that thrice blessed providence which shines in all the lives of men,-ay, shines like the daylight to men who are commonly honest and are willing to see. It needs no great learning to perceive the presence of God all around us: the greatest need is an upright, candid mind.

This being so, these men cast off God himself; the first step is to put him out of the field of action, and the next is to have done with him altogether, and to substitute other gods. According to the nineteenth verse, these people had forsaken God and served strange gods. Superstition follows on the heels of unbelief, for bad men are frequently amongst the most ardent votaries of superstition. Cast off a pure God, and you want a god of some sort, and so every man to his liking manufactures a god for himself. The earthy mind of the heathen makes a god of mud. The man whose soul is bound up in his bags makes the golden calf his deity. The dreamy thinker evolves an airy nothing out of his own imaginings. The free-liver invents a God who has no justice, and consequently takes no vengeance upon sin. Man looks for God, and thinks he sees him when he sees himself in a glass. By nature every man is his own deity, he worships his own image. It is only the man that is pure in heart that can see God, for what the man is that will his god be to him: but these men cast off God and set up superstitious beliefs of their own, and hence false gods were their choice.

And, worst of all, if worse could possibly be, when a man once gives himself up to a deceitful heart he gets to be a destroyer of others. Notice that twenty-sixth verse. “They lay wait, as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men.” Not content with being lost themselves, they became the servants of Satan to destroy others. Oh, it is a lamentable thing to think that there are persons whose lips drop moral plagues among youth whenever they speak; whose conduct and example are such that they might well be put in an everlasting quarantine, and shut away like lepers, especially from youth, lest they should infect the rising race. I hope that I do not speak to anyone here who is a man-catcher-who sets traps to catch men, aiming to pervert, to corrupt, to mislead, to beguile. Such fiends in human form have surely reached the last stage of corruption when they not only sin themselves, but are the creators of sin in others.

Look well at this picture of the progress of the deceitful. They begin with being dishonest to their fellow-men, and at last it comes to this-that they become Satan’s commission agents, trappers for the devil, fowlers who ensnare men as bird-catchers take the winged fowl.

This was the state of affairs in Jeremiah’s time. We have not, I trust, quite such a condition of things among us to-day, as a plague universally prevalent, but we have much of the disease of deceit in all quarters, high and low, and to what a head it may come time alone can show.

The appeal of Jeremiah was that of a holy man to God. He says, in effect, “O Lord, are not thine eyes such that thou canst defect what is truth and what is deceit? Thou spiest out the truth. That which is brought to thee as worship, thou canst tell whether it be sincere or not. Thou canst see the pretender’s face through his mask, and read his heart through his outward profession. Thine eyes spy out the facts which lie beneath the covering of appearances. Thou canst discern between the righteous and the wicked.” Yes, God is the detecter of shams and counterfeits, and by his infallible judgment the precious shall be severed from the vile; “for the Lord is a God of judgment, and by him actions are weighed.”

“Are not thy eyes upon the truth?” That is, “Dost thou not discover truthfulness wherever it exists?” The prophet had bidden them go through the streets and search for an honest man; but he in effect cries, “Lord, thou knowest where he is if there be one yet remaining.” God has not to search with a lantern to find a truthful man, for “the Lord knoweth them that are his.” Lot in Sodom is like a lone bird on the mountains, but the Lord perceived him. The truthful ones are often hidden from mankind, but the eyes of God are steadfastly fixed upon them, as it is written, “The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry.” The Lord can detect imposture, but he can also discover truthfulness, and we may be sure he will do it.

The prophet also means that God approved of that which he discovered. “Are not thine eyes upon the truth?” Thou wilt not look upon hypocrisy; it is thine abhorrence, and thou wilt not turn thine eyes that way. Thine eyes burn like fire to consume those that would impose upon thee; but as for those that are sincere of heart, thou dost love them, and watch over to do them good. They are never out of thy sight. They leave not thy presence; they bask in thy smile. O Lord, are not thy eyes upon truthfulness, to approve of it, to help it, to defend it, to vindicate it even to the last?

Let this which has gone before stand for a preface; and now let us come to the practical instructions which our text should yield us.

I think that there are four lessons, and the first is the utter folly of all pretence.

Hypocrisy is useless altogether, for God sees through it. You may by great cleverness delude your fellow-men for a while, though you will find it a poor and difficult business; but you can never deceive God. It is not that you may deceive the Lord for a little time, and then afterwards be discovered No; you cannot mislead him, even for an instant. He reads us as we read a book. He sees through us as we see through a sheet of clear glass. The instantaneous imagination which flits across the mind like a stray bird, leaving nor track nor trace, God observes it, and knows it altogether. To pretend to be other than we are before God is a hideous madness. Surely, Satan himself must laugh in his sleeve at those who come before God with words of piety on their lips when there is no devotion in their hearts: it is the comedy of a tragic blasphemy. It is utterly useless. It is a waste of time and energy. It were infinitely better that you were doing something else than dress and paint and put on ornaments to go before God who sees you in your spiritual death to be nothing but naked corruption. May God grant that we may never play the fool in this way; for playing the fool it is, to hope to appear otherwise before him than what we really are deep down in our hearts.

Nor is it only useless: it is injurious. For any man to hope that he can stand better with God by speaking more softly than his heart would suggest, or by using words which his soul does not really enter into, is to be doing the reverse of what he thinks to do. You spoil your sacrifice if there be any tincture of the odious gall of hypocrisy about it. Oh, if the Pharisee did but know that when he made broad the borders of his garments, and put on his phylactery, and sounded a trumpet before him in the streets, he was not pleasing God, but was actually provoking him, surely he would have sense enough to mend his ways. Everything about you and me that is unreal God hates, and hates it more in his own people than anywhere else. If in prayer we use expressions that really do not come from our hearts, or if in talking to our fellow-men we stick feathers in our caps to be a little taller and finer than we really are, it is abhorrent in the sight of God. He would sooner have us come before him in all the nakedness and shame of our first parents, and stand there and confess our crime, than dress ourselves out in the fig-leaves of formality and hypocrisy. Pretence is injurious to men as well as useless: it is not only an empty wind, but it is as the breath of pestilence.

