The whole passage runs on this wise: “Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place? For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod. Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen. This also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.” The prophet, inspired of God, shows that the husbandman is wise and skilful in the management of his farm, in ploughing, sowing, and threshing, and in all the processes of husbandry. He asserts that this skill has been taught him of his God. I suppose that this is set before us, not as poetry, but as fact. The wisdom of earth is a reflection of the light of heaven. Have you not read-“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: and I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship”? God is the great teacher of agriculture as well as of handicrafts. If there had not been some information concerning husbandry conveyed to our first parent when he left the garden of Eden he would not have known how to till the soil, and produce a harvest, and before he had found it out by experience he would have died of starvation, and the race would have ended with him. The twenty-sixth verse says, “His God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him.” Yes, God has taught men the rudiments of husbandry; and I conclude therefore, that if God gives men instruction so that they are able to cultivate the land and produce a harvest of divers kinds of seed, he will much more instruct us if we wait upon him as to the tillage of our lives, so that we may not sow to the flesh and reap corruption, but may learn how to sow to the Spirit, and may of the Spirit reap life everlasting. We are all of us husbandmen. Some of us may be wicked husbandmen who slay the heir; or slothful husbandmen who suffer hemlock and darnel to come up where there should be wheat and barley; or fickle husbandmen who having put our hand to the plough have looked back; but we all have fields to till and work to do for the great Landlord to whom all things belong. If any of us wish to be true husbandmen, and so to sow and so to reap as to be found accepted of our great Lord, and to produce a harvest unto his glory, then we had better go to him for instruction, and ask him to teach us knowledge, and guide us in the way of wisdom. Breathe that prayer to God now, and may he hear it on behalf of every one of us by sending us his Holy Spirit.

There is one point which the prophet mentions as a matter of wisdom on the part of the husbandman. It is this: that he knows what is the principal seed to cultivate, and makes it his principal object. My text is, “Does not the husbandman cast in the principal wheat?” He does not set to work at haphazard without thought, and go to the granary and take out wheat, and cummin, and barley, and rye, and fling these about right and left; but he estimates the value of each grain, and arranges them in his mind according to their proportionate values. He does not think that cummin, and dill, and carroway, which he merely grows to give a flavour to his dish on the table, is at all of such importance as the wheat; and, though rye and barley have their values, yet he does not reckon that even these are equal to the corn which he calls “the principal wheat.” He is a man of discretion, he arranges things, and he places the most important thing in the front rank, and spends upon it the most care.

Herein I would have you learn of the husbandman. Do keep things distinct in your minds-not mixed and muddled by a careless thoughtlessness. Do not live a huddled life, without care and discretion, running all things into one; but sort them out, and divide and distinguish between the precious and the vile. See what this is worth, and what the other is worth, and set your matters in rank and order, making some of them principal, and others inferior. I suggest to you young people especially that, in starting life, you say to yourselves, “What shall we seek for?” For he that seeketh findeth. “What shall we sow?” “For whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” The little things of this life are to be attended to, as a man may sow cummin and fitches; there are some inferior things that ought not to be left undone, as a man should sow rye and barley in their appointed place. Still there is some principal thing-some master thing-some chief thing for which we ought to live,-and what shall that be? What ought to be the principal crop that we shall endeavour to cultivate in our hearts and lives? Have you turned that over? Have you really put the problem before you? or have you gone at it hit or miss, as if it did not matter what.

Remember, the eye is a most important part of the body. How shall a man direct his steps if he cannot see? And the motive is the eye. What have you an eye to? What are you living for? What is the principal aim with you? Is it going to be that of the old gentleman satirized in Horace who said to his son-“Get money: get it honestly, if you can; but, by all means, get money”? Is money-getting to be the principal wheat with you? Or will you choose a life of pleasure-“a short life and a merry one,” as so many fools have said to their great sorrow? Is it in dissipation that your life is to be spent? Are thistles to be your principal crop? Because there is a pleasure in looking at a Scotch thistle, do you intend to grow acres of pleasurable vices? And will you make your bed upon them when you come to die? Oh, look and see what is worthy of being the principal object in life; and, when you have found that out, then pray God of his Holy Spirit to help you to choose that one thing, and to give all your powers and faculties to the cultivation of it. The farmer, who finds that wheat ought to be his principal crop, makes it so, and lays himself out with that end in view. He looks around and says, “What is the best thing for me to produce?” and when he has found it out he calls it his principal thing. Dear friends, do, I pray you, remember that true godliness is the principal thing; therefore get it and prize it above all things.

