That is a bit of genuine experience, honestly told, in the most natural manner. How glad we ought to be that David never fell into the hand of an ordinary biographer, for such a piece of weakness as this text records would have been carefully repressed, lest the good man’s reputation should suffer. It was only a hasty expression, and every friendly biographer would have felt that it ought to be taken as unspoken. Here, however, stands this piece of human weakness upon David’s life-page, and we are right glad of it: it is a comfort to us little folks to perceive the champions were men of like passions with ourselves. As a bee sucks honey out of nettles, so does faith find comfort even in the failings of David; but we must mind that we do not turn his errors into excuses, for that were to extract poisons instead of wholesome juices.

The experience of a good man, of a great man, of a tried man, like David, is exceedingly instructive and impressive. The children of God delight in doctrinal preaching, and in practical preaching, but I believe that nothing is so sweet to them as experimental preaching, by which we are not only taught truth in the head and in the hand, but something is said of truth in the heart. This is it which endears the Book of Psalms to the whole church, and makes the explanation of that volume so important. Nothing more sweetly cheers the straggler after better things than to hear of the life-struggles of godly men. Behold, then, a written confession, dictated by the penitent heart of David, who herein withdraws the curtain from his own innermost life. I should not wonder if his experience should turn out to be very like your own; for, as in water face answereth to face, so does the heart of man to man, and this is the reason why the experience of one man is his best means of interpreting the feelings of another.

Take heed, however, when you are reading the histories of the saints that you use them with prudence, for it is not all the experience of a Christian that is Christian experience. A believer may experience much which he does not experience as a believer, but because his believing is failing him. Sometimes we are rather to regard the experience of good men as beacons to warn us from rocks than as lighthouses to show us where the harbour may be. Rheumatism is certainly a human disease, but I would by no means recommend a person to seek after it in order to prove his manhood. We can well do without some things which were characteristic of certain eminent men, since they did not adorn or strengthen them, but rather disfigured and weakened them. In David’s case, it is well to follow David, but it is better to follow David’s son; for David sometimes went astray like a lost sheep, but David’s son was that great Shepherd of the sheep whose every step it is safe for the flock to follow. Do not let us imitate David in his speaking in haste, or in his saying, “I am cut off from before thine eyes;” but at the same time let us take care that we closely copy him in confessing conscious fault, as he here does; in crying to God in the hour of trouble, as he tells us he did; and also in bearing witness to the exceeding goodness of God, notwithstanding our faultiness, as he here bears witness when he says, “Nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried unto thee.”

For our edification we will consider the text thus: here is, first, an utterance of unbelief-“I am cut off from before thine eyes”; secondly, here is incidentally mentioned an effort of struggling faith,-he says, “Thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried unto thee”; and, thirdly, here is a testimony of gratitude, for David joyfully declares that, notwithstanding his unbelief, the Lord heard and answered his cries. O for the touch of the Holy Spirit to make this outline into a living sermon. Here are the altar and the wood: O Holy Ghost, be thou the fire!

Let us begin by listening to an utterance of unbelief-“I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes.”

Note here, first, that unbelief is generally talkative-“I said.” It had been better for him not to have thought it even, but when he did think thus wrongly it was most unwise to speak the thought. I have heard it said, “If it is in the mind it may as well come out,” but this is not true. If I had a rattlesnake in a box on this platform, I think you would none of you vote for the creature’s being let loose. Poison in a phial is deadly, but it will hurt no one until the cork is drawn, and then we cannot tell how far the mischief may go. Lions and tigers and vipers are best shut up; the wider range you give them the more you empower them to do mischief. If thou hast an ill thought, repent of it, but do not repeat it: it may harm thee, but it will not harm others if thou let it die within doors. Do as David did in another case, when he had a very ugly thought; he said, “If I shall speak thus I shall offend against the generation of thy people,” and he would not, therefore, put his thought into words lest he should offend the godly. If thou hast a hard thought of God, utter it not in the presence of his own children. Wouldst thou grieve thy brethren? Utter it not in the presence of his enemies. Wouldst thou open their mouths to speak against him? Where wilt thou utter it? Speak it not upon earth, for it is his footstool. Say it not in prayer, for thou art bowing at his throne. Say it nowhere, for God will hear it if none else should. Bury in silence that offspring of thy soul of which it has good cause to be ashamed; let it be cast over the wall as the untimely figs, and consumed upon the rubbish heap of forgotten things. Alas, unbelief does not understand holding its tongue. We read that the children of Israel murmured in their tents; they could not be quiet at home. They complained of God in their families, and very soon the murmuring in the tents became a murmuring throughout all the camp, till they gathered together in crowds against God and his servant Moses. Yes, unbelief will prattle. I have known believing men slow of speech, but when a man has anything to complain of he is fluent even to overflowing; he will go from one neighbour to another, and lament the badness of trade, how the crops are failing, how ill he is himself, what a sickly family he has, and a legion of other griefs. The gazette of sorrow has long columns, and is generally crowded with items; it is published every hour of the day, and you can get a new edition at almost any house, for unbelief must publish its inventions. The strife of the many tongues of unbelief causes much mischief in the world: its quiver is full, and its arrows are death. It would have been wiser for David to have bit his tongue than to have said what he ought not to have said: however, this much is clear,-unbelief is generally talkative.

Our next observation shall be that the ulterances of unbelief are generally hasty-“I said in my haste.” There was no reason for saying such a thing at all, and certainly not for being in a hurry to say it; for he said unto God, “I am cut off from before thine eyes.” Look at this statement well. It is a very solemn thing to make such a declaration. See if it be founded on fact. Do you think it is true? Search a little more. Set your supposed condition in another light, and see whether, after all, you may not have made a mistake. But no. Unbelief blunders it out, right or wrong: “I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes.” I suppose the reason for the hot haste is this-that when a man’s mind is much distracted and driven to and fro he wants to come to some sort of conclusion; and, though that conclusion may be totally false, and may be as far from right as possible, yet some sort of a conclusion his troubled thoughts require. John Bunyan says of the pilgrim that he was much tumbled up and down in his thoughts. It is a forcible Saxon expression, and most of you know what it signifies. You do not know whether you are on your head or your heels, as the old saying is, you are in a horrible confusion, and countless difficulties surround you; and so it is that you blunder at a conclusion, and say in your haste what should not be said. But why in such haste to write bitter things against yourself? Why in such haste to write your own condemnation? Why in such haste to misjudge your God? Stop a bit, brother. Stop a bit! There is time enough for this when the worst has come to the worst. Wait awhile, for when the brain is heated waiting will cool the brow, and prepare a place for wisdom. Why are you so desperately eager to play the fool? Know that the utterances of unbelief are hasty; and hasty things are raw and sour, and cannot display the maturity of prudence. What a man says in his haste he generally has to repent in his leisure. If it is a good thing, say it at once; but if it be a doubtful thing, stop; then stop again; then stop again; and if the stopping should end in your not speaking there will be a little more of golden silence in the world. I have heard say that one of the greatest points in good speaking is to know when to pause. I do not know about that, but I am sure that one of the wisest things in good living is to know when to pause, to stop, to question, and to deliberate. To go blindly on as though it were neck or nothing with you is to make sure shipwreck some day or other. Do nothing till you are sure that it is right to do it, and say nothing till you know that what you say is true. Hasty deeds and hasty words make up the most horrible parts of human history: the warnings of the past forbid all recklessness. Nevertheless, when once we grow despondent this is our temptation, and it will be well to bit and bridle both mind and tongue lest we fall into the evil.