Moreover, pretence is deadening, for he that begins with tampering with truth will, as I have already shown you, go on from bad to worse. He may say at first, “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?” and yet, like a dog, he will go into all manner of filthiness before he has done. Let a man once begin to tamper with his conscience, to play tricks with words, and especially to trifle with the solemnities of religion, and there is no knowing what he will be. Oh, I charge my tongue, as I charge yours, never to use a word which is not true when speaking with God or for God, for falsehood before the Judge of all the earth is blasphemy. When we think of him in our secret souls we must be careful not to allow a false idea, for it is dreadful even to think untruth before God. Falsehood in common life must not be tolerated for a moment. Once begin to sail by the wind of policy and trickery and you must tack, and then tack again and again; and as surely as you are alive, you will yet have to tack again; but if you have the motive force of truth within you, as a steamboat has its own engine, then you can go straight in the teeth of wind and tempest. The man of truth is the true man. That is the man to honour God in life and death. That is the man to fear nothing and win everything. He is the man whom the Lord accepts, who feels that if the heavens fall it is not for him to prop them with a lie if that could make them stand. He is the man who is resolved to be before God and before man just what he is, wearing his heart upon his sleeve, and throwing back every shutter of his soul that the divine eye may inspect all! “Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, in whose spirit there is no guile:” this freedom from guile is a main ingredient of the blessedness. The conscience must be clear and honest, or it will gather dust and defilement every day, and the man will wax worse and worse.

And there is this to be added,-that falsehood and pretence before God are damnable. I cannot use a less forcible word than that. Pretence condemns men fatally, and finally if it be continued in. I have noticed in reference to conversions one noteworthy fact. I would not wish to assert as a general rule that which happens to be the result of my personal observation; but be the rule what it may, all the world over, this one thing is a statement of my own experience,-I have constantly seen almost all sorts of people converted-great blasphemers, pleasure-seekers, thieves, drunkards, unchaste persons, and hardened reprobates, but rarely have I seen a man converted who has been a thorough-paced liar. I might have been still more correct if I had said never to my knowledge have I seen a wily, crafty man of cunning become a disciple of Jesus. The heart which is crammed with craft and treachery seems as if it had passed out of the reach of grace. You remember that the ground which brought forth fruit when the sower went forth to sow is called “honest and good ground.” There was nothing good in it spiritually, but it was honest, true, sincere, and so far “good.” Give me plain-spokenness and I have hope of a man. If a fellow can look you straight in the face you can deal with him. An open-hearted sailor, honest as the noonday sun, puts on no imitation of religion, but is evidently a bad fellow, a very bad fellow, and yet, when the grace of God enables him to listen to the gospel, how he sucks it in, and with what heartiness he responds to it. How very different it is with that clever gentleman who always attends a place of worship, and knows how to raise quibbles, and to answer texts of Scripture, and to blunt the edge of any truth that touches his conscience! You know him, do you not? He is a great sorrow to me. What a mischief-maker he is in all sorts of circles, and what a fetcher and carrier of religious gossip! He slips in and out of gospel services like a dog in a fair, and nothing ever comes of his running about. He is not good enough to be good to himself. How can you get at him? He knows all you can tell him, and yet knows nothing in truth. He is harder to handle than an eel, for he is all twists and turns. The man is shut up in armour, he is cased all over with his lying self-deceitfulness, and the arrows of truth are blunted when they touch his harness. May none of you ever grow into the like of him.

I charge you, above all things, be true. If Baal be God, serve him, but say so, and do it in broad daylight. If the devil be your master, do not disown him; but do not be one of those mean sneaks who will serve God on Sundays, and the devil when it pays them better. Be not one who will profess to be a Christian to be respectable, and under the cover of that will indulge in the most disreputable vices. Such a man, though never out of the reach of the infinite grace of God-I never meant to say that-is usually the kind of man that the election of God does not light upon, and that the grace of God seldom visits. Amidst a very large and wide observation I have noticed the fact which I have stated, and, therefore, I bid all pretenders look to themselves lest their bands be made strong, and their death-irons be riveted on their wrists before they know of it. I would say to young persons beginning life, whatever errors you fall into, whatever mistakes you make, ay, and into whatever transgressions you may wander, be true. Wear no cloak of hypocrisy. Profess not to be what you are not; never dare to jeopardize your soul by a falsehood. Remember, no way to hell is surer than the way of deceit, for it is written, “All liars shall have their portion in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.” He that loveth and maketh a lie shall be cast away from the presence of God and from the glory of his power.

May the Holy Spirit of truth bless this warning as to the folly of making pretences and forging falsehoods before God.

Our second lesson is, the great value of truthfulness. “O Lord, are not thine eyes upon truthfulness?”

The great value of it is this-that it alone is regarded by God in matters of religion: his eyes are upon that which is truthful about us, and all the rest is not worthy of his notice. For instance, suppose I say “I repent.” The question is,-Do I really and from my heart sorrow for sin? Is there a change in my mind with regard to sin, so that what I once loved I now detest? Is it so?-for only that part of our repentance which is of the heart is accepted before God. Tears, sighs, groans-these are mere wind and water, and go for nothing if the heart be not broken. The same holds good in reference to faith. A man may say, “I believe,” as thousands say their creed,-“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” and so on. Ah, but do you trust in God with your whole heart? Are you truly and sincerely believing in God and God’s word, and God’s Son, and God’s gospel?-for, if not, all your professed faith is useless. True faith the Lord accepts and smiles upon, but it is a real thing, and dwells deeper down than the lips and the throat. As to love to Christ, you know how very easy it is to sing sweet hymns about love to Jesus, and yet how few are living so as to prove their attachment to the Redeemer. We say-

“O love divine, how sweet thou art!

When shall I find my willing heart

All taken up by thee?”

and so on. But are we knit to Jesus? Is it heart-work? Does our very soul cleave to Jesus? Do we follow after him as the thirsty hart after the water-brook, resolved to find him, and to abide by him, or to die in the attempt? Lip-love is little better than hate in the esteem of Christ. Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Christ in thy very soul to-night?-for, if thou dost not, all talk about love is but a mockery of his name. Simon, son of Jonas, hast thou real practical love to Jesus? Thou canst sing, Simon; but canst thou, wilt thou feed thy Master’s sheep, and so give evidence of thy love? Simon, son of Jonas, thou art very eager and fervent, but dost thou so intensely love Jesus as to care for his little ones and feed his lambs? This shall be the test of thy love. This is coming to the point.

The same truth bears upon all the ordinances of religion. When we professed to worship God, how much praise was there in the song? As much as the heart made. There was no true praise of God in the noise of that set of pipes and pedals and keys and stops. I judge not those who find these noises helpful to devotion, but assuredly the sounds themselves are no part of divine worship. God does not accept praise from inanimate machinery. What cares he about what noise the air makes when it passes through pipes and valves? Even our singing is no better: it is but the sound of air as it is passing through the throat. What is there in that? No, the Lord only regards heart-singing; and the song of the soul is the amount and quantity of our song that was accepted of the Lord.