Now, mark that this farmer was wise, because he counted that to be principal which was most needful. His family could do without cummin, which was but a flavouring. Even the fitches are thought to have been a plant which yielded a grain used in giving a taste to bread, but they were not a valuable crop. The family could do without cummin and fitches. Perhaps the mistress might complain, or the cook might grumble; but that did not signify so much as it would do if the children cried for bread. They certainly could not do without wheat, for bread is the staff of life. It is bread that strengtheneth man’s heart, and therefore the Eastern farmer must grow bread if he does not grow anything else. That which is most necessary he makes to be the principal thing.

Is not this common sense? If we were wisely to sit down and estimate, should we not say, “To be forgiven my sin, to be right with God, to be holy, to be fit to live eternally in heaven, is the greatest, the most needful thing for me, and therefore I will make it the principal object of my pursuit”? To glorify God and to enjoy him for ever is the most necessary thing for a creature; for a creature cannot be satisfied unless he is answering the end for which he was created, and it is the end of every intelligent creature, first, that he may glorify God, and next, that he may enjoy God. What a bliss it must be to enjoy God himself for ever and ever. Other things may be desirable, but this thing is needful. A certain competence, a measure of esteem among men, a degree of health-all these are the flavouring of life, but to be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation, this is life itself: this is the bread by which our soul’s best life is to be sustained. Oh, that we were all wise enough to feel that to be one with Christ is the one thing needful; that to be at peace with God is the principal thing; that to be brought into harmony with the Most High is the true music of life. The moralities and courtesies of life, like the minor seeds, may take their place in due order upon our farm; but the fear of the Lord is the principal wheat, and we must cultivate it with our whole heart.

This farmer was wise, because he made that to be the principal thing which was the most fit to be so. Of course, barley is very useful as food. Nations have lived on barley bread, and lived healthily too; and rye has been the nutriment of whole nations: neither have men starved when restricted to oats, and other grains. Still, for all in all, give me good wheaten flour. I know our Scotch friends like oat-cake better, but I hardly think that we shall all come to their mind while wheat flour is of a reasonable price. We still like a piece of wheaten bread, and look upon it as being the best staff of life. The oat is rather a knotty staff, but wheat is a fair good walking-cane, with which a man may go through life right merrily. Only give men enough of bread, and why should they complain? though I suppose they would, for even when the Israelites had manna in the wilderness, and that was angels’ food, they called it light bread. Brethren, the Eastern farmer knew that wheat was the most fitting food for man, and so he did not put the inferior grain, which might act as a substitute, into the prominent place; but he planted the most fitting thing, namely, the wheat, into the most prominent position. He did not speak of “the principal barley,” or “the principal rye,” much less “the principal cummin,” or “the principal fitches,” but “the principal wheat.”

And what is there, brethren, that is so fit for the heart, the mind, the soul of man as to know God and his Christ? Other mental foods, such as the fruits of knowledge, and the dainties of science, excellent though they may be, are inferior nutriment and unsuitable to build up the entire structure of our manhood. If I can get my God, my Saviour, I find my heaven and my all. My soul sits down to a crumb of truth concerning the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and finds the greatest satisfaction in living upon it. The more we can know God, and enjoy God, and become like God, and the more Christ is our daily bread, the more do we perceive the fitness of all this to the new-born soul. O beloved, make that to be your principal thing which is the fittest theme for an immortal mind.

“Religion is the chief concern

Of mortals here below;

May I its great importance learn,

Its sovereign virtue know!

