C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.”-Romans 14:10-12.

No doubt there is an error in our version, for where in the tenth verse we read, “The judgment seat of Christ,” it should be “The judgment seat of God.” I suppose the word “Christ” slipped into certain manuscripts because Paul had been speaking of Christ, and it was thought to be natural that he should continue to use the same name. Paul did not say “Christ,” but “God,” but by that word he meant the same person. Paul knew that Christ is God, and when he was speaking of Christ it was no deviation from the subject for him to speak concerning him under the title of “God.” It was necessary here for him to use the word “God,” because he was about to quote from the Old Testament Scripture a passage which speaks concerning the sovereignty of God, which is to be acknowledged and confessed by all mankind. The passage runs, “We shall all stand before the judgment seat of God, for it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” I beg you to notice how strongly this passage goes to prove the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ; because the whole run of the passage is concerning Christ. “To this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living.” And then the apostle immediately, without any break in the sense whatever, speaks of God, because he was speaking of the same person, and he quotes a passage which relates to God himself, and uses it as relating to Christ. It does, indeed, relate to our Lord Jesus Christ, for he is “very God of very God,” and God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ. In another place Paul most distinctly declares that it is Christ who is to judge the world. Look into the fifth chapter of the second epistle to the Corinthians, at the ninth verse, “We labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him; for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” Therefore, though the reading should be God, the sense is “Christ.”

It would have been a most important point with Paul to draw a distinction between Christ and God if there had been any doubt as to his divinity. It would have been a most necessary thing to prevent us from idolizing a mere man. But here, so far from taking any pains to make such distinction between Christ Jesus and God, as would have been needful if he were not God, he interchanges the two words. He speaks of them in the same breath, for they are one. “The Lord shall judge his people,” and it is “the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom” (2 Tim. 4:1). “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him” (Rev. 1:7). This judgment by Christ is by our apostle proved from an Old Testament prophecy which certainly refers to Jehovah himself. Read Isaiah 45:23, and learn from it that our Lord Jesus is Jehovah, and let us joyfully adore him as our Saviour and God, to whom be glory for ever and ever.

The doctrine of eternal judgment, upon which I shall speak this morning, is introduced to us for a certain reason. Paul saw among Christians a much too common habit of judging one another. I suppose if Paul were to come among us now he would not see any remarkable difference upon that point. Just then the bulk of the converts were Jews, and as such, they brought into the Christian Church their former religious habits; those men who had devoutly kept the ceremonial law felt as if they would violate their consciences if they did not continue to keep its more prominent precepts; and though they gave up certain of its observances which were evidently abolished by the gospel, they kept up others, such as special days for religious fasts and feasts. Many true but weak believers were very scrupulous about what they should eat, thinking to keep up the legal distinction between meats clean and unclean. At the same time the church had in her midst men who said, and said correctly, “The coming of Christ has done away with the old dispensation; these holy days are all types and shadows whose substance is in Christ. Has not the Lord shown to Peter, who is the minister of the circumcision, that henceforth nothing is common or unclean?” The men of strong faith blamed their weaker brethren for being superstitious, and by their superstition bringing a yoke of bondage upon themselves. “No,” replied the weaker sort, “we were not superstitious; we are conscientious, while you go much too far in your liberty, and cause us to stumble.” Thus while the strong looked down upon the weak, almost doubting whether they could have come into the liberty of Christ at all, the weak condemned the strong, almost charging them with turning their liberty into licence. They were both wrong, for they were judging one another. Paul, who was himself most strongly opposed to the Judaizing party, and in every respect came out clear and straight upon the bold lines of Christian liberty, was, nevertheless, so actuated by the spirit of his Master that he was ready to be all things to all men, and seeing grave peril of dissension where all should be love, he rushed into the breach, and he said, “Do not judge one another: what have ye to do with judging? There is a judgment yet to come.” He mentioned the future judgment on purpose that by its powerful influence upon their minds they might be taken away from the frivolous amusement, for it does not come to much more-the frivolous amusement, the mischievous meddlesomeness of judging one another, when already the judge is at the door.

Let us linger a minute over this practical point, and see how Paul rebukes the spirit of judging one another. First, he says in effect that it is unnatural. “Why dost thou judge thy brother? Why dost thou set at nought thy brother? He whom thou judgest or despisest is thy brother. Thou hast called the weak one superstitions, but he is thy brother: thou hast called the strong man licentious because he enjoys his liberty; but he is thy brother.” If we must needs judge, certainly it should not be those who are linked to us by the ties of spiritual relationship. Are not all believers one family in Christ? Wherever the root of the matter is to be found there exists an overwhelming argument for undying unity. Why, then, wilt thou take thy brother by the throat and drag him before thy judgment seat, and make him answer to thee, brother to brother, and then condemn him? Shall a brother condemn a brother? When the outside world censures Christians we understand it, for they hated our Master, and they will hate us; but inside the charmed circle of Christian communion there should be esteem for one another, a defending of each other: we should be anxious rather to apologise for infirmity than to discover imperfection. Far be it from us to find flaws where they do not exist. Would to God it were so, that perfect love cast out all suspicion of one another, and that we had confidence in each other, because Christ our Lord will hold up our brethren, even as he has upheld ourselves.

This judging among Christians, then, is, first of all, unnatural; and, next, it is an anticipation of the judgment day. There is to come a day when men shall be judged-judged after a better fashion than you and I can judge. How dare we, then, travesty God’s great assize by ourselves mounting the throne and pretending to rehearse the solemn transactions of that tremendous hour? Judgment will come soon enough: may the Lord have mercy upon us in that day. My brother, why needest thou hurry it on by thyself ascending the throne? Cannot God do his own work? “Vengeance is mine: I will repay,” saith the Lord. We need not spend our time in perpetually trying to discern between the tares and the wheat. The tares to which the Saviour referred in that parable were so like the wheat that men could not tell which was which, and his command was, “Let both grow together until the harvest.” At harvest time he will give the reapers directions for separating between the real wheat and that which was a mockery of it. As for us, the saints shall judge the world, but for the present the order is “judge nothing before the time.” We can separate between the outwardly vile and the outwardly pure, by marks which God has given us, such as these, “By their fruits ye shall know them,” and “If any man love not the Lord Jesus let him be anathema.” As guardians of the church’s honour we are bound to use these rules; but between brother and brother, differing on minor points, between Christian and Christian, each one obeying his conscience, we are not to exercise mutual condemnation. Come hither, brethren! Here is work enough for you all in dragging the great net to shore. What are you at there? Sitting down and trying to put the good into vessels, and cast the bad away? That work may be left till later on; but now let us drag the net to shore. Haul away, brethren, with all your might! By-and-by shall come the time for reckoning up the results of our fishery, and separating between the seeming and the true.