As to prayer. “A large prayer meeting.” Yes, but the largeness of the number of attendants is not always a gauge of the quantity and power of prayer. The quantity of heart in the prayer decides its quality. The same is it with baptism and with the Lord’s Supper. The test is, How far is this done as unto the Lord? How far does the soul enter into the meaning of the outward symbols, and get at God in the use of them. A plunge in this baptistery is no better than a bath you may take in your own home; and the bread and wine on yonder table are no better than what you shall eat to-morrow at your own table, unless your heart comes to the baptism, rejoicing in being buried with Christ, and unless your heart comes to the table that you may feast upon his flesh and drink his blood. Let this stand, therefore, as the great test and gauge of all religion. We have no lack of external religion in these days. There, fill a cauldron with it! Set the great pot upon the fire! It goes in steam; see how it flies away! And what is left? Ah, so little that you may search with a microscope to discover any solid residuum. Those few grains at the bottom of the pot are, however, all that is real, and all that will remain in the day of testing. Such is the stern fact, that God values the truthfulness and the sincerity of our actions, the heartiness and the depth of them; and he does not regard what we do unless truth appears in it in all its forms.

This is equally true of all your private worship. That daily reading of the chapter is a very excellent thing; but do you read with your soul as well as with your eyes? That morning prayer and that evening prayer, those few minutes snatched in the middle of the day-these are good. I will not wish you to alter the regularity of your devotion, but still it may all be clockwork, godliness with no life in it. Oh, for one single groan from the heart! It may have more prayer in it than an army of collects and liturgies, though there may be prayer there too if the heart uses them before the living God with sincerity.

The value of truthfulness will be seen, because even in its lowest development God regards it. I think I might call that its lowest development which is spoken of in the first verse of the chapter, “Go and see if there be any that seeketh truthfulness”-a man who feels that he is not all he wants to be, but yet he wishes to be truthful. The man who is here sought for is conscious of many faults; ay, and he feels that sometimes he is not perfectly candid and transparent, and therefore he hates himself, and watches the deceitful tendencies of his heart, and zealously seeks to be true. Oh, my dear friend, if you really are on the right tack, if you are trying to be truthful, if you are labouring to be quite honest before God, if you can say “I want genuine conversion, and real faith in Christ; I cannot put up with shams and hollow professions,” then God accepts even that seeking after truth which is in your soul. May he keep you to that search by his divine Spirit till you come out into the clear, noonday light of the blessed truth as it is in Jesus.

It is evident that truth is regarded by God with acceptance and with pleasure wherever he sees it in the soul. My friend, you cannot pray in public as you would dearly like to do, but the few words you ever utter are hot from your heart. You cannot pray long, even in private, but your groan is sincere. When in secret you sigh, “Oh, that!” and “Ah!” and “Would that!” you mean those ejaculations. There is no sham in such cries of the heart. Your very soul goes in them, and God is pleased with them. I would sooner have a little diamond than a block of granite; and the Lord would sooner have the least morsel of truthfulness than the hugest mass of pretentious, ostentatious religion.

How far, dear friend, are you anxious to be right with God? Will you confess that you have sinned, and pray to have your sin blotted out by the Lord who sees it all? How far do you wish that God should know all about you? How far are you glad that there is a God? How far are you anxious to get into the very light of God through Jesus Christ? for, just so far as you truthfully wish to be like the true and living God, so far are you acceptable with the Most High. Oh, my dear brother, you may have only one talent, you may be very poor and very obscure, and to the church of God you may be almost unknown; but if your soul goes up and down these streets crying to God to bless your fellow-men, if you speak only what you feel, and if you walk before the Lord with tenderness and brokenness of spirit, striving always to be true, he accepts and blesses you. If you are resting on Jesus Christ alone, and on his precious blood, though your faith is feeble, it is true, and God will bless you and save you, and you shall be his in the day when he makes up his jewels.

Thirdly, and very briefly, let us learn the influence of truthful men. The influence of really truthful men is too wonderful to be overlooked.

First, it is so great with God that one of them can save a city from destruction. Jerusalem was full of every evil, and God said, “Shall I not punish such a people as this?” and yet he said, “If there be any that executeth judgment and seeketh truth, I will pardon it.” He will save a city for the sake of one man. A parallel case is that in which the Lord was ready to pardon Sodom if but ten righteous had been found there. No doubt many a state has been preserved by the godly remnant in it, whom the majority would have exterminated had it been in their power. Hence the value of good men in bad localities. When you, my dear friend, go into a hamlet or village where there is no religion, do not be so very sorry at your position, for God may have great ends to be served by you. You are a lump of salt, and we do not want to keep the salt locked up by itself in the store-room. Where should the salt be put? Why, where the corruption is likely to come, to preserve what is good, and to keep away that which is evil. I do believe that every now and then the Lord puts his hand into the salt-box of the Tabernacle and takes away some that do not wish to go; but he says, “You must go for the benefit of mankind. I have need of salt over there and over there.” In the happy church of which you are a member you would like always to remain; but you must go, or else be useless: which is your own choice? When the gospel chariot needs horses, will you for ever stand in the stall? Are the oxen to-day, as in the days of Job, to be ploughing, and the asses to be feeding beside them for ever? Let us not complain of being used, or of being placed where we can be used. All light must not be stored up in the sun; scatter it over earth’s poor lands that need it, lest all the trees of the field die in perpetual night Surely you would not have all waters in the sea; let them be exhaled, and let them return in silvery drops upon the soil to fertilize it. It must be so: God blesses us to make us blessings. One good man can benefit a whole district. Ask of God that you may be so sincere, so truthful, that he may bless those round about you for your sake.

This influence is such that it never was attributed to any man on account of his riches. God never saved a city because there was a millionaire in it: it may be he has done the reverse. I never heard of any city being saved because there was a learned man in it, or an eloquent man in it, or because there was some great architect in it. No, no, no. The Lord is no respecter of persons, and he seeth not as man seeth. Sincerity before God is approved-true reliance upon Christ the Lord accepts: and for this he blesses us, and others through us.

And, mark you one other thing, dear friend. If you are upright before God, and you should happen to fall among people that despise you and reject you, it is a sad thing to have to say, but it is true, and a proof of the great influence of truthful men,-your word, when you speak for God, shall be like fire, and those round about you shall be wood, and it shall devour them. If you are not a savour of life to life to men, you will be a savour of death to death to them. And, mark this, if the Christian church sends missionaries, as I trust it yet may be aroused to do, in such numbers as it ought to send them, and if they be rejected we are not to conclude that therefore they have had no influence whatever; but, solemn and dreadful as it is, it is a fact that the preaching of the gospel shall be a testimony against the nations, and this shall fulfil the eternal purpose of the Lord. This all proves how strong is the influence of a truthful man. He is never a “chip in the porridge”: there is a flavour in him. He that is sincerely right towards God is an efficient operating cause to which effects will be given; he cannot be a mere name or nullity, he must produce a result by his influence. He has force, and that force will, according to those he comes in contact with, turn to blessing, or else involve dread responsibility on those who resist it. Go, I pray you, then, dear friends, and live with God, and then be not afraid to live with men. Whoever they may be, God will make you to have power over them, and power with himself on their behalf.