Frequently when a man speaks in haste his expressions are the result of his temper. “We are quick tempered,” some will say. If you are quick tempered it is very likely that you are also quick tongued, and this is a great pity. You speak in a moment what you cannot unsay in a century. Now, it is very ill when we are in a temper with God. Is that ever the case? Oh yes. I fear that often professing Christians are out of temper with God. A good woman was wearing deep mourning years after the loss of him whom she mourned; and a Quaker said to her, “Friend, I perceive thou hast not forgiven God yet.” There he hit the nail on the head. Many have not forgiven God yet: they have taken umbrage against him either because of bereavement, or loss of property, or sickness, or disappointment, or trial, and they keep on sulking because they cannot have their own way. Surely they have never heard the question, “Should it be according to thy mind?” Wilt thou sit on the throne and judge thy God? Wilt thou

“Snatch from his hands the balance and the rod,

Rejudge his judgment, be the God of God”?

This is blasphemy; and yet too often such blasphemy enters into the human heart. Who is to be master? Are we to be lords over all? Who is to order providence? In whose hands should be the issues from death? Is God to wait on us, and ask our will, and do our bidding? That is, indeed, the turning of things upside down, and it cannot, must not be. It is because we get into wayward, foolish, rebellious tempers with God that therefore we speak in our haste what we ought not even to think. Thus David penitently confesses, “I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes.”

Again, it is very clear from the text that the utterances of unbelief are frequently exaggerated. “I am cut off from before thine eyes.” No, David; no, no. It is not so: you are cut off from the esteem of men through slander, and you are cut off from the friendship of those who once professed to love you, whose minds have been soured by an evil report; but you are not cut off from God. It is true you are cut off from the public services of God’s house, and obliged to hide away in the rocks and caves of the earth: that is true; but you are not cut off from before God’s eyes. You know you are not, and why do you say you are? Oh, but some people always talk big about everything; and it is a great pity, because it is so near lying that I do not know whether it is not the same thing. There must be a very narrow line, fine as a razor’s edge, between a lie and the unguarded expressions of exaggeration. Some people talk about their trials on a scale which allows a mile for every inch. Their afflictions are awful, they are dreadful, they are without parallel. There were never any like them, and there never will be again. They endure the most extraordinary pains, and the most wonderful afflictions, and they are altogether quite equal to Job and Jeremiah rolled into one. Never did any persons undergo sufferings comparable to theirs. You cannot sit down by their side to comfort them but they will tell you at once that you do not know anything about the great deeps whereon they are doing business: you are only knee-deep in the waters of trouble, while all God’s waves and billows have gone over them. I meet with some who are almost impossibly afflicted; their tribulations exceed that which is common to man, and that which is uncommon too; but this may be accounted for by the large organ of imagination with which they are endowed. By using this imagination to paint their spectacles they are soon able to see all manner of dreadful visions, and they talk accordingly. That is the way of our unbelief, it will talk at random about trials and troubles. This is not pretty. God does not love his children to talk in that fashion. The lips that speak truth are his delight; and if our unbelief will not speak truth-and it very seldom does, perhaps never does-then it is a great pity that it cannot hold its tongue. May I ask if any friend here has been exaggerating his trouble? Is there any sister here who is fretting out of all reason-making a great deal out of what may be much, but is not everything? Then stand rebuked at this hour. Your cup is not all gall. Your bread is not all turned to ashes. All your comforts have not fled; many a mercy is left you. Come, come, friend, we are not quite cut off from before the Lord; let us leave off exaggeration lest we be guilty of falsehood.

Once more, the utterances of unbelief dishonour God. “I am cut off,” says David, “from before thine eyes.” He does, as it were, blame the Lord. Before thy very eyes have I suffered this; thou hast so for saken me and given me over to the enemy, that I am cut off from before thine eyes. Why dost thou not deliver me? He spoke in his haste, as if God, at the very least, had been forgetful, even if he had not been untender and unfaithful. “I am cut off from before thine eyes.” It would greatly dishonour God if he did suffer one that could say, “In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust,” to be cut off from before his eyes. It would be contrary to his promise; for he has said that he will not suffer the righteous to perish. “The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry”: there never was a godly man cut off from God yet, and there never will be till time shall be no more. All the attributes of God forbid the destruction of a soul that is resting on the Almighty arm; and yet the unbelieving heart declares that such a destruction has taken place in its own case. Oh, wondrous unbelief, to think the Lord to be so unrighteous as to forget our work of faith and labour of love, to forget his children, to cast away his own, his covenanted ones, with whom he has entered into solemn league by oath, saying, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” He puts his promise very strongly in that passage, using many negatives in the original tongue. “I will not, not, not-never, never leave thee. I will not, not forsake thee”: many times over negativing the idea that he could possibly forsake one of his own.

Brethren, let us consider whether you and I may not have given utterance to words of unbelief. If we have, let us eat up those words to-night; let us call them back and drown them in our tears. Those cruel charges were none of them true. They were spoken in haste; they were the offspring of petulance and folly. Lord, have mercy upon thy servants, and cast these grievous words of ours behind thy back. Let them be as though they were never spoken, for we never had any reason so to speak, and what we have said we do thoroughly repent of, and pray that thou wouldst blot it out for evermore.

So much, then, upon the first head-an utterance of unbelief: we are now ready to look within the sorrowing heart, and mark the signs that grace is still living there. We have not far to search; for, secondly, in the text there is mentioned an effort of struggling faith.

Though David said, “I am cut off from before thine eyes,” yet he prayed, and prayed distinctly to God. He says, “Thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried unto thee.” O child of God, cry to a smiting God. Cry to God even when he seems to cast thee off; for where else canst thou go? What remains for thee but to cry to him, even if he shut his ear to thy plea? What if he frown upon thee? Still cling to him. Where else canst thou espy a hope? To whom, or whither could you go if you should turn from God? What if his providences seem hard? What if he use the rod upon thee till thy whole head is sick and thy whole heart faint? What if he even appears to put his hand to his scabbard to draw out the sword to slay thee? Even then there remains no resort for thee so hopeful as believing prayer. Say thou with Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” Cling to him still. Sink or swim, live or die, do not doubt thy God, but still pray. What did Jonah do when the weeds were wrapped about his head and he went down to the bottoms of the mountains? He still made supplication to the Lord God of salvation, and trusted his spirit in the divine hands. He tells us, “Out of the belly of hell cried I.” Wherever you may be drifted, and however desperate your case, yet still pray: still pray. If you can do nothing else-if your hands are bound as to any form of effort, still pray. Never cease from crying, though you cannot rise a note above the most pitiful wailing. When Bunyan’s pilgrim went through the valley-of-the-shadow-of-death, he found that he had no weapon with which he could smite the fiends that surrounded him except the weapon of all-prayer. The adversaries were too impalpable for sword or spear, too mysterious for battle-axe or bow; but prayer could find them out and smite them to the heart. Believer, this is the most convenient and useful of all the weapons in our heavenly panoply. All-prayer will help you against man or devil. It will help you to bear up under trials that come from God and tribulations that mysteriously approach you from earth or hell. Long as you live should you pray, for while you can pray you cannot perish. You must under no pressure cease from prayer, my brother. It is your last resort. “Men ought always to pray, and not to faint.”