Moreover, we not only anticipate the judgment, but we impudently intrude ourselves into the office and prerogative of Christ when we condemn the saints. “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ:” that is the true throne of judgment. How many times I have had to appear before the judgment seat of my fellow-men! Sometimes one’s motives are impugned; another time one’s actions, or mode of speech, or way of managing church affairs. Well, it is a small matter for us to appear before men’s judgment seat: we may very well refuse to put in an appearance at all, for man is not our master, and we are not bound to answer to his summons. Why is it that so many brethren seem to think that they are masters, and have a right to judge the Lord’s servants? I know some Christians who not only form judgments, and very severe judgments, upon all that are round about them as to the facts that come under their notice; but they, also, without any facts whatever, conceive notions concerning persons whom they have never seen, and are full of obstinate prejudices against them. Many twist words into meanings which they were never intended to mean by the person who used them; and others, even without so much as the excuse of misunderstanding words, sit down and imagine evil against their brethren. They dream that they are slighted, and then hard judgments follow. Once imagine that you are badly treated, and then you will think that everything is done out of spite to you, and the next thing is to think spitefully of others. There are persons about who are liberally gifted in the line of gossip who by their talk would make you think that you were living in Sodom and Gomorrah, if not in Tophet. You are made to fear that everyone you have trusted is a vile deceiver, that every man who is zealous is mercenary, that every minister is preaching in public what he secretly disbelieves, that every generous subscriber only gives out of pride; that, in fact, you are living in a place where the race of Judas Iscariot is to be seen, reproduced ten thousand times over. One goes to bed and cannot sleep after talking to these tale-bearers. The consolation is that there is no truth in their wonderful discoveries. These slanderous statements are a base burlesque of judgment, and nothing more. Why are they thought so much of? After you and I have done our best to hold our mimic court and have summoned this man and that man before us, what is it at its best but child’s play, and at its worst a violent usurpation of the rights of Christ Jesus, who alone reigns as lawgiver in the midst of his church to-day, and who will sit as judge on the clouds of heaven by-and-by to judge the world in righteousness?

The apostle argues strongly against this evil spirit of censoriousness in the Christian Church; and to give a knock-down blow to it he says, “It is all needless; you need not judge one another, for both your brother and yourself will stand before the judgment seat of God. There is no need of your condemnation, for if any man be worthless the Judge will condemn him: you may not interfere with the business of the great Supreme; he will manage the affairs of men far better than you can.”

Yet more, your judgment is unprofitable: you would spend your time much more profitably if you would recollect that you also who can be so exact and severe in pointing out this fault here, and the other fault there, will be yourselves examined by an unerring eye. Your own account books have to be sent in, and to be examined item by item; therefore look well to your own matters. If you were watching your own heart, out of which are the issues of life; if you were watching your own tongue and bridling it, and so mastering your whole body; if you were watching your own opportunities for usefulness; if you were observing your Master’s eye as a handmaiden looks to her mistress, you would be doing something that would pay you far better than censuring others, something much more to the glory of God, much more to the gain of the church, much more to the comfort of your own soul. So the apostle winds up by saying, according to the most forcible rendering of the original, “We must each one of us give an account of himself to God.”

Brothers, sisters, I bring these truths before you because they are meant for brothers in Christ, and not so much for the outside world. It is to those who have faith, and are in the family of love, that the word of warning is given that we do not judge, and to us the argument is addressed that we shall each one give an account for himself to God. I do not know that you specially need a warning against unkind judgments, but I know that you may need it, even as other churches have done. I am very thankful that we have not been much disturbed with this great evil; but, still, it does come up among all Christian people more or less. I read the other day in an interesting pamphlet upon the Apocalypse,* a note which furnishes me with an illustration: the writer endeavours to explain why the tribe of Dan is not mentioned in the Book of Revelation as having its chosen twelve thousand. All the other tribes are there, but Dan is missed, and Manasseh is put in his place. The author says it is because Dan signifies “judgment,” or “one that judges.” He says: “These ‘judges of evil thoughts’ have been sad troublers in Israel in all ages; not fearing to judge their brother and set at nought their brother, they have judged everything and everybody but themselves. All who have not pronounced their Shibboleth, nor seen eye to eye with them, have been adjudged as heretics, not to be tolerated, but tabooed to the extent of their ability. In vain for them has it been written, ‘Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the counsels of the hearts.’ Like their great ancestor of this tribe, they deal in foxes and firebrands, and too often set on fire their neighbours’ standing corn, an act we have never been able to commend even in Samson. This predilection for foxes and firebrands has unhappily developed in the seed of Dan to this day. And so in the place of Dan, The Judge, we get Manasses, One who forgets, one who, though cast off by his brethren, forgets and forgives their injuries, and we account it a good exchange; and in the New Jerusalem home, where failure will be no more, Dan, ‘a serpent in the way,’ or ‘a lion’s whelp,’ would be as much out of work as out of place.”

If any of the Danites hear or read this let them pray for grace to change their habits and natures.

Now I come to the doctrine itself, the solemn doctrine of judgment to come. May God make it impressive to our hearts. Our thoughts are now directed to the future judgment, and we notice concerning it, first, that the judgment will be universal: “For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” There will come a judgment, then, for all classes of persons; for the strong brother who with his knowledge of Christian liberty went as far as he should, perhaps further than he ought to have gone. He judged himself to be right in the matter, but he must stand before the judgment seat of Christ about it. There will also be a judgment for the weak brother. He who was so scrupulous and precise ought not to be censuring the other man who felt free in his conscience, for he will himself stand before the judgment seat of God. No elevation in piety will exclude us from that last solemn test, and no weakness will serve as an excuse. The man of one and the man of ten talents must alike be reckoned with. Weak Christians are exempted from many trials by the gentleness of God, but not from the ultimate trial, for we shall each one of us give an account of himself unto God: the strong and the weak. The men who bore office in the church will have to answer for it, even as saith the apostle Paul, in Hebrews 13:17, “They watch for your souls, as they that must give an account.” And again, “It is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful: he that judgeth me is the Lord.” I could on bended knees ask your pity for myself, having to minister to so large a congregation, and with so much larger a congregation outside to whom I weekly minister through the press. Ah me, who is sufficient for these things? Who shall be found faithful in such a position? I think all ministers might with tears in their eyes cry to you, “Brethren, pray for us.” It will be the height of my ambition to be clear of the blood of all men. If, like George Fox, I can say in dying, “I am clear, I am clear,” that were almost all the heaven I could wish for. Oh to discharge one’s ministry aright, and to be able to render an account like that of Paul, who said, “I have fought a good fight, I have kept the faith.” This is my soul’s longing.

Yes, but not only will ministers, and deacons, and elders, and persons who had high standing in the church have to appear before the judgment seat of Christ, but so will the most obscure of the members of the church, and those secret ones who never dared to take up membership at all. You will not be able to hide away for ever. The man with the one talent must be summoned before his Lord as certainly as the man with ten, and of each one a reckoning shall be taken. In our Lord’s parables it is ever the King’s own servants that are called before him. “The lord of those servants cometh and reckoneth with them.” Our Master will say to each one of his servants, “Give an account of thy stewardship.” “God shall judge the righteous and the wicked,” “for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God.” I have not time or space to enter into the differences of that judgment as it regards the righteous and the wicked, but I confine myself to the one fact that all mankind will be judged, according to the word of the Lord in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, at the fifth verse: “The day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according to his deeds: to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; but glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: for there is no respect of persons with God.”