To close. Let me urge upon you, in the fourth place, the last lesson, namely-the necessity and the means of our being true and sincere before him whose eyes behold truthfulness. My first argument is this, these times require it. This is an age of tricks and policies. Oh, the puffs-the lying puffs-you meet with everywhere in books and broadsides innumerable. Everybody who goes abroad has need to carry a discount table with him to arrive at the truth of statements that are made. Be you, therefore, the more true. At the present moment there is going through this city of ours a lying influence of the worst kind on the behalf of Popery. I do not refer to the honest Catholic priest who comes bravely before us in his true colours, but I refer to those who should be Protestant ministers, who are beguiling the people and leading them gradually away from the doctrines of the Reformation and the gospel of Christ. The land swarms with Jesuistical churchmen, who look towards Canterbury but row towards Rome. Everywhere in society you meet with this disguised influence. Are there not hospitals not far from here that are simply houses for proselytizing? Are there not sisterhoods which are more for the making of Romanists than they are for the healing of the sick? Why, we are surrounded with the givers of bribes of all kinds, whose one design is to buy the people from the gospel. Is there a house but what these sisters and brothers will enter if they possibly can, with gifts and charities so called, trying to buy the souls of the poor that they may plunge them into the darkness which surrounds themselves? The net is coming closer to us than ever, and we cannot help feeling its meshes. Truth is the way to cut the net. Truth is a straight, honest, sharp-bladed sword, and you have only to use it well, and away go the meshes of deceit. They may compass sea and land, and make their proselytes if they will, but we will preach the everlasting gospel of the blessed God, and we will pray that all who love it shall live it, and be truthful, and be straight, whoever may be dark and mysterious. I would scorn to make a convert to my persuasion by the concealment of anything that I believe, or by the putting it in a light that was not clear, or by bribery and scheming. If men cannot be saved by truth, they certainly cannot be saved by falsehoods and tricks and policies. Let us be true, then, brethren, all of us, and we may not question the result. Meet the Prince of Darkness with the light; he cannot stand against it. Our times require our sincerity.

So does our God also require it. I have already spoken to this, and I need not repeat the solemn strain.

So do our souls require it. Our eternal welfare demands it. Oh, there must be no mistake about our being true before God, for when it comes to dying work, nothing will stand us then but sincerity. When he comes to the light of the judgment-bar, where will the hypocrite appear? Ah, Judas, come and kiss thy Master again! Betray him again if thou darest! See how the traitor flies! He cannot bear the light; nor can men who are like him. May you never have one drop of Judas-blood within your veins. God take it away if it be there. It is an awful thing to live untruthfully. It is a sort of minor hell to go about and feel that you have not spoken the straight thing in every company. You spoke against a certain person very bitterly when he was not present to defend himself, and now you have to meet him, and to feign admiration of him in the presence of those who heard your former tirade. You are in an awkward position; a worm in a ring of fire could not wriggle more painfully. I thank God that I have learned always to say to a man what I think of him, and I do not find that I make enemies thereby; nay, those to whom I have said the hardest things are some of my best friends this day. I am sure that there is no plain path, no easy path, like that of downright truthfulness towards our fellow-men, and there is no right path for eternity like that of downright honesty before the living God. May his Spirit work this excellence in us, for he is the great author of truth in the inward parts. We are all crooked from the birth. We go astray, speaking lies from our childhood. One of the first things that a child does is to speak what is not true; and parents sometimes teach their children to be false by laughing at their little deceits; yes, and they will tell their children what is not true, as a kind of sportive childish recreation. But this will not do! We are all inclined to shuffle with God. It is hard work to bring us up to confession of sin at the first, and to make us pull off our pretty, cheating righteousness. We like to wear a rag or two of our own as long as we can. That base money of our own merit, those counterfeit farthings of supposed excellence, we do not like giving them all up. It is hard to get the last penny out of us, and make us bankrupts in the court of heaven, and yet to this we must surely come. When we do wrong, do we not feel a tendency to think that it was not so very wrong in us? The same offence in anybody else is horrible, and we go off to a neighbour to report what has been done, but in ourselves it is a venial error, not worth a censure. We hold the scales of justice, as we think, with blinded eyes; but we just wink a little beneath the handkerchief, and spy out an excuse for ourselves. We must get away from all this false judging, and yet we never shall unless the Holy Spirit-the Spirit of truth and light-shall create in us a new heart and a right spirit. He must keep us true, too, or we shall start aside like a broken bone.

This is the sum of the matter: we must come to God as poor, weak, helpless sinners, we must trust Christ to help us, and look to the divine Spirit to purge and cleanse us, and make us truthful, and then all will be well. Let this, then, be our prayer,-“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”

The Lord grant his blessing to these words, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Jeremiah 5.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-34 (Vers. II.), 641, 649.

HOLY LONGINGS

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, February 27th, 1881, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments at all times.”-Psalm 119:20.

One of the best tests of a man’s character will be found in his deepest and heartiest longings. You cannot always judge a man by what he is doing at any one time, for he may be under constraints which compel him to act contrary to his true self, or he may be under a transient impulse from which he will soon be free. He may for awhile be held back from that which is evil, and yet he may be radically bad; or he may be constrained by force of temptation to that which is wrong, and yet his real self may rejoice in righteousness. A man may not certainly be pronounced to be good because for the moment he is doing good, nor may he be condemned as evil because under certain constraints he may be committing sin. A man’s longings are more inward, and more near to his real self than his outward acts; they are more natural, in that they are entirely free, and beyond compulsion or restraint. As a man longeth in his heart, so is he. I mean not every idle wish, as I now speak, but strong desires of the heart: these are the true life-blood of a man’s nature. You shall know whether you yourself be good or evil by answering this question, To which have you the greatest desire? Do you continually long after selfish pleasures? then are you evil, beyond all question. Do you sigh to be, and feel, and do that which is good?-is this the great aim of your life? Then in the core of your being there is some good thing towards the Lord God of Israel. So then, dear hearers, your heart-longings may furnish you with excellent helps for self-examination, and I beg you to apply them at once. The things of the heart touch the root of the matter. Unbelievers are “a people that do err in their heart,” and men truly find the Lord when they “seek him with their whole heart”; so that the heart is all-important, and its longings are among the surest marks of its condition.