Please notice that David prayed in downright earnest, for he says, “Thou heardest the voice of my supplications,” so that he offered many prayers-prayers with voices to them, and he describes them under the term, “I cried.” His was a crying prayer. Those are the very best prayers. Our eyes sometimes light upon “prayers to be said or sung”: we have no wish to depreciate such compositions for others, but they are of no possible use to us who delight to tell our desires to our heavenly Father in our own broken speech. That is the prayer which is neither said nor sung, but cried: it drops from the eyes in tears, it breaks forth from the lips in moans, and from the breast in groanings that cannot be uttered. Those prayers of ours which we could not endure for any human ear to hear are among the best of prayers. A little child may begin to speak and call to its mother in words, and perhaps she will not come to it; but let it give up words and try crying, and you will see if the mother does not come. Let it cry again and again, and the mother’s ear will be caught by the child’s cry. There is no praying to God like the crying of a childlike spirit. A cry is not a very pleasant sound. No; but it is a very prevalent sound. A cry is not even articulate. No, but it is expressive. Crying is the language of pain; it is the eloquence of grief; it is the utterance of intense longing. When you use crying prayer, when you must have the blessing, and therefore cry for it-you shall have it. We do not always give our children what they cry for, but this is the rule of our heavenly Father, “The righteous cry and the Lord heareth.” Well did Isaiah say, “He will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when he shall hear it, he will answer thee.” The rule is invariable, and many are the cases which go to prove it. We know who said, “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.” Even in his despair, I say, David prayed, and that praying took the form of an earnest and passionate cry.

Note well that God heard his prayer. We sometimes fancy that God will not hear us if any measure of unbelief is mixed with our prayers. If that were the case I am afraid that the Lord would not often hear us, for there is a measure of unbelief even our in strongest faith. It is a great mercy that even when we are lamenting, “I am cut off from before thine eyes,” yet if at the same time we can pray, our petition is accepted of the Lord. The Scripture saith, “According to your faith be it unto you.” Suppose that text had run like this, “According to your unbelief be it unto you.” Ah, me, where would you and I have been? Our unbelief would have involved us in the curse and condemnation which rest upon all who believe not in the Lord Jesus. Unbelief would sour and spoil all. God did not deal with David according to his unbelief, but he dealt with him according to his faith. We are a sorrowful mixture of natures, and if we were reckoned with according to our ill side who among us could stand? David’s faith was small, but still it was true. It was an infant faith that could cry, a struggling faith that could plead, a patient faith that could wait, and so it was an accepted faith which obtained favour of the Lord. It was a faith which, if it had not an arm to fight with, had a voice to cry with, and therefore it prevailed with God.

My friend, thou who art in trouble, whoever thou mayest be, let me urge, persuade, entreat thee, not to listen to the voice of Satan who tempts thee to cease from prayer. Do not say, “God will not hear me because I am in this wretched condition.” Remember the words, “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.” Cry to him wherever you may be, or whoever you may be. However desperate your plight, you shall survive it if you pray; however dire your danger, a way of escape shall be made for you if you cry unto the Lord. Cannons have been styled “the last arguments of kings”; but I may better call prayers the last arguments of needy sinners. Cling to the mercy-seat when you can cling nowhere else. Cling to the mercy-seat when justice lifts her sword to slay thee. Increase your earnestness in proportion as you are tempted to cease from prayer; and may God the Holy Ghost, who is the God of grace and of supplications, intensify your desires, help your infirmities, and teach you how to pray, and what to pray for, as you ought.

Our text next supplies us with a testimony of gratitude. The Psalmist says, “Nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplications.”

Notice, that God acted in directly the opposite manner from that in which the Psalmist’s unbelief acted; for, first, his unbelief spoke and said this and that; but God did not speak. He was a listener; “Thou heardest.” Not a word came from God: there had been too many words in the business already. When we begin to grumble with anybody it takes two to make a quarrel, and if number two answers to our murmuring we soon stir up a fierce quarrel. If God were as man is, if his thoughts were as our thoughts, he would say, “Murmur, do you, when I am dealing with you so kindly? Then you shall have cause for complaining. Is my little finger heavy? You shall feel my hand. Is my hand heavy? You shall know the weight of my loins.” Well might God say to us, “What! find fault while you are surrounded with so many blessings! Tell me I have forsaken you! Say to me that you are cut off from before my eyes when I am dealing graciously with you all the day long! Talk to me so! Then I will do as you have said; I will take you at your word, and make your saying true.” But oh, the marvellous patience of God. He says nothing. There was the strength of Christ, that “as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth” in the midst of his accusers; and here is a part of the marvellous power of God-the omnipotence which restrains omnipotence, so that he is not provoked, or, being provoked, speaks not in anger, and deals not with his servants in wrath, else had we long ago been consumed. Oh, how sweet to look back and think, He did not answer me according to my folly, or walk frowardly with me because I walked frowardly with him. His word says, “With the froward thou wilt show thyself froward”; but he did not fulfil that threat to me, nor walk contrary to me though I walked contrary to him. In gentleness and patience he regarded not my evil words, and answered me not according to my folly.

You see then the difference between the quiet of God and the clamour of our unbelief. David bears cheerful testimony to the fact that he was in error when he spoke so hastily, and that God was exceeding gracious in taking so little notice of his foolish complaint.

The next contrast is seen in the fact that though David spoke in a hurry, there was no haste in God. “I said in my haste.” Yes, but God did not reply in haste. Notice the glorious leisure of infinite love, for it is written, “Thou heardest the voice of my supplications.” God was quietly hearing while his petulant servant was fiercely complaining. We had a meeting of ministers a short time ago, at which it was agreed that for five minutes each one should relate a piece of experience. One of the brethren gave us this thought, which I shall not soon forget. He said, “It is a great thing for a minister who visits his people to be a good listener. The afflicted value this faculty above gold. Perhaps the pastor calls upon a poor woman who is in great trouble, and he sits down, and she tells him her mournful tale. Bless her heart! He has heard that tale a dozen times before, but he sits quite still and takes it all in, listening most earnestly. He has not perhaps the power to help her at all, but she feels very thankful to him because he has heard her case, and it has comforted her to tell it.” It is a great thing to be willing to sit and listen, and hear a story which perhaps is very badly told, and is not at all pleasant to hear, which even creates sorrow in your own mind as you hearken to it. Such hearing displays tender sympathy. Hence the Scriptures say of God, “O thou that hearest prayer.” Mark, it is not “answerest,” but “hearest.” Those brethren who want to be exceedingly correct tell us “God is the hearer and answerer of prayer.” Yes, that is very proper; but the Scripture is content to write, “O thou that hearest prayer.” It is a wonderful thing that God should sit down, as it were, and listen to the prayers of his people and put up with their nonsense-their complaining and their crying. David does not cease to wonder that in his unhappy condition he had yet been regarded of the Lord: “Thou heardest the voice of my supplication.” How beautiful that is! “I spoke in haste.” Ah, I poured out my bitter plaint; and all the Lord did was he heard it-quietly, patiently, listened to it all; took it all in, considered the case of his poor servant, knew what his fevered brain meant, and how far that evil haste arose out of it, and therefore forgave the sad unbelief which spoke out so audaciously in words of repining. Oh, it is beautiful, that gentleness of God which led him to give no answer to the hurried, passionate speech of David, but just to hear it and no more. Well did David say in another place, “Thy gentleness hath made me great.”