What a motley throng will gather at that assize, of all nations and peoples and tongues! Persons of all ages, too. You boys and girls, and you who have lived through a long life. Kings and princes will be there to give in their weighty account, and senators and judges to answer to their Judge; and then the multitude of the poor and needy, and those that live neglecting God, and forgetful of their souls,-they must all be there. It is a universal judgment. John says, “I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God.” Both sheep and goats shall gather before the great dividing shepherd: the wise and foolish virgins shall both hear the midnight cry; the house on the rock and the house on the sand shall alike be tested by the last tremendous storm; tares and wheat alike shall ripen; bad fish and good shall be sorted out from the net, while the multitudes outside, the nations that knew not God, shall all without exception hear with trembling the summons to the dread tribunal.

Saints and sinners too, only on what a different footing, are all to be judged out of the books, and out of the Book of Life. Thus saith the word of the Lord,-“We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” To the saints the judgment of the things done shall be according to righteousness, for these things shall be taken in evidence that they were indeed reconciled to God. The Judge will say, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from before the foundations of the world.” And then shall come the evidence: “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat; thirsty, and ye gave me drink,” and so on. These fruits shall be the evidence that they were in Christ, the evidence of their being justified by faith; while on the other hand the sour and bitter fruit of the ungodly shall be an evidence that they were not planted of the Lord: “I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; sick and in prison, and ye did not minister unto me.” We need have no fear of the judgment to come when we know that we are in Christ, for who fears to enter a just court when he knows that by the highest authority he has already been cleared? How complete the Christian’s safety! For there will be no accuser. So bright will be the righteousness of a saint through faith that no accuser will appear. Hark, the herald gives forth the challenge! “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” All through the court it rings; and God is there-the faithful and all-seeing God. Does he lay anything to their charge? Far from it. “It is God that justifieth.” Outside the court the voice demands, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” They hear it in heaven, and angels who have watched the race of every believer, and seen how he has been running towards the goal, are silent as to any accusation. The challenge is heard in hell, where devils hate the godly, but they dare not forge a lie against them. Happy he who can also say, “There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the righteous Judge shall give me at that day.” Mark, he will give it as Judge, and on that day; how say some among you that there is no judgment for the saints? Who, then, need fear to enter the court when every accusation is silenced and a reward is expected?

But still you say that the believer has sinned. Yes, but that sin has been forgiven, and he has a righteousness with which to answer the law. I will show you ere I have done how the Christian has been judged, condemed, and tried, and in reference to him the essence of the judgment is past already, so that there can be no condemnation. Hence that second challenge, “Who is he that condemneth?” The Judge is the only one who can condemn, and we are sure that he will not, for “it is Christ that died, yea rather, that has risen again, who also maketh intercession for us.” Tremble not, therefore, at the doctrine that we shall all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, but pray that, as John puts it, “we may have boldness in the day of judgment,” because as Jude saith, the Lord Jesus “is able to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with great joy.”

Not a single person shall escape the judgment. There shall be no omission from the calendar; every being of the race of Adam shall answer for himself. “The kings of the earth, and the great men, and the chief captains and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man” must see the face of him that sitteth upon the throne. We shall have to put, in an appearance as men do in court when they are subpœnaed to attend. The word of Jesus is, “Behold I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.” Ah, how unwillingly will rebels come before that throne! Pharaoh! you must see a greater than Moses. Herod! you must see the young child upon his throne. Judas! you hanged yourself to escape the judgment of your conscience, but by no means can you escape the judgment of your God. Though four thousand years have elapsed since men died, and their bodies may have melted quite away, yet when the trumpet ringeth out clear and shrill their bodies shall live again, and they must all come forth, each one to answer for himself at that grand assize before the Judge of all the earth, who must do right with each of them. Let us, then, bow before the solemn truth that God hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained.

The second truth, which we must make as prominent as ever we can, is that it will be a personal judgment for each one. This is the pith of what the apostle is saying: “So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” The judgment will not proceed in a rough, indiscriminate manner, as upon a race or tribe, but each man will have to stand apart, and the account reckoned will not be of a family or a band, but of each individually for himself. Note this carefully, O men: We shall have to give an account each man for his own actions, for his own thought, for his own words, for his own intention; nay, not only of that, but of himself. We shall each man have to give account of the state of his own heart, of the condition of his mind before God, whether he repented, whether he believed, whether he loved God, whether he was zealous, whether he was truthful, whether he was faithful. If it only dealt with actions, words, and thoughts, the account would be solemn enough, but we must each one give an account of himself, of what he was as well as what he did, of what was in his heart as well as of that which came out of it in his deeds. Oh, what a trial will this be!

We shall then have to give an account of our judgments of others. We shall not have to answer for what they did, but for our daring to judge and condemn them. Did you ever think of this, you that judge others, that you are laying down the standard by which you will have to be judged yourselves? I generally find that those who are most severe towards others need and often expect great leniency towards themselves, but it will not be so at the last, for thus it is written, “With what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged.” How easy it will be to judge the fault-finding at the judgment day. The Judge will only have to say, “They have already condemned themselves: they have condemned their own faults as they saw them in others; they have used the sharpest judgments against less faults than their own; out of their own mouth let them take the sentence and depart.” You will have to render no account for other people, but you will have to render an account of yourself and how you judged other people. The last account will be wholly personal, therefore see ye to it.

That account will, according to my text, have connected with it full submission. “As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me.” You may to-day say, “I do not care about God”: you will have to care about him. As truly as God lives you will have to bow. You may say, “What matters it to me what Scripture says?” It will matter to you, as certainly as God lives, which is putting it on the most solemn certainty that can be. God has taken an oath about it, and declares that you shall own his sway. You had better bend at once, for you must either break or bow. God means to have his sovereignty acknowledged by all mankind. Hath he not made us? Do we not owe everything to him? He will not have his crown rights denied for ever. He is Lord of all, and he swears by himself that every knee shall bow and own it. You will have to come to it, my friend. Next, you will have to confess; so the text saith. By this I understand that you will have to acknowledge that God is your Lord and Master, and had a right to your services; that you ought to have kept his law; that in sinning you have done unrighteously and acted as you ought not to have acted. That confession you will not be able to withhold. Oh how the wicked will bite their tongues when they have to acknowledge their folly and wrong-doing; but it will have to come out of every man’s mouth. When God pronounces sentence, and the ungodly are sent down to hell, they will give their own assent to his righteousness in condemning and punishing them. The verdict of the castaways in hell is that they deserve it; and this is, indeed, the hell of hell, that they cannot deny the justice of those pains which come upon them as the result of their disobedience. God will see to it that we shall justify him either in life or in death, by confessing that he is righteous.