Moreover, heart-longings are prophecies of what a man will be. It is not always capacity, if we could ascertain it, which will certify us as to what a man will do; for many men of large abilities achieve next to nothing for want of inclination: their talents lie hidden in the earth, and, albeit they might have succeeded marvellously well in certain pursuits, they do nothing at all remarkable because they have no tendencies in that direction. An individual may have the means to relieve the poor, and yet never perform a charitable act from want of liberality; or he may have great mental powers and yet never produce a line of useful literature, because he is eaten up with idleness. But other things being equal, the longings of a man are a pretty sure index of what he will be: they cannot create capacity, but they develope it, they lead to the use of means for its increase, and they make the mind keen to seize on opportunities. By some means or other a man usually becomes what he intensely longs to be, especially if those desires are formed in early youth while yet the world is all before him where to choose. Hence our proverb: “The child is father to the man.” Even in little children tastes and pursuits have been prophetic-the young artist sketches his sister in the cradle, the youthful engineer is busy with his boyish inventions. If his longings deepen, strengthen, and become vehement with the increase of his years, the young man’s character is being surely moulded from within, and this is often a greater force than that of circumstances acting from without. Thus is it in spiritual things: we may form forecasts as to what we shall be from our burning and pressing desires. Desires are the buds out of which words and deeds will ultimately be developed. Spiritual desires are the shadows of coming blessings. What God intends to give us he first sets us longing for. Hence the wonderful efficacy of prayer, because prayer is the embodiment of a longing inspired of God because he intends to bestow the blessing. What are thy longings, then, my hearer? Dost thou long to be holy? The Lord will make thee holy. Dost thou long to conquer sin? Thou shalt overcome it by faith in Jesus. Art thou pining after fellowship with Christ? He will come and make his abode with thee. Does thy soul thirst, yea, even pant after God as the hart for the waterbrooks? Then thou shalt be filled with all his fulness; for all these longings are prophetic of that which is to be, even as the snowdrop and crocus and anemone foretell the approach of spring. I say not that it is so with all human wishes; for “the sluggard desireth and hath nothing,” and many a man hath such evil cravings within his heart that it were contrary to the purity of God for him to grant them; but where there are intense, heart-breaking yearnings of a holy order depend upon it they are tokens of good things to come.

Where the grace of God reigns in the soul it makes a man become a stranger among his fellows, and it breeds in him peculiar affections and novel desires. The verse which precedes my text runs thus-“I am a stranger in the earth”: he was a king surrounded by courtiers and friends, and yet he was not at home, but like one banished from his native land; and being thus strange in the earth he had a remarkable desire which worldlings could not understand, and that singular craving he here expresses-“My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments at all times.” Worldly men care nothing for the judgments of God; nay, they care nothing for God himself; but when a man becomes new born, a citizen of heaven, there grows up within his spirit a spiritual appetite, of which he had felt nothing before, and he longs after God and his holy word. See to it, men and brethren, whether your souls cry out for God, for the living God; for again I say, by your longings you may test yourselves, by your heart’s desires you may forecast your future, and by your hungerings and thirstings you may judge whether you are men of this world or citizens of the world to come. With such aids to self-judgment no man ought to remain in doubt as to his spiritual condition and eternal prospects.

In order that we may be helped to the right use of this text we shall handle it thus: first, we shall notice the saint’s absorbing object-“Thy judgments”; secondly, we shall reflect upon the saint’s ardent longing”;-“my soul breaketh for the longing that it hath:” and, thirdly, we shall mention the saint’s cheering reflections, which he may readily draw from the fact that he does experience such inward heart-break. Of these we will speak as the divine Spirit shall enable us, for without him we know nothing.

First, then, let us think of the saints’ absorbing object. They long after God’s judgments. The word “judgments” is here used as synonymous with the “word of God.” It does not mean those judgments of God with which he smites sinners and executes the sentence of his law, but it refers to the revealed will or declared judgments of God. All through this long psalm the writer is speaking of the word of God, the law of God, the testimonies, the precepts, the statutes of God; and here the word “judgments” is used in the same sense. Perhaps I shall give you the meaning pretty readily if I remind you that the commandments and doctrines of the word are God’s judgments about moral and spiritual things, his decisions as to what is right and what is wrong, and his solutions of the great problems of the universe. God’s revealed plan of salvation is God’s decision upon man’s destiny, God’s judgment of condemnation against human sin, and yet his judgment of justification on behalf of believing sinners, whom he regards as righteous through faith in Jesus Christ. The Bible may be rightly regarded as the book of divine judgments, the recorded sentences of the High Court of Heaven, the infallible decision of perfect holiness upon questions which concern our souls.

“This is the Judge that ends the strife

Where wit and reason fail;

Our guide through devious paths of life,

Our shield when doubts assail.”

You may come to the Scriptures as men came to the throne of Solomon, where hard cases were at once met; yea, a greater than Solomon is here. Search God’s word and you will have before your eyes the ultimate judgment of unerring truth, the last decree from the supreme authority, from which there is no appeal. The Bible contains the verdicts of the Judge of all the earth, the judgments of God, who cannot lie and cannot err. Thus God’s word is rightly called his “judgments.” It is a book not to be judged by us, but to be our judge: not a word of it may be altered or questioned, but to it we may constantly refer as to a court of appeal whose sentence is decisive.

David in our text tells us how he desired the Lord’s judgments, or his word; by which we understand, first, that he greatly reverenced the word. He was not among those who regard the Bible as a very important portion of human literature, but as being no more inspired than the works of Shakespeare or Bacon. Little as David had of the Scriptures, he had a solemn reverence for what he had, and stood in awe of it. I have no objection to honest criticism of the keenest kind, but I am shocked at certain divines who cut and carve the blessed word as if it were some vile carcase given over to their butchery. When learned men handle the words of this book let them not forget whose book it is, and whose words they are that they are examining. There is a near approach to blasphemy against God himself in irreverence to his word. There is no book like this for authority and majesty; it is hedged about with solemn sanctions, so that it hath both a wall of fire round about it and a glory in its midst to make it distinct from all other writings. All other books might be heaped together in one pile and burned, as the Mahometans burned the Alexandrian library with less loss to the world than would be occasioned by the total obliteration of a single page of the sacred volume. All other books are at the best but as gold leaf, whereof it takes acres to make an ounce of the precious metal; but this book is solid gold; it contains ingots, masses, mines, yea, whole worlds of priceless treasure, nor could its contents be exchanged for pearls, rubies, or the “terrible crystal” itself. Even in the mental wealth of the wisest men there are no jewels like the truths of revelation. Oh, sirs, the thoughts of men are vanity, the conceptions of men are low and grovelling at their best; and he who has given us this book has said, “My thoughts are not your thoughts; for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” Let it be to you and to me a settled matter that the word of the Lord shall be honoured in our minds and enshrined in our hearts. Let others speak as they may, “our soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto the Lord’s judgments.” We could sooner part with all that is sublime and beautiful, cheering or profitable, in human literature than lose a single syllable from the mouth of God.