“More needful this than glittering wealth,

Or aught the world bestows;

Not reputation, food, or health,

Can give us such repose.”

Moreover, this farmer was wise, because he made that the principal thing which was the most profitable. Under certain circumstances, in our own country, wheat is not the most profitable thing which a man can grow; but, ordinarily, wheat is the best crop that the earth yields for general consumption, and therefore the text speaks of “the principal wheat.” Our grandfathers used to rely upon the wheat stack to pay the rent. They looked to their corn as the arm of their strength; and though it is not so now, yet so it always was of old, and perhaps it may yet be so again. Anyhow, the figure is just as good with regard to true religion: to fear the Lord is the most profitable thing. I am told that rich men at the present time find it hard to get hold of anything which yields five per cent. Oh, but this blessed fear of the Lord is an extraordinarily profitable kind of business, for it brings in far more than a hundred per cent. or a thousand per cent. In this business a man begins without any capital; in fact, he commences over head and ears in debt, and yet he makes a fortune such as misers never dream of. You will say it is a strange way of starting in business: but the believing sinner does so. When he comes to God he is penniless, and as much in debt as he can be: the Lord discharges his heavy arrears of sin, and then the believer rises in riches by sinking more deeply into debt of another kind; not of sin, but of gratitude. He owes his great Lord more and more, till he is quite unable even to imagine the depth of his obligation. Neither does this grieve him, he comes to love the poverty which enables him to avail himself of the heavenly treasury; he even aspires to be more and more deeply in debt to the sovereign grace of God; his ambition is to increase his obligations, which even now overwhelm him. He grows richer as he feels himself poorer, and he is stronger as he knows more of his personal infirmity. It is a wonderful business this, in which bankrupts make fortunes, in which beggars rise to sit among princes.

“’Tis perfect poverty alone

That sets the soul at large;

While we can call one mite our own,

We have no full discharge.

“But let our debts be what they may,

However great or small,

As soon as we have nought to pay,

Our Lord forgives us all.”

Being freely discharged of our sins, we are by overflowing grace greatly enriched, so that we number among our possessions heaven itself, Christ himself, God himself. All things are ours. Oh, what a blessed trade it is to enter upon! There never was such a transaction as this; for when an empty sinner trades with a full Saviour he is himself filled with all the fulness of God. Assuredly this soul-enriching communion with Christ ought to be first upon our thoughts.

Then let godliness be the principal wheat, for there is nothing so profitable. Godliness is profitable for the life that now is, and for that which is to come. Godliness is a blessing to a man’s body: it keeps him from drunkenness and vice. It is a blessing to his soul: it makes it sweet and pure. It is a blessing to him every way. If I had to die like a dog, I would like to live like a Christian. If there were no hereafter, yet still, for comfort and for joy, give me the life of one that lives like Christ, or strives to do so. There is a practical everyday truth in the verse-

“’Tis religion that can give

Sweetest pleasures while we live;

’Tis religion must supply

Solid comfort when we die.”

Only that religion must not be of the common sort; it must not be a vain profession, but it must have for its root a hearty faith in Jesus Christ. See ye to it. Religion must be either everything or nothing, either first or nowhere. Make it the principal thing, and it will fill your soul with treasure.