It is delightful to see how the Lord notes always the good and ignores the evil when dealing with his saints. In David’s case he would not hear the foolish and false charges of his unbelief, but he heard the cries of his struggling faith. Remember the instance of Sarah: she doubted as to her bringing forth a child when she was old, and asked, “How shall it be, my lord being old also?” The Holy Spirit says nothing in the New Testament about Sarah’s unbelieving speech, except that he commends that one good word in it, and notes that she “obeyed her husband, calling him lord.” If the Lord can spy a beauty in his people, he fixes his eyes on it; and as for all their defilements, he washes them away, saying “they shall not be remembered against them any more for ever.”

Let us go a little farther in our contrast between David and his Lord. There was no exaggeration with God. Unbelief exaggerates, as we have shown; but God does not. On the contrary, he diminishes the evil of his servants till it comes to nothing, putting it all away. He heard the feeble cry of faith in David’s heart, and did not allow the voice of his unbelief to drown it; he did not look upon his servant’s fault till it hid his grace; but he smiled upon the work of grace, little as it was.

And though, as we have said, unbelief dishonoured God, yet God did not dishonour his servant’s prayer for all that. No; he might have said to David’s prayer, “Go thy way, I will not hear thee. Doth the same fountain send forth sweet water and bitter? I heard David say just now, ‘I am cut off from before thine eyes.’ Am I going to hear out of the same mouth a charge against my faithfulness and a cry for help? If he thinks I have forsaken him, let it be so.” But not so our God. He will not dishonour prayer, even though prayer be very feeble, and though there be an unbelief in it which is grievous in his sight. It never shall be said that faith and prayer came back from the throne of God with blushing faces: he will maintain his memorial untouched, and the motto of that memorial is-the God that heareth prayer. “Thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried unto thee.”

We dare not make much out of our English version by way of dogmatic teaching, and yet somehow I feel inclined to pull each little word of the text in pieces just for a minute. Look at it. “Nevertheless thou heardest the voice.” “Never-the-less,” as much as to say, Though I had spoken as I ought not to do, yet thou didst not lessen thine attention to me, but thou didst just as much hear my prayer as if I had never sinned with my tongue. Not one jot the less was thy pity or thy bounty: thine ear did not in any measure lose its readiness to hear my prayer, nor thy heart its willingness to feel for me. Not one particle the less for all my transgressing “thou heardest the voice of my supplications.” O thou gracious God, never-the-less dost thou deal out thy mercies though it seems as if ever-the-more we sin. Nevertheless dost thou love though ever the more do we err. Oh grant that ever the more we may be grateful to thee, and never, oh never, may we again grieve thee by our unbelief.

The time has come for me to wind up with sundry lessons in a few words.

The first is, let us repent heartily of every hard thought we have ever had of our God and Father. I am forced to look back upon some such sins of thought with much distress of mind. They have come from me in serious pain and depression of spirit; and now I pray the Lord of his great mercy to look at them as though I had never thought them, for I do heartily abhor them, and I loathe myself in his sight that I should ever have questioned his tender love and gracious care. If you have similarly transgressed, dear friends, in your dark nights of trouble, come now, and bow your heads, and pray the Lord to forgive his servants concerning this thing; for he is so good, so gracious, that it is a wanton cruelty to think of him as otherwise than overflowing with love. There is none like unto him among the sons of men; the kindest of mortals have not his bowels of compassion. There is none like unto thee, Jehovah, even among the gods,-no fabled deity, however painted in glowing colours, can be compared unto thee! Let us take back our words if at any time we have said aught against him, and make the utmost amends by magnifying his holy name.

In the next place, let us earnestly pray that, if ever we shall be tempted again to hard, mistrustful thoughts, we may be able to put a check upon our language, and to keep our mouth as with a bridle. Oh that our tongue, which is given us to praise our God with, may never be perverted into an instrument of complaint against our greatest benefactor. O thou vile tongue, how couldst thou ever in thy hottest haste let slip an angry word against the Lord? Better far to be dumb than to dishonour a name so dear.

The next lesson is this,-let us always continue to pray, come what will. Brethren, never cease praying. What I have said before, I say again-continue in prayer. Call upon your God. Cry to him. Cry to him. While breath lasts, and life gives power to feel a desire, never cease to supplicate the Lord.

Last of all, let us always speak well of his mercy. If we have bitterly complained let us with equal vigour declare his goodness. I wish that you who are given to grumble would make up your minds that the time past will suffice you to have grumbled, and now you are going to growl backwards, to recall all your hard speeches, and to praise God as much as you have formerly complained against him. I should like farmers to break into a wonderful excitement of gratitude, so that all the nation would ring with it, and all men would confess,-“Whenever you meet a farmer, you meet with a man who is always praising God for the weather.” It will be a wonderful change if that should ever come to be the general remark. I wish you tradesmen would suddenly put a new leaf into your books, and become the most thankful set of men alive, so that it would be universally said, “Whenever we meet a tradesman, we always find him praising God for his goodness to him in his business.” For many years most traders have done the other thing, and it is time they should pitch a new tune, and sing another song. There have been “very bad times-dreadfully bad times,” quite long enough. Are there no better times coming? Bad as times are these grumblers live, and live in comfort too. Do they live on their losses? They cannot well do that, and so we may suppose that they are living on the savings of former years, and it is clear that they must have had some wonderfully good times once when we did not hear much about them. They ought to praise God now for those wonderful seasons four, five, or six years ago, when things were so marvellously good that they were able to lay up store for the years of famine. It will be a blessed thing for us when all times are good, because our minds are good and our hearts are content. May we grow like the shepherd who was asked, “Will there be good weather to-day?” and he answered that there would be good weather. “Don’t you think it will rain?” “Very likely; or perhaps it will snow.” “But you said that it would be good weather.” “Yes,” he answered, “if God sends it, it cannot be anything else than good.” “But I mean, do you think there will be such weather as pleases you.” “Ay, that there will,” said he, “for whatever pleases God pleases me.”

God give us a happy, childlike, rejoicing spirit. We have done enough murmuring to last a lifetime; let us change the tune. Suppose that you were to say, “I will make up my mind that just as much as I have ever disbelieved, mistrusted, murmured, so much will I do in the way of trusting and praising the Lord.” But suppose you were actually to do as much, that would be a poor life of which you could merely say, “There was as much praise of God in that man’s life as there was of murmuring.” Shall we be content with such a summary? No, no, no, we must rise to something better than that. We must praise God a thousand times to every complaint. No; we must get above that; we must have done with all complaining. God deliver us from it, and lift us right out of unbelief; and when we do speak in our haste again may it only be to exclaim, “Bless the Lord, hallelujah!” If some body sincerely remarks “That was a bit of enthusiasm,” you may reply, “Oh yes; but as I am a hasty man, and rather quick tempered, that is the way in which I show my hastiness; I bless the Lord while my heart is hot, and then keep on doing so till I have cooled down.” Lift up a hallelujah when nobody is prepared for such a word of praise. Startle your friends by crying, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name.” The Lord lift you all up to this, and keep you there, for Christ’s sake. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Psalm 31.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-138, 37, 246.

THE BARRIER

A Sermon

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

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”-Revelation 21:27.