But more: inasmuch as the Psalmist greatly reverenced God’s word, he intensely desired to know its contents. He had not much of it, probably only the five books of Moses; but the Pentateuch was enough to fill his whole soul with delight. Never depreciate, I pray you, the Old Testament. Remember that the great things that are said in the Psalms about the word of God were not spoken concerning the New Testament, which was not then written: although they may most fitly be applied by us to the entire series of inspired books, yet they were originally spoken only concerning the first five of them, so that the first part of the Bible, according to the Holy Spirit’s own testimony, is to be valued beyond all price. Indeed, the substance of the New Testament is in the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy,-there shut up like Noah in the ark, or hidden like Moses in his mother’s house. The lovely form of queenly truth is there, only her veil conceals her countenance. The clearer shining of the New Testament is not a different light, nor perhaps is it in itself brighter; but it shines through a thinner medium, and therefore more fully enlightens us. If I might venture to compare one part of God’s word with another, I have even thought that the first books are the deepest, and that if we had but skill to find it out we should discover within them a more condensed mass of revelation than even in the New Testament. I will not defend the opinion; but usually the lower strata, though most hidden, are the most dense, and certainly that which is most easy to be understood is not therefore of necessity the fullest of meaning, but the reverse. The various books of Scripture do not increase in real value, they only advance in their adaptation to us; the light is the same, but the lantern is clearer, and we see more. The treasure of the gospel is contained in the mines of the books of Moses, and I do not wonder therefore that David, instinctively knowing it to be there, but not being able to reach it, felt a great longing after it. He was not so well able to get at the truth as we are, since he had not the life of Christ to explain the types, nor apostolic explanations to open up the symbols of the law; therefore he sighed inwardly, and felt a killing heartbreak of desire to reach that which he knew was laid up in store for him. He saw the casket, but could not find the key. If he had not been sure that the treasure was there he would not have cried, “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law”; but he was like a voyager on the verge of a discovery, who nevertheless cannot quite reach it. He was like Columbus out at sea with the fruits of an unknown continent floating beneath his keel; but the wind did not favour his reaching the shore. He was like a miner whose pick has struck upon a lump of metal, and he is sure that gold is there; but he cannot get it away from the quartz in which it is embedded. The more certain he is that it is there, and the harder it is to reach, the more insatiable does his desire become to possess himself of the treasure. Hence I see the reasonableness of the Psalmist’s vehement passion, and I marvel not that he cried, “My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments at all times.”

But I am sure that David did not merely want to know as a matter of intellectual pleasure, but he wished to feed upon God’s word; and what a very different thing that is, that feeding upon the word, from the bare knowledge of it. You can teach a child many chapters out of the Bible, and yet it may not have fed on a word of it. I have known persons to be so foolish as to set it as a task to a child to learn a portion of Scripture. I call this foolish, and surely it is also wicked to make the word of God into a punishment; as well turn the temple into a prison. Undoubtedly many know the history, the doctrine, and the letter of God’s word as well as others know their Homer or their Virgil, and so far, so good; but oh, to feed upon the word of God is quite another thing. An oven full of bread is well enough, but for nourishment a loaf on the table is better, and a morsel in the mouth is better still; and if the mouthfuls are well digested and taken up into the system they are then best of all: in like manner truth in a sermon is to be valued; truth attentively heard comes nearer to practical benefit; truth believed is better still; and truth absorbed into the spiritual system is best of all. Alas, I fear we are not so absorbent as we ought to be. I like to see men who can be spiritual sponges to God’s truth-suck it right up and take it into themselves: it would be well, however, that they should not be so far like sponges as to part with the truth when the hands of the world attempt to wring it out of them. I say, we are not receptive enough, brethren, and that because our hearts are not in tune with God. Do we not feel at times that certain doctrines of the Word are hardly to our mind? We do not quite agree with the divine judgments on this or that; we dare not question their rightness, but we rather wish they were different. Friends, this must not be so any longer. All that kind of feeling must be gone; we must agree with God in all that he has spoken, and let our belief run side by side with the teaching of the Lord. It is high time that we were altogether agreed with God. “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?” “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” We shall sit at the last great day as assessors with Christ in the great assize to judge the fallen spirits. Does it not become us to be of the same mind with our Lord? Should we not delight in his judgments even now that we may the more heartily say “Amen” to his verdict from the great white throne? Our judgment must be daily more and more conformed to the judgments of God, which are laid down in Scripture, and there must, at any rate, be in our spirit a longing after holiness until we delight in the law of the Lord, and meditate therein both day and night. We shall grow to the likeness of that which we feed upon; heavenly food will make us heavenly minded. The word received into the heart changes us into its own nature, and by rejoicing in the decisions of the Lord we learn to judge after his judgment and to delight ourselves in that which pleases him. This sense, I think, comes nearer to the explanation of David’s intense longing.

Doubtless, David longed to obey God’s word-he wished in everything to do the will of God without fault either of omission or of commission. He prays in another place, “Teach me thy law perfectly.” Do you, my hearer, long after perfection in that same fashion? for all that truly know God must have a mighty yearning to run in the way of the Lord’s commandments. He does not live before God who does not crave to live like God. There is no regeneration where there are no aspirations after holiness. The actual practice of obedience is necessary as a proof of the possession of true grace, for the rule is invariable, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” No man knows the word of God till he obeys it: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine.”

The Psalmist also longed to feel the power of God’s judgments in his own heart. You know something about this, my friend, if the Spirit of God has had dealings with you. Have you not felt the Lord judging you in the chamber of your conscience? The Spirit comes by the word, and sets our iniquities before us, our secret sins in the light of his countenance. You had forgotten the wrong, or at least, you hardly remembered it as a sin; but suddenly you saw it all. As I have looked upon a landscape under a cloudy sky a gleam of sunlight has suddenly fallen upon one portion of it and made it stand out brilliantly from the midst of the surrounding gloom; so has the Holy Spirit poured a clear light upon some one act or set of acts of my life, and I have seen it as I never saw it before. That inner light has judged us, and led us to seek fresh cleansing: the judgments of God have come into our souls, and led us anew to cry for mercy. I have found it so, have not you? The sins of our youth, and our former transgressions, have been judged of the Lord within us. I do not think that David fully recognized all the sins of his youth till he had become an old man, and, alas, many who have sinned in ways in which he never erred have failed to know the evil of their transgressions till in their bones and in their flesh they have felt its terrible effects years afterwards.

The Lord will judge his people and make sin bitter to them. Ought we to wish for this? I say, Yes. Every true man should feel a longing in his own soul to have every sin within him exposed, condemned, and executed. He should wish to hide nothing, but to be revealed unto himself and humbled by the sight. There are two judgments, one of which we must undergo, either judgment in the forum of the conscience, or else judgment before the great white throne at last. You must either condemn yourself or be condemned. A court of arraigns must be held in your heart, and you must be tried, and cast, and condemned in your own soul, or else you will not fully know the judgments of the Lord, or truly seek for pardon at his hands. God justifies the men who condemn themselves, and none but these shall ever obtain the righteousness which is of God by faith. Hence we may long for stripping judgments that we may obtain the robe of righteousness; we may cry to be emptied that grace may fill us. David desires that God’s word would come right into him, and hold its court and judge and try him; and he came to feel this process to be so necessary and so salutary, that his soul broke with the longing which he had to be dealt with by God after this fashion. This is wisdom and prudence when a man so desires sanctification that he is straitened till painful processes are being carried on by which his purity is to be produced. It is a wise child that will, for the sake of health, even long to take the appointed medicine; God’s children are not far from being well when they have reached such a point of sacred judgment.