I appeal to you, my dear hearers, whether you are ready with your account which you will have to render to God: have you kept one at all? Sometimes when men appear before a court they plead that they have no books, and it is always a bad sign. You know what the judge thinks of him. Can you dare to examine yourself, and answer questions? Can you give an account of your stewardship? Have you kept it correctly, or have you credited yourself with large things where you ought to have debited yourself? Your fraud will be discovered, for the great Accountant will read it through, and will detect an error in a single moment. Is your account kept correctly, and are you ready to render it in at this moment? Christian brother, you and I might hold back a little before we could say “Ay” to that, and yet I trust we could say it, for we know ourselves to be accepted with God. As for those who have scarcely thought of their God, their Maker, what will they do? what can they do, when each one of them must give an account before God, and they have no account except that which will condemn them for having wasted their Master’s goods, for having defrauded the eternal God of that which was justly his due, and having spent upon their lusts that which ought to have been dedicated to their God? This judgment, then, will be personal. You cannot put your godly mother into the scale with yourself; you cannot associate your dear old father with yourself in judgment. O children, you cannot be judged by your ancestry, but by your acts; for it is written: “the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.” Oh, see ye to it: God help you to do so.

Thirdly, this judgment will be divine. “We shall stand before the judgment seat of God.” The judgment will be universal, personal, divine; and because it is the judgment seat of God, it will be a judgment according to truth. God will make no mistakes: he will not impute any wrong to us undeservedly, and he will not give us credit for right because we bore the appearance of it. He will search to the very core and essence of the matter. Are you ready to be tried as by fire? Trial by fire is but a scant figure of trial by the searching eye of the Most High God. He will test us by the supreme standard of perfect justice. We judge by one another, and if we are as liberal, or as prayerful, or as gracious as others we consider that it is all right. But the balances of the sanctuary are far more exact. It will not be you in one scale and I in another; and if I am as gracious as you, we shall both be accepted. Ah, no; there is another standard than that, the standard of truth and grace in the heart, and real love to God, and conformity to the image of Christ. Judge ye whether ye can stand that test. That judgment will be most searching. “The Lord pondereth the hearts.” He will not judge after the sight of the eyes, but search out our secrets. Then shall the foundations be tested, then shall all that the man rested on and stayed himself upon be tried, whether it be the Rock of Ages or whether it be the mere sand of presumption. There will be no such trial day before or after as that day of the assize of God. “For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.”

That judgment will be impartial. You and I are always partial in weighing ourselves. We generally give the most lenient verdict except when we happen to be despondent in spirit, and then we are morbidly sensitive. But God will judge us without partiality. Rich friend, that diamond ring will answer no purpose in that day: my ladies, those fine garments will make no impression in that court. My learned friend, that handle to your name will be of no avail; and you, fine sir, with your knighthood, earldom, or dukedom, will be none the better off; for coronets, and even imperial crowns all go for nothing before the throne of God, who is no respecter of persons.

This judgment will be final. The sentence of the Supreme Court will settle all. Doth he say, “Depart ye cursed”? They can do no other. Doth he say, “Come ye blessed”? Oh, how blessed to enter into the eternal home. May none of you ever hear him say, “Depart”; for he will never reverse the sentence: you will have to depart, and keep on departing, going further, further, and further away from him who is hope and life and joy. There is no hope held out that he shall ever say, “Come back again, ye cursed”; but no, “Depart into everlasting fire in hell.” God save us from such an ultimatum as that.

At the last judgment certain sins will prove to be of heavy weight. I will do no more than mention a few of them. There is one that is never treated leniently by any judge; it is contempt of court. God will speedily condemn those who have despised his authority. Are there any such here who have despised the Lord their God, and set at nought his counsel? They seldom or never think of God or his law, or even regard his day; but they say, “Who is the Lord that we should obey his voice?” Beware, ye despisers, and wonder and perish, for the Lord our God is jealous of his great name, and he hears the voices of them that scoff at him.

Rejection of mercy is also a high crime and misdemeanor. The Judge who shall sit upon the throne has already presented mercy to all of you, and the unconverted among you have refused it. Surely they deserve the deepest hell who slight eternal love. If the Judge can say, “The prisoner at the bar has had the glad tidings of forgiveness presented to him, but has refused to listen to the gracious message, or having listened, and being almost persuaded, he nevertheless put it off to a more convenient time, and here he stands a trampler on the blood of Christ.” This will be the fiercest heat of the eternal burnings. Ye refused mercy; ye put from you eternal life, and counted yourselves unworthy of salvation. This sin will be a millstone about the soul for ever.

Then there is the crime of wilful, deliberate sinning, with intent so to do. Have any of you been guilty of this fact, and have you not fled to Christ? Did you choose sin, knowing it to be sin? Are you still choosing sin, and living in it against the voice of conscience? Ah, believe me, sin repeated, sin continued in will bring swift and sure destruction. These sins go beforehand to judgment, and there lodge solemn plaints against the guilty.

I cannot close amid these clouds. Break forth, O sun! Turn to the passage from which Paul quoted; for there you shall hear a sweet gospel word which may fitly end my discourse. Paul’s mind was at Isaiah 45:23. He did not quote the words literally, but he gave the sense. Here is the passage: “I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.” Now, what words do you think come before these? You shall look for yourselves. I will wait while you open your Bibles. Do you see the blessed lines? God declares that every man shall bow before him, and confess his authority; but what word of exhortation stands before that oath of his? I wish I could make it flash out at this moment in letters of light right round the building,-“Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.” That mercy-message stands side by side with the judgment prophecy. Come, then, dear hearts, you that are guilty, come and bow before your God ere he ascends the throne of judgment. Come and do willingly what you will have to do by-and-by unwillingly. Come now, and confess that he is judge and ought to be honoured; confess that he is king and ought to be obeyed; confess that you are his subject and are bound to serve him; confess that you have done wrong, grievous wrong, in having broken his law; come and make out your own indictment; come and be your own accuser; come and condemn yourself; come and bow your head when God’s law condemns you; come and own that you deserve divine wrath, and submit yourself to the Lord’s justice. Then give another look to your God and Saviour and say, “My Lord, I know thou art my Judge; but thou art also my Redeemer: I accept the place of condemnation, but I see that thou didst stand there in my behalf, the just for the unjust, my substitute, bearing my sin and punishment. Blessed Lord, I accept thee as my substitute; I yield myself up to thee; I stand now tried, condemned, punished, dead, raised again in thee, and therefore pardoned, acquitted, justified, beloved, accepted for Jesus’ sake.” Oh, is not this a blessed ending to a solemn sermon?

“Bold shall I stand in that great day,

For who aught to my charge shall lay?

While through thy blood absolved I am

From sin’s tremendous curse and shame.”

God bless you. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Romans 14, 15:1-7.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-190, 363, 341.

FARM LABOURERS

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, June 5th, 1881, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth: but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry.”-1 Corinthians 3:6-9.