The text refers to the glorified church of our Lord Jesus Christ. That perfected company of the elect and sanctified is set forth in this wonderful chapter under the image of a city descending “from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Her work-day dress all laid aside, the bride appears in garments of needlework and raiment of wrought gold. The militant church, the church of the present day, is comparable to a tent, and is well imaged by the tabernacle in the wilderness: it is lit up within by the glory of God’s presence, and covered without by the fiery cloudy pillar of his eternal providence; but yet to the eyes of men it is mean and inconsiderable, for verily it doth not yet appear what it shall be. By-and-by this same church, which to-day is likened unto a structure of curtains readily removed from place to place, shall become a city, fixed, permanent, high-walled, and compact together, a “city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” The discomforts and trials of the desert life shall be exchanged for the quiet and comfort of a city dwelling. There shall be nothing of the wilderness about the church triumphant; it shall be a right royal abode, the metropolis of the universe, the palace of the great King. Everything that is lustrous, pure, precious, majestic shall be there. Rare and priceless things which are now the peculiar treasure of kings shall be the common possession of all the sanctified. The church shall be no longer despised, but shall sit as a queen among the nations, while at her feet they shall heap up all their glory and honour. In that church there shall remain nothing for which men shall reproach her, but everything shall be manifested in her for which they shall do her honour; her very streets to be trodden on shall be of pure gold like unto transparent glass, and her lowest course of stones shall be of jasper. Everything about the perfected church shall be the best of the best: she shall be recognized as being the fairest among women, the bride, the Lamb’s wife, the crown and flower of the universe. We read the sparkling figures of John’s vision as emblems of moral and spiritual excellence, but we doubt not that, beyond the spiritual riches of the church, all materialism will also be at her disposal, and the restored creation shall bring her choicest beauties to adorn the chosen bride of the Lamb.

We have said that the glorified church will be the crown of the new creation, and it is into the new heavens and the new earth that she is represented as coming down from God. He that sitteth upon the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” The creation which is round about us at this hour waxeth old, and is ready to vanish away. Wise men tell us that there are evident preparations in the bowels of the earth for a burning up of the earth and of all the works of men that are upon it, for its centre is an ocean of fire. God shall but speak, and as once the waters leaped upon the world and utterly destroyed all things that were upon it, so shall he call to the waves of flame and they shall rise from their hidden furnaces to melt all things with their fervent heat. Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. The former things shall have passed away, and a new creation shall dwell beneath the new heavens, filling up the new earth; and the flower and perfection of the new creation shall be the church of the living God in her full bloom and perfectness. Even now the regenerate are a kind of first fruits of God’s creatures, the forerunners of the renewed universe; but then they shall be its centre and glory. The new birth is the beginning of the new creation: we lead the way, even we who are the church of the firstborn, but the whole creation groans to follow us so as to be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

It is the glorified church, I say, that is here spoken of, and hence the text may be said to refer to heaven, for at the present moment the nucleus of the glorified church is in heaven, and from heaven every defiled thing must be shut out. Hence, too, it may refer to the kingdom of the millennial age, when the saints will reign with Christ upon the earth for a thousand years, when even upon this battle-field our conquering Leader shall be crowned with victory, and where his blood was shed his throne shall be set up, for among the sons of men shall he triumph, even among those that spat in his face. The text may also be read as including the eternal world of future bliss, for of that glorious, endless, undefiled inheritance the church glorified will be the possessor, but out of her shall long before have been gathered all things that offend, and them that do iniquity. From heaven and from all heavenly joys and states sin must be shut out. Into the perfected church there shall never enter anything that defileth, and from all its honours and rewards every polluted person is shut out by immutable decree.

I should like you for a minute or two to think of that perfected church as she is described in this chapter, for it is a description worthy of the profoundest study. What glory will surround the risen saints in their capacity as the city of God: “having the glory of God,” saith the eleventh verse. What a glory of glories is this! Even now, my brethren and sisters, you that are in Christ possess the grace of God, but you shall by-and-by conspicuously shine with the glory of God. At present you share in the dishonour which falls to the lot of your Master and his cause among a wicked generation, but then you shall share in the glory which is the reward of the travail of his soul. “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” How glorious will that church be whose light shall be the presence of God himself,-light in which the nations of them that are saved shall rejoice. O my God, write my name among them! And to that end write me among thy persecuted saints below. Well may we be content to endure what little of shame shall come upon the church militant on earth if we may participate in the honour of the church glorified above, for this is a glory which excelleth, “having the glory of God.”

The city is described as exhibiting great massiveness, for the length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. It is a solid square, perfect and compact:

“Thy walls are made of precious stones,

Thy bulwarks diamond square.”

What a church will the church of God be in those happier days! Now she is as a rolling thing, removed as readily as a shepherd’s tent; but then she shall stand firm as a cube which rests upon its base. We watch the church of God sometimes with trepidation and alarm, for though we know that the gates of hell shall not prevail against her, yet her feebleness makes the timid tremble; but in her state after the resurrection there shall remain no signs of feebleness, for that which was sown in weakness shall be raised in power. She shall be a city the like of which hath never been beheld, whose foundation shall be deeper than the depths beneath, and her towers shall reach above the clouds. No institution shall exist so long or flourish so abundantly as the church of the living God. When you think of the massiveness of the church of God, settled in her place by the Almighty himself who hath established her, remember at the same time her vastness, for a multitude that no man can number shall be comprehended among her inhabitants: her census shall prove her citizens to be as the stars of heaven for multitude. Her stones shall not lie cast about as a little heap, but from her vast foundation the living stones shall rise course upon course, twelve foundations of jewels, till “the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be exalted above the hills.” I say again, write my name down among the dwellers in the great city! What higher honour can I crave than to have it said, “this man was born there”? To be numbered with princes, to be named with emperors, what of it! Your golden fleece, and silken garter, and grided star are all poor toys; true glory lies in being part and parcel of the church, to-day despised and rejected of men, which shall ere long look forth fair as the sun, and astonish the world with the brightness of her rising. Ambition’s self needs ask no more than citizenship in the heavenly Jerusalem.

The perfection of the church is set forth in her being foursquare, her value in the sight of God by her walls being composed of the rarest gems, and her delights in the variety of the sparkling jewels which bedeck her, there being scarcely one precious stone omitted of those that were known to Orientals, while some are mentioned which are scarcely known to us at all. All manner of joys and treasures and pleasures and delights, every form and shade of excellence, virtue, and bliss shall belong to the perfected ones when their number and character shall be complete, and they shall be comparable to the city of God.

The safety and quiet of the church is set forth by her gates for ever open. In times of war the city gates are fast closed, but for the New Jerusalem there will remain no fear of foe, no need to set a watch against an invader. Gog and Magog will be slain, and Armageddon’s battle fought and finished, and unbroken rest shall be the portion of the glorified. Write my name among them, O my God, and permit me to enter into thy rest.

Best of all, remark how holy will the church be. She shall have no temple within her walls, for this simple reason, that she shall be all temple; she shall have no spot reserved for sacred uses, because all shall be “holiness unto the Lord.” The divine presence shall be in all and over all, and this shall be the joy of her joy, “The glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” Brethren, the glory of the church even here below is the presence of God in her midst, but what will that presence be when it shineth forth in noonday brightness? when spirits strengthened for the vision shall endure with transport the full splendour of Jehovah’s throne? Tongue cannot tell the glory, for thought cannot conceive it. Write my name among the blessed who shall see Jehovah’s face. O thou living God, my soul thirsteth after thee. To dwell in thy presence is the summit of the soul’s delight; to be with thee where thou art, and to behold thy glory, is the heaven of heaven. To what beyond this can thoughts aspire?