This is the wish of all true believers,-to be perfectly conformed to the judgments of God. Some of us can honestly say that we would not have a second wish for ourselves if our heavenly Father would grant us this one,-that we might be perfect even as he is. We would leave all matters else with him as to wealth or poverty, health or sickness, honour or shame, life or death, if he would but give us complete conformity to his own will. This is the object of the craving, yearning, and sighing of our souls. We hunger to be holy. Here I must correct myself as to our one desire, for surely if the Lord would make us holy we should then desire that all other men would be the same. Oh that the world were converted to God! Oh that the truth of God would go forth like the brightness of the morning! Would God that every error and superstition might be chased away like bats and owls before the rising of the sun! O God, thy servants long for this. We ask for nothing save these two things: first reign, O Lord, in the triple kingdom of our nature, and then reign over all nature. Let the whole earth be filled with thy glory and our prayers are ended.

I hope that in this sense our soul breaketh for the longing which it hath towards God’s judgments.

And now, secondly, let us think of the saint’s ardent longings.

First, let me say of these longings, that they constitute a living experience, for dead things have no aspirations or cravings. You shall visit the graveyard, and exhume all the bodies you please, but you shall find neither desire nor craving. Longing lingers not within a lifeless corpse. Where the heart is breaking with desire there is life. This may comfort some of you: you have not attained as yet to the holiness you admire, but you long for it: ah, then, you are a living soul, the life of God is in you. You have not yet come to be conformed to the precept, but oh how you wish you were: that wish proves that a spark of the divine life is in your soul. The stronger that longing becomes the stronger is the life from which it springs: a feeble life hath feeble desires, but a vigorous life hath vehement desires, burning like coals of juniper. Are you earnestly longing this morning? Can you say that your heart pines for God as the watcher through the midnight sighs for the dawn, or as the traveller over burning sand longs for the shadow of a great rock? Oh, then, though I would not have you rest in longings-and, indeed, I know you never can-yet they are a proof that you are spiritually alive. Heart-longings are far better tests than attendance at sacraments, for men who are dead in sin have dared to come both to baptism and communion. Eager desires prove spiritual life much better than supposed attainments, for these supposed attainments may all be imaginary, but a heart breaking for the longing which it has to God’s word is no fancy, it is a fact too painful to be denied.

Next, recollect the expression used in our text represents a humble sense of imperfection. David had not yet come to be completely conformed to God’s judgments, nor yet to know them perfectly, or else he would not have said that he longed for them. So it is with us. We have not reached perfection, but do not let us, therefore, be discouraged, for the apostle of the Gentiles said, “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect;” and the man after God’s own heart, even David, when he was at his best, and I think he was so when he was writing this blessed psalm, says not so much that he had obtained anything as that he longed after it, not so much that he had yet grasped it, but sighed for it: “my soul breaketh for the longing that it hath.” I do not envy those who have no more longings, who have reached so divine a height that henceforth they can climb no higher. I heard of one who said his will was so perfectly resigned to the will of God that in fact he had no will, and so he had given up prayer, having nothing to seek. This is fine talk. When a man gets so full of life that he no longer breathes, I should say that he is dead. Prayer is the breath of the soul, and he that can do without it is dead in sin. When a man thinks himself so good that he cannot be better, he is probably so bad that he could not be worse. That is the judgment which caution will pronounce upon him; for all good men long to be better, and better men desire to be best of all, that they may dwell in heaven. The more grace the saints have the more they desire: sacred greed is begotten by the possession of the love of God: “My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments.”

Furthermore, the expression of the text indicates an advanced experience. Augustine dwells upon this idea, for he rightly says, at first there is an aversion in the heart to God’s word, and desire after it is a matter of growth. After aversion is removed there often comes an indifference in the heart; it is no longer opposed to godliness, but it does not care to possess it. Then, through divine grace, there springs up in the soul a sense of the beauty of God’s word and will, and an admiration of holiness; this leads on to a measure of desire after the good thing, and a degree of appetite for it; but it shows a considerable growth in grace when we ardently long after it, and a still larger growth when the soul breaks because of these longings. It is a blessed thing when the soul is so stretched with desire that it is ready to snap, or when, like a vessel full of fermenting liquor, the working within threatens to break up the vessel altogether. The text represents the agonizing of an earnest soul. Such a state of things shows a considerable advancement in the divine life; but when a believer has those desires “at all times,” then is he not far from being a full-grown Christian. “Oh,” say you, “he thinks so little of what he has that he is crushed under the burden of desire for more.” Yes, and he is the very man who has most of spiritual wealth. Those desires are mysterious entries in the account book of his heart, and rightly read they prove his wealth, for in the divine life the more a man desireth the more he has already obtained. You may make tallies of your desires, and as you reckon by those tallies they shall tell you to a penny what your spiritual wealth is. The more full a man is of grace the more he hungers for grace. Strange it is to say so, but the paradox is true, the more he drinks, and the more he is satisfied and ceases to thirst in one sense, the more is he devoured with thirst after the living God. It is an advanced experience, then.

And it is an experience which I cannot quite describe to you, except by saying that it is a bitter sweet; or, rather, a sweet bitter, if the adjective is to be stronger than the noun. There is a bitterness about being crushed with desire; it is inevitable that there should be, but the aroma of this bitter herb is inexpressibly sweet, no perfume can excel it. After all, a bruised heart knows more peace and rest than a heart filled with the world’s delights. How safe such a soul is. “Oh,” said one, “I cannot go to hell, it is impossible, because I must love Jesus Christ and long after him. It is not possible for him to forbid me the privilege of loving him, and to love him and long for him is happiness.” Better to feel a heavenly hunger than a worldly fulness. Heart-break for God is a sweeter thing than content in sinful pleasures. There is an inexpressible sweetness, a dawning of heaven, in longing after God; and yet because you feel you have not yet attained what you desire there is a bitter mixed with it. I think the only thing that honey wants to improve it is just a touch of bitter or acid in it. When you eat much honey it begins to cloy because it is all sweet, but just a taste of lemon or a dash of quassia might strengthen the taste, and enable it to take in a fresh freight of sweetness. It is surely so with true religious experience. Pangs of strong desire increase our overflowing pleasures, and longings and hungerings make attainings and enjoyings to be all the more delightful. May the Lord send us more of this lamb with bitter herbs, this mingled experience in which we are “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”

Still, those longings after God’s word may become very wearing to a man’s soul. The sense of our text in the Hebrew is that of attrition or wearing down. Keble reads it-

“My soul is worn and wasted quite

Thy laws desiring day and night.”