In all ages since the Fall there has been a tendency in the human heart to forget God, and get away from him. Idolatry has been the sin of all nations, including God’s favoured people, the Jews, and including certain persons who call themselves Christians, and yet make idols out of crosses and images. This vicious principle of ignoring God, and setting up something between our minds and our Creator, crops up everywhere, in every department of thought. When men study the works of God in nature they often hang up a veil to hide the great Worker. Because God acts in a certain way they call his method of action a law, and straightway they speak of these laws as if they were forces and powers in and of themselves, and thus God is banished out of his own universe, and his place is taken up in the scientific world by idols called “natural laws.” Take the region of providence, and here you find persons, instead of seeing the hand of God everywhere, looking to second causes; seeking causes of prosperity, and becoming very despondent if they do not appear to exist; or viewing the agents of affliction, and becoming angry against them, instead of bowing before the God who has used them for correction. It is easy to make idols out of second causes, and to forget the God who is everywhere present, causing all things to work together for good. That this evil principle should intrude into the church is very sad, and yet it is with difficulty excluded. You may bar all your doors as fast as you please, but the idol-makers will come in with their shrines. In the instance of the church at Corinth, Paul found the brethren forgetting their God and Saviour in their high esteem for certain preachers. Instead of all saying, “We are Christ’s disciples,” and uniting together to promote the common cause, they made parties, and one said, “Paul who founded this church is to be had in the greatest reverence, and we are of Paul”; others replied, “But Apollos is more eloquent than the apostle, and by him we have been edified till we have gone beyond Paul, and therefore we are of Apollos”; while a third party declared that they were of no sect whatever, for they were “brethren,” and were “of Christ.” These last, I suspect, either ignored or denounced the other two parties, and would not commune with them, in order to testify against their sectarianism and to promote unity. I only surmise this from the conduct of those “brethren” who in our day take the Corinthians to be their model, and cut off everybody else, being more exclusive than any other sect in Christendom. The Apostle warns the saints in Corinth against this: he brings the Lord before their minds, and bids them remember that if Paul plants and Apollos waters, still it is God that gives the increase. Since they think so highly of men, he will have it that “neither is he that planteth anything, nor he that watereth anything,” but God that giveth the increase is everything. See to it, dear friends, that ye set the Lord always before you in this church and in all your churches. Know them that labour among you, and esteem them highly in love for their work’s sake, but do not make them your dependence. Recollect that the ablest ministers, the most successful evangelists, the profoundest teachers are, after all, nothing but labourers on God’s farm,-“labourers together with God.” Let your mind be set upon the Master and not upon the servants, and do not say, “We are for this man because he plants,” and “we are for the other because he waters,” and “we”-a third party,-“are for nobody at all”; but let us join in ascribing all honour and praise unto God who worketh all our works in us, since every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, to whom be glory world without end.

I shall begin at the end of my text, because I find it to be the easiest way of mapping out my discourse. We shall first remark that the church is God’s farm: “Ye are God’s husbandry.” In the margin of the revised version we read “Ye are God’s tilled ground,” and that is the very expression for me. “Ye are God’s tilled ground,” or farm. After we have spoken of the farm we will next say a little upon the fact that he employs labourers on the farm; and when we have looked at the labourers-such poor fellows as they are-we will remember that God himself is the great worker: “We are labourers together with God.”

We begin by considering that the church is God’s farm. The Lord has made the church of his sovereign choice to be his own by purchase, having paid for it a price immense. “The Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.” Because the Lord’s portion was under mortgage, therefore the only-begotten Son laid down his life as the purchase price, and redeemed his people to be the Lord’s portion for ever and ever. Henceforth it is said to all believers, “Ye are not your own; ye are bought with a price.” Every acre of God’s farm cost the Saviour bloody sweat, yea, the blood of his heart. He loved us, and gave himself for us: that is the price he paid. What a ransom! The death of Jesus has sometimes almost seemed too high a price to pay for such poor land as we are; but the Lord having set his eye and heart upon his people would not draw back, but completed the redemption of the purchased possession. Henceforth the church is God’s freehold, and he hath the title deeds of it, yea, of you and of me, for we belong alone to him, and we are glad to own the fact: “I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine.” The church is God’s farm by choice and purchase.

And now he has made it his by enclosure. It lay exposed aforetime as part of an open common, bare and barren, covered with thorns and thistles, and the haunt of every wild beast; for we were “by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” We were part of the dreary desert till divine foreknowledge surveyed the waste, and electing love marked out its portion with a full line of grace, and thus set us apart to be the Lord’s own estate for ever. In due time effectual grace came forth with power, and separated us from the rest of mankind, as fields are hedged and ditched to part them from the open heath. Hath not the Lord declared that he hath chosen his vineyard and fenced it? Has he not said, “I will be a wall of fire round about you, and a glory in the midst”?

“We are a garden wall’d around,

Chosen and made peculiar ground;

A little spot, enclosed by grace

Out of the world’s wide wilderness.”

The Lord has also made this farm evidently his own by cultivation. What more could he have done for his farm? He has totally changed the nature of the soil: from being barren he hath made it a fruitful land. He hath ploughed it, and digged it, and fattened it, and watered it, and planted it with all manner of flowers and fruits. It hath already brought forth to him many a pleasant fruit, and there are brighter times to come, when angels shall shout the harvest home, and Christ “shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.”

This farm is kept what it is, as well as made what it is, by God’s continual protection. Not only did he enclose it, and work upon it by his miraculous power, to make it his own farm, but he continually maintains possession of it. “I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it I will keep it night and day.” If it were not for God’s continual power her hedges would soon be thrown down, and wild beasts would devour her fields. Wicked hands are always trying to break down her walls and lay her waste again, so that there should be no true church in the world; but the Lord is jealous for his land, and will not allow it to be destroyed. If the church were left of God she would become a howling wilderness, but she shall not come to such an end. A church would not long remain a church if God did not preserve it unto himself. What if God should say, “I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down: and I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briars and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.” What a wilderness it would become. What saith he? “Go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel.” Go ye to Jerusalem, where of old was the city of his glory and the shrine of his indwelling, and what is left there to-day? Go ye to Rome, where once Paul preached the gospel with power, what is it now but the centre of idolatry? The Lord may remove the candlestick, and leave a place that was bright as day to become black as darkness itself. Hence God’s farm remains a farm because he is ever in it to prevent its returning to its former wildness. Omnipotent power is as needful to keep the fields of the church under cultivation as to reclaim them at the first.