It being declared that the glorified church is to be all this, and a great deal more, of which we cannot now speak particularly, we may well long to enter within her gates of pearl. But what saith the text? I beseech you listen attentively to the solemn sound of the word of exclusion-“There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie.” Listen, I say, to this word of exclusion, though it sounds like a death-knell in my ears. Learn that it can be abundantly justified to the conscience of all thoughtful men; learn that your own soul, if it be honest, must set its seal to the sentence of exclusion. This is no arbitrary decree, it is a solemn declaration to which all holy spirits give their willing assent and consent; an ordinance of which even the excluded themselves shall admit the justice.

For, first, it is not meet that so royal and divine a corporation as the glorified church of God should be ruined by defilement. God forbid that “her light, which is like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal,” should ever be dimmed by the breath of sin. How beautiful was this fair world in the early morning of her creation, when the dew of her youth glistened upon her, and the sunlight of God made her face to shine. Keep watch and ward, ye shining ones, that this beauty be not marred! Let watchers and holy ones fly round the new-made world to drive far hence the apostate spirit and his fellows who kept not their first estate. Sad was the hour when with dragon wing the fallen spirit descended into Eden, advanced to mother Eve, and whispered in her ear the fell temptation. Oh, ye seraphs, would God your fiery swords had kept out the arch-deceiver, that this world might never have fallen, that we might have dwelt here amidst sunny glades, by pure rivers rippling o’er sands of gold, a holy and happy race, making every hill and vale vocal with the praise of God. Now, O earth, thou art a field of blood, but thou mightest have been a garden of delights; now art thou one vast cemetery, where all the dust was once a part of the living fabric of mortal men; but thou mightest have been as the firmament filled with stars, all shining to their Creator’s praise. Alas that Eden should now remain only as a name,-gone as a vision of the night! Inasmuch as we could heartily wish that evil had never entered into the primeval world, we earnestly deprecate the idea that it should ever defile the new. Shall those new heavens ever look down with amazement upon the flight of a rebellious spirit, flying, beneath their serene azure, on an errand of destruction? Shall the jewelled walls of the thrice holy city be overleaped by an enemy of the king who is there enthroned? Shall the serpent leave his horrid trail upon the heavenly Eden, twice made of the Lord? God forbid! The purity of a world twice made, the perfection of the church of the regenerate, the majesty of the presence of God, all demand that every sinful thing should be excluded. All heaven and heavenly things cry, “Write the decree and make it sure, there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth.” Grave it as in eternal brass, and let omnipotence go with the decree to execute it with the utmost rigour, for it would be horrible indeed if a second time evil should destroy the work of God. Into the church of the firstborn above the breath of iniquity must not enter. It cannot be that the work which cost the Redeemer’s blood should yet be defiled. The eternal purpose of the Father, and the love of the Spirit, forbid that the Lord’s own perfected church should be invaded by any unholy thing.

Brethren, there can be no entrance of evil into the kingdom of God, for it is the very essence of the bliss of the glorified church that evil should be excluded. Imagine for a moment that the decree of our text were reversed or suspended, and that it were allowed that a few unregenerate men and women should enter into the glorified church of God. Suppose, in addition, that those few should be of the gentler sort of sinners, not those who would profanely blaspheme the name of God, nor openly break the eternal Sabbath, but a few who are indifferent to God’s glory, and cold and formal in his praise. How could heaven bear with these? These who are neither cold nor hot are sickening both to Christ and to his people, and must they endure the nausea of their society? Why, as in a living body the existence of a dead piece of bone breeds fret, and pain, and disease, so would the presence of these few defiling ones cause I know not what of disquietude and sorrow. It must not be. Love to the saints demands that they be no more vexed by sin or sinners. Pity, mercy, yea, even the partiality of kindred love dare not ask that it may be. All heaven is up in arms at the supposition. Holy spirits are alarmed at the idea that they should be again tempted by the presence of evil. Fast bar the gates of pearl and never open them again, ye spirits, rather than that there should come upon that pure street of transparent gold a foot that will not walk in the ways of God’s commandments, or the halls of Zion be disgraced by a single spirit that shall refuse to love the holy and exalted name. Heaven were not heaven if it were possible for evil of any sort to enter there. Therefore, stand firm, O dread decree, for it would be cruelty to saints and destruction to heaven that there should in anywise enter into it anything that defileth.

Furthermore, let me beg you to consider that there is an impossibility of any defiled, sinful, unrenewed person ever entering into the body corporate of the glorified church of God-an impossibility within the persons themselves. Look, good sirs, the reason why wicked men cannot be happy is not alone because God will not let rebellion and peace dwell together, but because they will not let themselves be happy. The sea cannot rest because it is the sea, and the sinner cannot be quiet because he is a sinner. How could you, O natural, unregenerate man, ever enter into the kingdom of heaven as you are? You are not capable of it; it is not possible to you. Holiness has in it no attractions for you, since you love sin and the wages of it. You do not know God, and cannot see him; for this is the privilege of the pure in heart, and of them alone. You live in a world where everything has been made by the great Lord, and yet you do not perceive his hand, so great is your blindness. Shall blind men grope through the streets of the New Jerusalem? You are unacquainted with the simplest elements of spiritual things; for they can only be spiritually discerned, and you have no spiritual faculty. You are blind and deaf, yea, dead to God and heavenly things:-you know you are. Well, then, of what avail would it be that you should enter the spiritual realm, supposing it to be a place? for if you were admitted into the place called heaven, you would not be a partaker of the state of heaven, and it is the state of mind and character which is, after all, the essence of the joy. To be in a heavenly place and not in a heavenly condition would be worse than hell, if worse can be. What are songs to a sad heart? Such would heaven be to an unrenewed mind. The element of glory would destroy rather than bless an unrenewed mind. It is as though you saw before you a blazing furnace, in which happy creatures disported themselves among the flames, bathing themselves in the white heat, leaping in rapture amid the rising sparks; for they are children of the flame, who drink in fire, and find it life. Imagine yourself to be a poor fly such as you hear buzzing on the window-pane; and you ask to enter into the glow of the furnace, thinking to be as merry as the fire-children. Keep back. Why tempt your doom? You will die soon enough; why ask to perish more quickly? No place would be so dreadful to a sinner as the place where God is most openly manifest. That holy element, which is the habitat of the new-born soul, would be the grave, the everlasting prison-house of an unholy soul could it enter there. To the wicked the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light, and the glory of the Lord is terror, and not bliss. Oh, unconverted hearer, they sing in heaven; but in their songs your ear would find no delight. They worship God in heaven; but as divine worship is irksome to you, even if it be kept up for an hour or so below, what would it be to dwell for ever and ever in the world to come in the midst of hallelujahs? O soul defiled with sin, you are incapable of heaven. The Roman Emperor Caligula, in his madness, made his horse first-consul of Rome; but his horse could not be a magistrate; it could not judge or govern, whatever the emperor might decree; though he fed it upon gilded oats from an ivory manger, it was a horse and nothing more. Even so, if a man be unregenerate, and unbelieving, we may do what we will with him, but he cannot rise to spiritual joys, and if we could even bid him come into heaven, still he would remain what he was, incapable of the joy and bliss which God hath prepared for them that love him. So standeth it a fact in the very essence and nature of things, that there shall in no wise enter into the realm of the spiritual, the kingdom of the true, the land of the blessed, the home of the perfected, anything that defileth. It cannot come there from incapacity within itself.