They wear out the man when they become so fervent as those confessed in the text. I believe that some of the Lord’s holy ones have been worn down to sickness and depression by the passion of their hearts after God: their souls have become like sharp swords which cut through their scabbards, for they have destroyed the body by intense inner desires. At times holy men draw so near to God, and pine so greatly after his glory, that for half a word they would pass the frontier and enter into heaven. They are so fully in accord with God, that the shell which shuts in their soul is almost broken, and the newborn spirit is ready for its fullest life and liberty. How blessed to shake off the last fragment of that which holds us back from the freedom of an immortal life in perfect agreement with God. Oh to attain to this! One saint cried, “Let me see the face of God,” and another answered, “Thou canst not see God’s face and live;” to which he replied “Then let me see my God and die.” So do we feel that our soul comes near to dying with her longings after her God; little would we tremble even if we knew that the joy of realization would be killing, and would pass us over the border into Immanuel’s land, where we shall see the King in his beauty.

But I must not linger, though there is much to tempt me to speak on. Are you searching yourselves, brethren, to see whether you have such longings? If so, do you have them “at all times”? We are not to long for God’s word and will by fits and starts; we are not to have desires awakened by novelty or by excitement; nor are we to long for divine things because for awhile temporal things fail us, and we are sick and sorry, and weary of the world, and so in disgust turn to God. Brethren, I trust you long after God when all is bright in providence, and that you love his word when all is pleasant in family affairs. It is well to desire the Lord’s will when he is permitting you to have your own will as well as when he is thwarting you. God is to be always our delight. He is our defence in war, but he is also our joy in peace. Do not use him as sailors use those harbours of refuge for which they are not bound, into which they only run in time of storm, but if it be fair they stand far out to sea. The Lord’s will is to be the path of our feet, and himself the element of our life. This is to be a true child of God, always to have a yearning soul towards God’s commandments; to be eager after his word “at all times.” May the Holy Spirit keep us ever hungering and thirsting after God and his truth.

And now I am going to close with a few cheering reflections. Methinks this morning some heart has been saying, “There are comforting thoughts for me in all this. I am a poor thing, I have not grown much, I have not done much, I wish I had; but I have strong longings, I am very dissatisfied, and I am almost ready to die with desire after Christ.” My dear soul, listen-let this encourage you. First, God is at work in your soul. Never did a longing after God’s judgments grow up in the soul of itself. Weeds come up of themselves, but the rarer kind of plants I warrant you will never be found where there has been no sowing: and this flower, called love-lies-bleeding, this plant of intense eagerness after God, never sprang up in the human breast of itself. God alone has placed it there. Friend, there was a time when you had no such longing. Ah, and if you were left to yourself, you would never have such longing again: you would decline till you became as content with the world as others are; you know you would. Come, then, beloved, God is at work in your soul-let this comfort you. The great Potter has you yet upon the wheel-he has not cast you away as worthless: his work may pain you, but it is honourable and glorious. Your heart may swell with unutterable longings, and it may be torn by throes of desire, but life thus proves its presence, and reaches forth to something yet beyond. These pains of desire are the Lord’s doings, and they should be perceived with gratitude.

The result of God’s work is very precious. Come, though it be only a gracious desire, thank God for it. Though thou canst get no further than holy longing, be grateful for that longing. I would have thee strive for the highest gifts, but I would not have thee despise what God hath already given thee. I have known times when I thought myself in a very strange case, and I judged ill of myself, and yet a month or two afterwards I have looked back upon that condition which I condemned, and I have wished that I could return to it. Has it not been so with you? You have been racked with sighs, groans, cravings, and other forms of unrest, and you have said, “O God, deliver me from this sore travail”; but when within a week you have had to lament insensibility and lukewarmness, you have cried, “Lord, put me back again into my state of desire! Lord, set me hungering and thirsting again, a fierce appetite is better than this deadness.” Oh, you that are longing, be thankful that you do long, for you have a rich promise to cheer you, since it is written, “He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him.” The more wretched and unhappy you are under a sense of sin the more grateful you ought to be for tenderness of heart; and the more you are longing to lay hold on Christ and to become like Christ, the more you should thank God that he hath wrought this selfsame thing in you. How sweet is that word, “Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble: thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear.”

Hearken once again: not only is the desire precious, but it is leading on to something more precious. Hear ye that which is written: “The desire of the righteous shall be granted.” What sayest thou to such words as these? “He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer.” “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them.” Do you think that God prompts us to desire a thing which he does not mean to bestow upon us? Is that the way you treat your children? I know you will play with the little ones sometimes, and hold a nut or a penny in your closed hand and bid them open your fingers for themselves; but you give them their treat before long. You would not hold a sweetmeat before a poor child and promise it to him, and excite his desires for it, and then refuse him a taste of it: that were a cruel pastime. God is not unkind: if he makes you hunger, for that hunger he has made ready the bread of heaven; if he makes you thirst, for that thirst he has already filled the river of the water of life. If the desire comes from God the supply of that desire will as certainly come from God. Rest you sure of that, and cry mightily to him with strong faith in his goodness.

Meanwhile, the desire itself is doing you good. It is driving you out of yourself, it is making you feel what a poor creature you are, for you can dig no well in your own nature, and find no supplies within your own spirit. It is compelling you to look alone to God. Do not need much compelling. Come readily to your Lord. Be one of those vessels which can sail with a capful of wind. Come by faith to Jesus, even though you fear that your desires are by no means so vivid and intense as those of my text. Believe, and you shall be established. Rest assured of this, that there is in God whatever your soul wants. In Christ Jesus dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in that divine fulness there must of necessity be more than a creature can require. In Christ Jesus there is exactly what your soul is panting for. Yes, I mean you, weakest of the flock; you, feeblest of the saints; you who dare not put your names down among God’s people at all,-if there is a sacred longing in your spirit, there is that in Christ which is adapted to you, despite your feebleness and unworthiness. God is ready to give you whatever you are ready to receive. Only come and trust him for it, and look to his dear Son, for in Jesus you have all things.

Oh, this is the blessedness of this longing after God’s judgments, that it makes Christ precious; and, with that remark, I have done. We see all God’s word in Christ; we see all God’s decisions against sin and for righteousness embodied in our Saviour; we see that if we can get Christ we have then found the wisdom of God, and the power of God, and, in fact, the all-sufficiency of God. If we can become like Christ we shall be like unto God himself. This, I say, makes Christ so precious, and makes us long to get more fully to know him and to call him ours. Come, ye longing ones, come to my Lord Jesus even now! Come, ye that are bursting with wishes and desires, come and trust the Saviour, and rest in him now; and may this be the hour in which you shall find how true it is, “Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” May you yet sing the Virgin’s song, “He hath filled the hungry with good things. My soul doth magnify the Lord.”

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Psalm 119:17-24, 81-88.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-912, 119 (Song I.), 119 (Song VI.)