Inasmuch as the church is God’s own farm, he expects to receive a harvest from it. He comes to us looking for sheaves, where he has sowed so plentifully. The world is waste, and he looks for nothing from it; but we are tilled land, and therefore a harvest is due from us. Barrenness suits the moorland, but to a farm it would be a great discredit. Love looks for returns of love; grace given demands gracious fruit. Watered with the drops of the Saviour’s bloody sweat, shall we not bring forth a hundredfold to his praise? Kept by the eternal Spirit of God, shall there not be produced in us fruits to his glory? The Lord’s husbandry upon us has shown a great expenditure of cost, and labour, and thought; ought there not to be a proportionate return? Ought not the Lord to have a harvest of obedience, a harvest of holiness, a harvest of usefulness, a harvest of praise? Shall it not be so? I think some churches forget that an increase is expected from every field of the Lord’s farm, for they never have a harvest or even look for one. The people come together and take their seats on a Sunday and listen to sermons-that is, when they do not go to sleep; the sacraments are celebrated, a little money is contributed, a few poor folk are relieved, and affairs crawl along at a snail’s pace. As to affecting the whole village, or endeavouring to bring the surrounding population to Christ, I do not think it has occurred to some churches to attempt it; and when certain warmer spirits seek to bring sinners to Jesus the older and more prudent folks fetch wet blankets, and use them with very great effect, so that every sign of enthusiasm is damped down. Brethren, such things ought not to be. I conceive that if there were no Christians in England but the members of our baptized churches these would suffice for God’s great designs of mercy, if they were once awakened to real labour. Alas, the loiterers are many, but the labourers are few. Look, my brethren, at the number of Nonconforming churches in this land, and at the earnest ministers remaining in the Establishment, and if these were more fully quickened into spiritual life, would there not be workmen enough on the home farm? If all churches felt that they did not exist for mere existence sake, nor mere enjoyment’s sake, would they not act differently? Farmers do not plough their lands or sow their fields for amusement; they mean business, and plough and sow because they desire a harvest. If this fact could but enter into the pates of some professors, surely they would look at things in a different light. But of late it has seemed as if we thought that God’s church was not expected to produce anything, but existed for her own comfort and personal benefit. Brethren, it must not be so; the great Husbandman must have some reward for his husbandry. Every field must yield its increase, and the whole estate must bring forth to his praise. We join with the bride in the Song in saying, “My vineyard, which is mine, is before me: thou, O Solomon, must have a thousand, and those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred.” But I come back to the place from which I started. This farm is, by choice, by purchase, by enclosure, by cultivation, by preservation, entirely the Lord’s.

See, then, the injustice of allowing any of the labourers to call even a part of the estate his own. When a great man has a large farm of his own, what would he think if Hodge the ploughman should say, “Look here, I plough this farm, and therefore it is mine: I shall call this field Hodge’s Acres”? “No,” says Hobbs, “I reaped that land last harvest, and therefore it is mine, and I shall call it Hobbs’s Field.” What if all the other labourers became Hodgeites and Hobbsites, and so parcelled out the farm among them, I think the landlord would soon eject the lot of them. The farm belongs to its owner, and let it be called by his name; but it is absurd to call it by the names of the bumpkins who labour upon it. Is that a disrespectful title to apply to labourers? Why, I meant it for anybody and everybody whose name is used as the head of a party in the church. I meant Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and other great men, for at their best as compared with their Master they are only farm labourers, and we ought not to call parts of the farm by their names. Remember how Paul put it, “Who then is Paul and who is Apollos?” “Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?” The entire church belongs to him who has chosen it in his sovereignty, bought it with his blood, fenced it by his grace, cultivated it by his wisdom, and preserved it by his power. There is still but one church on the face of the earth, and those who love the Lord should keep this truth in mind. Paul is a labourer, Apollos is a labourer, Cephas is a labourer, but the farm is not Paul’s, not so much as a rood of it, nor does a single parcel of land belong to Apollos, or the smallest allotment to Cephas: “Ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” The fact is that in this case the labourers belong to the land, and not the land to the labourers: “For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas.” We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.

We have now to notice, as our second head, that the great husbandman employs labourers. By human agency God ordinarily works out his designs. He can, if he pleases, by his Holy Spirit, get directly at the hearts of men, but that is his business, and not ours; we have to do with such words as these: “It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” The Master’s commission is not, “Sit still, and see the Spirit of God convert the nations”; but, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” This is God’s method in supplying the race with food. In answer to the prayer, “give us this day our daily bread,” he might have bidden the clouds drop manna, morning by morning, at each man’s door; but he sees that it is for our good to work, and so he uses the hands of the ploughman and the sower for our supply. God might plough and sow his chosen farm, the church, by miracle, or by angels; but it is a great instance of his condescension towards his church that he blesses her through her own sons and daughters. He employs us for our own good, for we who are labourers in his fields receive much more good for ourselves than we bestow. Labour developes our spiritual muscle and keeps us in health. “Unto me,” says Paul, “who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.” It is a grace, then. We find it to be a means of grace to our souls to preach the gospel. I have heard it said, and I believe there is some truth in it, that those who have to preach are under the temptation of getting so familiar with sacred things that they cease to feel their power. If this be true it is an awful proof of our total depravity, for the more familiar we are with holy things the more we ought to be affected by them; and this I know, it has been the greatest means of grace to me to be bound by my office to study the Scriptures, and wait upon God for help in expounding them. Some of you who do not grow in grace by hearing other people might possibly get on better if you were yourselves to try and preach: at any rate, you might not be quite so fault-finding with other folks. When I hear a person say, “I cannot hear my minister,” I suggest to him to buy a horn. “Oh,” he says, “I do not mean that. I mean that I cannot enjoy his preaching.” Then I say to him, “Preach yourself.” “I cannot do that.” “Then do not find fault with those who are doing their best.” Instead of blaming the ploughman, just try a turn in the furrow yourself. Why grumble at the weeds? Take a hoe, and work at them like a man. Do you think the hedges untidy? Put on the leather gloves, and help us trim them.

Our great Master means that every labourer on his farm should receive some benefit from it, for he never muzzles the ox which treadeth out the corn. The labourer’s daily bread comes out of the soil. Though he works not for himself, but for his Master, yet still he has his portion of food. In the Lord’s granary there is seed for the sower, but there is also bread for the eater. However disinterestedly we may serve God in the husbandry of his church we are ourselves partakers of the fruit. It is a great condescension on God’s part that he uses us at all, for we are poor tools at the best, and more hindrance than help.

The labourers employed by God are all occupied upon needful work. Notice, “I have planted, Apollos watered.” Who beat the big drum, or blew his own trumpet? Nobody. On God’s farm none are kept for ornamental purposes. I have read some sermons which could only have been meant for show, for there was not a grain of gospel in them. They were ploughs with the share left out, drills with no wheat in the box, clod-crushers made of butter. I do not believe that our God will ever pay wages to men who only walk about his grounds to show themselves. Fine orators who display their eloquence are more like gipsies who stray on the farm to pick up chickens than honest labourers who work to bring forth a crop for their master. Why, many of the members of our churches live as if their only business on the farm was to pluck blackberries or gather wild flowers. They are great at finding fault with other people’s ploughing and mowing, but not a hand’s turn will they do themselves. Come on, my good fellows. Why stand ye all the day idle? The harvest is plenteous, and the labourers are few. You who think yourselves more cultivated than ordinary people, if you are indeed Christians, must not strut about and despise those who are hard at work. If you do, I shall say, “That person has mistaken his master; he may probably be in the employ of some gentleman farmer, who cares more for show than profit; but our great Lord is practical, and on his estate his labourers attend to needful labour.” When you and I preach or teach it will be well if we say to ourselves, “What will be the use of what I am going to do? I am about to teach a difficult subject: will it do any good? I have chosen an abstruse point of theology: will it serve any purpose?” Brethren, a labourer may work very hard at a whim of his own and waste his labour, but this is folly. Some discourses do little more than show the difference between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee, and what is the use of that? Suppose we sow the fields with sawdust, or sprinkle them with rose-water, what of that? Will God bless our moral essays, and fine compositions, and pretty passages? Brethren, we must aim at usefulness: we must as labourers together with God be occupied with something that is worth doing. “I,” says one, “have planted”: it is well, for planting must be done. “I,” answers another, “have watered:” that also is good and necessary. See to it that ye can each bring in a solid report, but let no man be content with the mere child’s play of oratory, or the getting up of entertainments and such like.