Let me add that our own hearts forbid that evil should so enter. As I mused on this text I supposed myself to be defiled with sin, yet standing outside the pearl gates of heaven. Then I said within myself, “If I might enter there defiled as I am, would I do so?” and my heart answered, “No, I would not if I might. How could I blot such brightness and spoil such happiness?” Suppose myself infected to-day with a deadly fever-an incurable typhus, which would bring death to all that touched me. The blast is pitiless, and the snow is falling, and I stand shivering at the door of one of your houses longing for shelter. I see inside the room your little children, sporting in full health: shall I venture among them? I long to escape from the cold without; but if I should enter your room I should bring to you fever, and death to your innocent little ones and to yourselves, and thus turn your happiness into misery. I would turn away and brave the storm, and sooner die than bring such desolation into a friend’s abode. And well might any honest spirit say at sight of the perfect family above, “Nay, if I might, I would not be admitted into a perfect heaven while yet I might defile it, and spread the fell contagion of moral evil.” You know, brethren, how a few rags from the East have sometimes carried a plague into a city; and if you were standing at the quay when a plague-laden ship arrived you would cry, “Burn those rags; do anything with them, but do keep them away from the people. Bring not the pest into a vast city, where it may slay its thousands!” So do we cry, “Great God, forbid it that anything that defileth should enter into thy perfected church! We cannot endure the thought thereof.” Draw your swords, ye angels; stand in your serried ranks, ye seraphim, and smite every defiled one that would force a passage within the gates of pearl. It must be so: “There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth.”

The fiat of God has gone forth, and the fiery sword is set at the gate of the new Eden. Into the first paradise there came the serpent; into the second never shall the subtle tempter enter. Into the first paradise there came sin, and God was driven from it as well as man; but into the second there shall never come anything that approximates to sin or falsehood; but the Lord God shall dwell there for ever, and his people shall dwell there with him. Thus much, then, upon the word of exclusion.

I desire, as I continue this meditation, in the power of the Holy Spirit, not so much to preach as to think inwardly, and ask you to think with me, of that word of exclusion working within the soul,-within my soul, within yours. It sits in judgment upon me, and it chastens me. It strikes home to my conscience, and rouses me to self-examination. Its voice is solemn, and strikes heavily upon the ear, as we remember its wide sweep and comprehensive breadth-“There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth.” No person who defiles, no fallen spirit, or sinful man can enter. And as no person, so no tendency, leaning, inclination, or will to sin can gain admission. No wish, no desire, no hunger towards that which is unclean shall ever be found in the perfect city of God. Nor even a thought of evil can be conceived there, much less a sinful act performed. Nothing shall ever be done within those gates of pearl contrary to the perfect law, nor anything imagined in opposition to spotless holiness. Consider such purity, and wonder at it: the term “anything that defileth” includes even an idea, a memory, a thought of evil. Thoughts that flit through the mind as birds through the air that never roost or build a nest-even such shall never glance across the skies of the new creation. It is altogether perfect! And, mark well, that no untruth can enter-“neither whatsoever maketh a lie.” Nothing can enter heaven which is not real; nothing erroneous, mistaken, conceited, hollow, professional, pretentious, unsubstantial, can be smuggled through the gates. Only truth can dwell with the God of truth. These are sweeping and searching words,-no evil, nothing that works to evil; no falsehood, nothing that works to falsehood, can ever enter into the triumphant church of God. O my soul, my soul, how bears this upon thee? Cuts it not to the very quick? For how art thou to enter, defiled as thou art, and so diseased with falsehood of one sort or another?

Well may we be aroused when we remember what defiled and defiling creatures we have been in the days of our unregeneracy. Brethren, let us not shrink from the humbling contemplation. Come down from your high places and see the horrible pit in which you lie by nature. Think of your past lives, I pray you, of those days in which ye found pleasure in walking after the flesh. I call on you to remember the sins of your youth, and your former transgressions, of thought, word, and deed. If they are shut out who defile, and are defiled, where are you? where are you? For these sins of ours, though they were committed years ago, are none the less sinful to day; they are as fresh to God as if we perpetrated them this very moment. Thou art still red-handed, O sinful man, though thy crime was worked some twenty years ago. Thou art black, O sinner, still, though it be fifty years ago that thy chief sin was committed; for time has no bleaching power upon a crimson sin. The guilt of an old offence is as fresh as though it were wrought but yester-morn. Our sins in themselves make us unclean and unfit for holy company, and, alas, they are many. Our sins have left a second defilement on us, by creating the tendency to do the like again. Is there one among us that has sinned who does not know that he is all the more likely to sin again? Since after once being drawn aside by sin there are stronger draggings in the same way, sin once committed becomes a fountain of defilement. The stream in which the fish has sported will be sought by it again in its season, and the swallow will return to its old nest; even so will the mind return to its folly. Ay, so it is; and if everything that defileth is shut out from the holy city, my God, my God, am not I shut out too?

Bethink you that not only does actual sin shut men out of heaven, but this text goes to the heart by reminding us that we have within us inbred sin, which would defile us speedily, even if we were now clean of positive transgression. The fount from which actual sin comes is within every unrenewed bosom. How can you and I enter heaven while there is unholy anger in us? The best of men are too apt to retain an unhallowed quickness of temper, which under certain circumstances worketh wrath. There shall in no wise enter into heaven a hasty temper, or a quick imperious spirit, or a malicious mind; for these defile. In certain persons there is no quickness of spirit, but there is a cold, chill obstinacy; so that having once resolved, though the resolve be evil, they stand to it doggedly and cannot be moved. Like obstinate mules, they can scarcely be driven; blows cannot stir them from their purpose. Disobedient obstinacy cannot enter the kingdom: my hearers, are you under its dominion? And, oh, there is in all of us a lusting after evil of some sort or other. Only place us in certain conditions, and the flesh longs after forbidden things, and though we chide ourselves and check the longing, yet is there not within us a relish for the sweet stolen morsels of transgression? We could weep our eyes out when we discover what a palate for pleasurable sin our old nature still retains; yea, a longing for the very sin of which we most bitterly repent and from which we most eagerly long to be delivered. How can we hope to enter heaven if there be these appetites in us? They are there, and they defile! What can we do? There, too, is that vile thing called “pride.” Why, some of us cannot be trusted with a pennyworth of success, but we are exalted above measure. Some of God’s children cannot have ten minutes’ fellowship with Christ but they must needs put on their fine feathers and crow right lustily because they feel themselves to be nearing absolute perfection. Alas for the pride of our hearts, and the pollution which comes of it! How can such vain creatures be admitted among the glorified? Nor is this all; for sloth preys on many, and tempts them to shun God’s service, and especially to shun the cross of Christ. Sloth is a rust which has a sadly defiling power: we gather moth and mildew from inaction. Never is a man pure who is not zealous in the service of God. We rot to corruption if we lie still; how, then, shall we be admitted within the jewelled city? Ah, look within thy heart, my brother-look steadily beneath the fair film of the surface, and mark the inward evil which it conceals. Judge not thyself alone when at thy best, occupied with thy prayers and praises and almsgivings, but look steadily into thy soul at other times, and thou shalt see a loathsome mass of evil life, a seething corruption moving within thy heart; for evil remaineth even in the regenerate; and this cannot enter heaven. Thank God, it cannot. Even though the word of exclusion staggers me, and sends me back as with a stunning blow, and makes me cry, “Thou shuttest me out, my God, by this thy decree;” yet I feel that if it be so, the decree is right, and just, and good. “There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth.” Amen and amen.