On the Lord’s farm there is a division of labour. Even Paul did not say, “I have planted and watered.” No, Paul planted. And Apollos certainly could not say, “I have planted as well as watered.” No, it was enough for him to attend to the watering. No one man has all gifts. How foolish, then, are they who say, “I enjoy So-and-so’s ministry because he edifies the saints in doctrine, but when he was away the other Sunday I could not profit by the preacher because he was all for the conversion of sinners.” Yes, he was planting; you have been planted a good while, and do not need planting again, but you ought to be thankful that others were made partakers of the benefit. One soweth and another reapeth, and therefore instead of grumbling at the honest ploughman because he did not bring a sickle with him you ought to have prayed for him that he might have strength to plough deep and break up hard hearts. Let us do all that we can, and try to do more, for the more work we can turn our hands to the better. “You must not have too many irons in the fire,” said somebody. But I say, Put all the irons into the fire, and if you have not fire enough, cry to God till you have; set your whole soul on fire, and keep all your irons hot. Yet you may find it wise to direct your strength into one line of things which you understand, so that by practice you may come to be skilful in it. Each man should find out his own work and do it with his might.

Observe that, on God’s farm, there is unity of purpose among the labourers. Read the text. “Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one.” One Master has employed them, and though he may send them out at different times, and to different parts of the farm, yet they are all one in being used for one end, to work for one harvest. In England we do not understand what is meant by watering, because the farmer could not water all his farm; but in the East a farmer waters almost every inch of ground. He would have no crop if he did not use all means for irrigating the fields. If you have ever been in Italy, Egypt, or Palestine, you will have seen a complete system of wells, pumps, wheels, buckets, channels, little streamlets, pipes, and so on, by which the water is carried all over the garden to every plant, otherwise in the extreme heat of the sun it would be dried up. Planting needs wisdom, watering needs quite as much, and the piecing of these two works together needs that the labourers should be of one mind. It is a bad thing when labourers are at cross purposes, and work against each other, and this evil is worse in the church than anywhere else. How can I plant with success if my helper will not water what I have planted; or what is the use of my watering if nothing is planted. Husbandry is spoiled when foolish people undertake it, and quarrel over it, for from sowing to reaping the work is one, and all must be done to one end. O for unity! Let us pull together all our days, even as we have done in this church hitherto.

We are called upon to notice in our text that all the labourers put together are nothing at all. “Neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth.” The workmen are nothing at all without their master. All the labourers on a farm could not manage it if they had no one at their head, and all the preachers and Christian workers in the world can do nothing unless God be with them. Remember that every labourer on God’s farm has derived all his qualifications from God. No man knows how to plant or water souls except God doth teach him from day to day. All these holy gifts are the grants of free grace. All the labourers work under God’s direction and arrangement, or they work in vain. They would not know when or how to do their work if their master did not guide them by his Spirit, without whose help they cannot even think a good thought. All God’s labourers must go to him for their seed, or else they will scatter tares. All good seed comes out of God’s granary. If we preach, it must be the true word of God or nothing can come of it. More than that, all the strength that is in the labourer’s arm to sow the heavenly seed must be given by his Master. We cannot preach except God be with us. A sermon is vain talk and dreary word-spinning unless the Holy Spirit enlivens it. He must give us both the preparation of the heart and the answer of the tongue, or we shall be as men who sow the wind. When the good seed is sown the whole success of it rests with God. If he withhold the dew and the rain the seed will never rise from the ground; and unless he shall shine upon it the green ear will never ripen. The human heart will remain barren, even though Paul himself should preach, unless God the Holy Ghost shall work with Paul and bless the word to those that hear it. Therefore, since the increase is of God alone, put the labourers into their place. Do not make too much of us, for when we have done all we are unprofitable servants.

Yet, though inspiration calls the labourers nothing, it makes a great deal of them, for it says, “Every man shall receive his own reward, according to his own labour.” They are nothing, and yet they shall be rewarded as if they were something. God works our good works in us, and then rewards us for them. Here we have mention of a personal service and a personal reward: “Every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour.” The reward is proportionate, not to the success, but to the labour. Many discouraged workers may be comforted with that expression. You are not to be paid by results, but by endeavours. You may have a stiff bit of clay to plough, or a dreary plot of land to sow, where stones, and birds, and thorns, and travellers, and a burning sun may all be leagued against the seed, but you are not accountable for these things; your reward shall be according to your labour. Some put a great deal of labour into a little field, and make much out of it. Others use a great deal of labour throughout a long life, and yet they see but small result, for it is written, “one soweth, and another reapeth”; but the reaping man will not get all the reward, the sowing man shall receive his portion of the joy. The labourers are nobodies, but they shall enter into the joy of their Lord.

Unitedly, according to the text, the workers have been successful, and that is a great part of their reward. “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.” Frequently brethren say in their prayers, “A Paul may plant, an Apollos may water, but it is all in vain unless God gives the increase.” This is quite true, but another truth is too much overlooked, namely, that when Paul plants and Apollos waters God does give the increase. We do not labour in vain. There would be no increase without God, but then we are not without God: when such men as Paul and Apollos plant and water there is sure to be an increase; they are the right kind of labourers, they work in a right spirit, and God is certain to bless them. This is a great part of the labourers’ wages. I am rich, I am increased in goods, I have need of nothing when I see souls converted; my heart leaps for joy; my spirit is glad, and I am ready to sing, “My soul doth magnify the Lord”: but if it were ever to come to this, that I stood here Sunday after Sunday and saw no conversions, and the church rather going down than increasing, I should take it as an intimation that I had better take my plough somewhere else and scatter my seed on other soil. I would break my heart over non-success, or cry to God to break it, for he that worketh and getteth no fruit is disheartened in his labour. What would you farmers do? You are half inclined to give up now, because you have had two or three bad years; but what would you do if you never saw a harvest at all? Why, you would clear out and be off to the western prairies or to the bush of the southern continent, to see if the soil somewhere else would repay your labour. Do the same, brother ministers! If you have been at work in one spot for years, and have not led souls to Jesus, pack up your traps and go somewhere else. Do not for ever break your plough upon rocks. It is a big world, and there is plenty of good ground somewhere, let us seek it. If they persecute you in one city flee to another, and let the word of God be published all the more widely by your moving about.

So much upon the labourers. Now for the main point again. God himself is the great worker. He may use what labourers he pleases, but the increase comes alone from him. Brethren, you know it is so in natural things: the most skilful farmer cannot make the wheat germinate, and grow, and ripen. He cannot even preserve a single field till harvest time, for the farmer’s enemies are many and mighty. In husbandry there’s many a slip ′twixt the cup and the lip; and when the farmer thinks, good easy man, that he shall reap his crop there are blights and mildews lingering about to rob him of his gains. God must give the increase. If any man is dependent on God it is the husbandman, and through him we are all of us dependent upon God from year to year for the food by which we live. Even the king must live by the increase of the field. God gives the increase in the barn and the hayrick; and in the spiritual farm it is even more so, for what can man do in this business? If any of you think that it is an easy thing to win a soul I would like you to try. Suppose that without divine aid you should try to save a soul-you might as well attempt to make a world. Why, you cannot create a fly, how can you create a new heart and a right spirit? Regeneration is a great mystery, it is out of your reach. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” What can you and I do in this matter? it is out of our pale, and beyond our line. We can tell out the truth of God, but to apply that truth to the heart and conscience is quite another thing. I have stood here and preached Jesus Christ, preached my whole heart out, and yet I know that I have never produced any saving effect upon a single unregenerate man unless the spirit of God has taken the truth, and opened the heart, and placed the living seed within it. Experience teaches us this. Equally is it the Lord’s work to keep the seed alive when it springs up. We think we have converts, and we are not long before we are disappointed in them. Many are like blossoms on our fruit trees; they are fair to look upon, but they do not come to anything; and others are like the many little fruits which fall off long before they have come to any size: a cold night or a blight will come, and away go our hopes of a crop: it is just so with hopeful converts. He who presides over a great church, and feels an agony for the souls of men, will soon be convinced that if God does not work there will be no work done: we shall see no conversion, no sanctification, no final perseverance, no glory brought to God, no satisfaction for the passion of the Saviour. Well said our Lord, “Without me ye can do nothing.”

What is the effect of all this upon your minds? Briefly I would draw certain practical lessons out of this important truth: the first is, if the whole farm of the church belongs exclusively to the great Master Worker, and the labourers are worth nothing without him, let this promote unity among all whom he employs. If we are all under one Master, do not let us quarrel. It is a great pity when ministers harshly criticise one another, and when Sunday-school teachers do the same. It is a miserable business when we cannot bear to see good being done by those of a different denomination who work in ways of their own. If a new labourer comes on the farm, and he wears a coat of a new cut, and uses a hoe of a new shape, shall I become his enemy? If he does his work better than I do mine, shall I be jealous? Do you not remember reading in the Scriptures that, upon one occasion, the disciples could not cast out a devil? This ought to have made them humble; but to our surprise we read a few verses further on that John and others saw one casting out devils in Christ’s name, and John says, “We forbad him, because he followeth not with us.” They could not cast out the devil themselves, and they forbade those who could. A certain band of people are going about winning souls, but because they are not doing it in our fashion, we do not like it. It is true they use all sorts of strange devices and wild excitements, but they do save souls, and that is the main point. Yet there are gentlemen who never converted half a soul in their lives who cry, “This is fanaticism.” Go and do better before you find fault. Instead of cavilling, let us encourage all on Christ’s side. Wisdom is justified of her children. The labourers ought to be satisfied with the new ploughman if his master is so. Brother, if the great Lord has employed you, it is no business of mine to question his right. I do not like the look of you, and cannot think how he can have such a fellow upon the farm; but as he has employed you I have no right to judge you, for I dare say I look as queer in your eyes as you do in mine. Can I lend you a hand? Can I show you how to work better? Or can you tell me something so that I may do my work better? May not the Master employ whom he pleases? If a new hoe or a new rake comes out and you that have been doing work steadily for years open your eyes and say, “I shall not use that new-fangled thing”-are you wise? Do not use the new invention if you have not tried it and can work better in your own way; but let the other man use it who finds it a handier tool. If new methods of getting a hearing for the gospel are invented by the ingenuity of earnestness let the brethren use them; and if we cannot imitate them let us at least feel that we are still one, because “One is our Master, even Christ.”

This truth, however, ought to keep all the labourers very dependent. Are you going to preach, young man? “Yes, I am going to do a great deal of good.” Are you? Have you forgotten that you are nothing? “Neither is he that planteth anything.” A divine is coming brimful of the gospel to comfort the saints. If he is not coming in strict dependence upon God he, too, is nothing. “Neither is he that watereth anything.” Power belongeth unto God. Man is vanity and his words are wind; to God alone belongeth power and wisdom. If we keep our places in all lowliness our Lord will use us; but when we exalt ourselves he will leave us to our nothingness.

Next notice that this fact ennobles everybody who labours in God’s husbandry. This passage makes my heart leap as I read it; my very soul is lifted up with joy when I mark these words, “For we are labourers together with God”: we are God’s fellow-workers: mere labourers on his farm, but labourers with him. Does the Lord work with us? Yes. “The Lord worketh with them with signs following.” “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work,” is language for all the sons of God as well as for the great Firstborn. God is with you, brother; God is with you, sister, when you are serving him with all your heart. Speaking to your class concerning Jesus, it is God that speaks by you; picking up that stranger on the way, and telling him of salvation by faith, Christ is speaking with you even as he spoke with the woman at the well; addressing the rough crowd in the open air, young man, if you are preaching of pardon through the atoning blood, it is the God of Peter who is testifying of his Son even as he did on the day of Pentecost. O brother labourers, ours is a high honour, since the Father is with us and works by us. As Mr. Wesley said, “The best of all is, God is with us.” The Lord of hosts is with us, and therefore we cannot fail. If we could in working with God be defeated, then God’s own honour would be compromised, and that cannot be.

But, lastly, how this should drive us to our knees. Since we are nothing without God, let us cry mightily unto him for help in this our holy service. Let both sower and reaper pray together, or they will never rejoice together. As a church God has blessed us so richly, that in generations to come it will be spoken of as a wonder that God should so greatly favour a congregation for so many years; but it has been wholly and alone in answer to prayer. So far from supposing that our union and prosperity are in any measure due to me, I protest that the sole cause of all the soul-winning that has been done in this place is to be found in the prayers of the saints. God in great mercy has given the spirit of prayer to you and to others who love me, and hence I am highly favoured. I am terribly afraid lest this prayerfulness should be damped down: I am jealous lest you should begin to think the preacher is something, and so should fail to pray for him. There is a thinner congregation when I am away, and therefore I am afraid that you have some reliance upon me, and do not expect a blessing if I am absent. Is it so? Having begun in the Spirit are ye now made perfect in the flesh? Have you begun to be of Spurgeon? This will never do. Brothers, this will never do. We must get rid of the tendency before it grows upon us. God can bless one man as well as another. I do not know that he always does do so, but he can; and perhaps if you expected him to do so he would do so. If you came up to this house with the same prayerfulness for others as you apportion me, you would get the same blessing. I am weakest of the weak apart from God, therefore pray for me; but others are weak too, therefore pray for them also. Do let us pray mightily for a blessing. Pray always. Pray in your bed-chambers, at your family altars, at your work, and in your leisure, and also in this place. Come in larger numbers to pray for a blessing. We have many appointed prayer-meetings, keep them all flourishing. The windows of heaven are easily opened if our mouths and hearts are opened in prayer. If the blessing be withheld, it is because we do not cry for it and expect it. O, brother labourers, come to the mercy-seat, and ye shall see God’s farm watered from on high, and tilled with divine skill, and the reapers shall soon return from the fields bringing their sheaves with them, though, perhaps, they went forth weeping to the sowing. To our Father, who is the husbandman, be all glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-1 Cor. 3.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-178, 483, 958.