Now, I ask you whether this word of exclusion does not, in you who know its meaning, slay all hope of self-salvation? For, first, here are our past sins, and they defile, and make us defiling. How are we to get rid of them? How can we wash out these polluting blots? Tears! So much salt water thrown away if looked upon as a bath for sin! Good works performed! They are already due to God. How shall future discharge of debts repay the past? O, my God, if I have ever known what sin means, I have also known that it is impossible that its defiling nature should ever be changed, or that the pollution should ever be removed by any efforts of my own. I spoke with one the other day who said that she was seeking salvation by good works. I knew that she had performed self-denying acts of charity, and I asked her whether she felt nearer to the salvation at which she aimed. I knew that I spoke to a sincere, honest person, and her reply did not surprise me. She answered sadly, “The more I do, the more I feel I ought to do, and I am no nearer to the point I am aiming at.” And so it is; the more a sincere heart doth seek to serve God, the more it feels the shortcoming of its service of him; and the more a person seeks after purity by his own efforts, the further he judges himself to be from it. Our standard rises as we rise towards it; our conscience becomes tender in proportion as we obey it; and so, in the nature of things, rest of heart comes not in that manner. Ah, there remaineth not beneath heaven anything that can wash out the defilement of past sin save one only cleansing flood. O sinful man, plunge thy hands into the Atlantic and thou shalt crimson every drop of its tremendous waters, and yet the stain shall be as scarlet as before. No, no, no: it is certain that no man can enter heaven, by reason of his transgression and his sinfulness, except omnipotence shall cleanse him.

But then look at the other part of the difficulty, that is, the making of your own heart pure and clean. How shall this be done? How shall the Ethiopian change his skin and the leopard his spots? Have you tried to master your temper? I hope you have. Have you managed it? Your tendencies this way or that, you have striven against them, I hope, but have you mastered them? I will tell you. You thought you had. You thought you had bound the enemy with strong ropes: you tied him and you fastened him down, and you shut him up in an inner chamber, and you said, “The Philistines be upon thee, Samson.” You felt that the champion was vanquished now, but oh how grimly did he laugh at you as the old adversary arose within you, and snapped the bonds, and hurled you to the ground; defeated when you thought that you had won the victory. I cannot overcome myself, nor overcome my sin. I will never cease from the task, God helping me, but apart from the divine Spirit the task is as impossible as to make a world.

It seems to me that we may most fitly come to the close of our sermon by thinking of the word of salvation, which just meets the difficulty raised by the sentence,-“There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth.” But, first, my past sin, what of that? There are many who are even now within the church of God above, and we will ask concerning them, “Who are these arrayed in white robes, and whence came they?” We receive the reply, “These are they that have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” “In the blood of the Lamb!” I feel as if I could sing those words. What joy that there should be anything that can take all my stains away,-all without exception, and make me whiter than snow. If Christ be God, if it be true that he did within that infant’s body contain the fulness of the Deity, and if, being thus God and man, he did take away my sin, and in his own body on the tree did bear it, and suffer its punishment for me, then I can understand how my transgression is forgiven and my sin is covered. Short of this my conscience cannot rest. The misty atonements of modern divines cannot calm my conscience; they are not worth the time spent in listening to them, they are cobwebs of the fancy, altogether insufficient to sustain the strain even of the present conscience, much less of the conscience which shall be aroused by the judgment bar of God. But this truth,-Christ instead of me, God himself the offended one in the offender’s place, bowing his august head to vengeance and laying his eternal majesty in the dishonour of a tomb: this is the fulness of consolation. O Lamb of God, my sacrifice, I shall enter heaven now! I shall pass the scrutiny of the infallible watchers. I shall not be afraid of the eyes of fire. I shall be without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing-“Washed in the blood of the Lamb!” This is our first great comfort, brethren-“He that believeth in him is not condemned.” He that believeth in him is justified from all things from which he could not be justified by the law of Moses. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.”

But here is the point, there is still no entrance into the holy city so long as there are any evil tendencies within us. This is the work, this is the difficulty, and since these are to be overcome, how is the work to be done? Simple believing upon Christ brings you justification, but you want more than that; you need sanctification, the purgation of your nature, for have we not seen that until our nature itself is purged the enjoyment of heaven must be impossible? There can be no knowledge of God, no communion with God, no delight in God hereafter unless all sin is put away and our fallen nature is entirely changed. Can this be done? It can. Faith in Christ tells us of something else beside the blood. There is a Divine Person,-let us bow our heads and worship him-the Holy Ghost who proceedeth from the Father, and he it is who renews us in the spirit of our minds. When we believe in Jesus, the Spirit enters into the heart, creating within us a new life; that life struggles and contends against the old life, or rather the old death, and as it struggles it gathers strength and grows; it masters the evil, and puts its foot upon the neck of the tendency to sin. Do you feel this Spirit within you? You must be under its power or perish. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his. I would not have you imagine that in death everything is to be accomplished for us mysteriously in the last solemn article; we are to look for a work of grace in life, a present work, moulding our character among men. Oh, sirs, the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit is not a sort of extreme unction reserved for death-beds, it is a matter for the walks of life and the activities of to-day. I do not know how much is done in the saint during the last minute of his lingering here; but this I know, that in a true believer the conquest of sin is a matter to be begun as soon as he is converted and to be carried on throughout life. If the Spirit of God dwells in us, we walk not after the flesh but after the spirit, and we mortify the corruptions and lusts of the old man. There must be now a treading under foot of lust and pride, and every evil thing, or these evils will tread us under foot for ever in the future state where character never changes. There must be now a rejection of the lie, a casting out of the false, or we shall be cast out ourselves for ever. There must be now a cry, “O Lord, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Beloved, it is to this we must come, to be washed in the water which flowed with the blood from Jesus’ side, for there must be a purging of nature as well as a removal of actual transgression, or else the inevitable decree, like a fiery sword, will keep the gate of paradise against us. “There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie.”

O my hearers, suppose we should never enter there! Nay, start not, for the supposition will soon be a fact with many of you except you repent. Suppose we should be in the next world what some of us are now, defiled and untruthful-what remains? That is an awful text in the parable of the virgins-“And the door was shut.” You read of those who said, “Lord, Lord, open to us,” to whom he answered, “I know you not.” You have read of them, will any one of us be among them? Will anyone of us who has a lamp, and is thought to be a virgin soul, be among the shut out ones, on whose ear shall fall the words, “I know you not whence you are.” You see you cannot be anywhere else but out unless you are in; and you must be shut out if you are defiled and defiling. Dear heart, this is a question I beg you to look to at once. You do not know how short a time you have left to you in which you may look into it. Some who were here but a Sabbath-day or so ago are now gone from us. Eleven deaths reported at one church-meeting among our members! We are a dying people; we shall all be gone within a very short time. I charge you by the living God, and as you are dying men and women, see to it that you are not shut out, so as to hear the fatal cry, “Too late, too late, ye cannot enter now.” There shall be no purgation in eternity, and no possible way of entering in among the perfected, for it is written, “There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth.” No crying, “Lord! Lord!” no striving to enter in, no tears, no, not even the pangs of hell itself, shall ever purge the soul so as to make it fit to join with the holy church above, should it pass into the future state uncleansed. Shut out! shut out! O God, may that never be true of anyone among us, for Christ’s dear name’s sake. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Revelation 21.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-855, 867, 51 (Vers. II.)