Thus, you see, the farmer was right in having a principal crop, and in selecting the right seed to be his principal care. I do not suppose that he ever entered into any dispute upon the matter. He felt sure that wheat must be his principal produce, and he gave his thoughts to it. I cannot bear to hear people disputing as to whether it is worth while to give their heart to Christ. The people who question the value of faith have never tried it. Whenever you observe some conceited creature writing an essay against true religion, and putting it into one of our precious “reviews,” do not be carried away by hearing people say that it is mightily clever. If you read it, say to yourselves, “Certainly, this is a clever thing, for here is a blind man writing upon the harmony of colours; see what learned observations he makes upon scarlet and blue, which, he says, are precisely the same, only some narrow-minded folks insist upon their being different.” You may regard the wise remarks of an unregenerate philosopher as a very fine essay by a deaf man, upon music. Can a horse write upon angels? He does not know anything about the subject, nor does the unrenewed man understand the regenerate man. He has not the powers and faculties that would enable him to know, for the carnal man knows not the things that be of God: they are spiritually discerned, and as he has no spirit he cannot discern them. Until he is born again he has no spiritual knowledge or judgment. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” “Ye must be born again.” We are willing to take the evidence of scientific men upon the science that they have mastered; but we care nothing for their opinion upon a matter which is quite out of their range. Who shall tell me that there is no sweetness in honey? I do not accept the verdict of one who asserts it to be as tasteless as the white of an egg; but I wonder at the palate which can so deceive a man. Has a man lost the power of taste? What is his judgment worth? I put a piece of honeycomb into my mouth, and my experience of sweetness is a complete deliverance from all infidelity in that direction. When a man tells me that there is no sweetness in godliness, I smile for myself and drop a tear for him, and tasting yet more and more the deliciousness of godliness, I smile again to think that he should talk so fast about a thing of which he knows nothing. Oh, yes, we have made up our minds long ago; we are not going to argue about it any more: godliness is the principal wheat to us. We know it by experience. We have tasted and handled the good word of life. As the Eastern farmer was quite sure that the wheat was the principal thing, so are we quite sure of it, and henceforth, God helping us, we shall sow the principal wheat and leave others to sow tares or darnel if they will.

Thus have I said sufficient upon our first obervation: the husbandman is a lesson to us because he knows what is the principal thing.

Secondly, he is a lesson to us because he gives this principal thing the principal place, I find that the Hebrew is rendered by some eminent scholars, “He puts the wheat into the principal place.” That little handful of cummin, for the wife to flavour the cakes with, he grows in a corner; and the various herbs he plants in their proper borders. The barley he puts in its place, and the rye in its acre; but if there is a good bit of rich soil-the best he has-he says to his men, “That is for the wheat.” The principal place is for the principal crop. He gives his choicest fields to that which is to be the main means of his living.

Now, here is a lesson for you and for me. Let us give to true godliness our principal powers and abilities. Let us give to the things of God our best, our ripest, our most careful, our most intense thought. I pray you, do not take religion at second hand from what I tell you, or somebody else tells you; but think it over, and give it your principal thoughts. Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the word of God. The thoughtful Christian is the growing Christian. Remember, the service of God deserves our very best consideration and endeavour. We are poor things at our best, but we ought to give the Lord nothing short of our principal powers. God would not have us serve him heedlessly, but he would have us use all the brain and intellect and mind that we have in studying and practising the things of God. “Acquaint now thyself with God, and be at peace.” “Meditate upon these things. Give thyself wholly to them.” If ever your mind is more clear and active at one time than at another, then sow the principal wheat of godly contemplation and gracious devotion. If you feel more fresh and more inclined to think at one time of the day than at another, let your whole mind at once go forth towards the best things.

Be sure, also, to yield to this subject your most earnest love. The best field in the little estate of manhood is not so much the intellect as the affections; sow the principal wheat there. Oh, to have true religion in the heart; to love what we know-intensely to love it; to hold it fast as with the grip of life and death-never to let it go! The Lord says, “My son, give me thy heart,” and he will not be contented with anything less than our heart. When your zeal is most burning, and your love is most fervent, let the warmth and the fervency all go towards the Lord your God, and to the service of him who has redeemed you with his precious blood. Let the principal wheat have the principal part of your nature.

Towards God and his Christ also turn your strongest, and heartiest, and most fervent desires. When you enlarge your desire, desire Christ; when you become ambitious, let your ambition be all for God. Let your hunger and your thirst be after righteousness. Let your aspirations and your longings be all towards holiness, and the things that shall make you like to Christ. Give to this principal wheat your principal desires.

Then let the Lord have also always the attentive respect of your life. Let the principal wheat be sown in every action of life. I think if we are truly Christians we must, of necessity, be as much Christians outside the church as in it. We shall try to make our eating and our drinking, and everything we do, tend to the glory of God. Draw no line between the secular and the religious part of your conduct, but let the secular be made religious by a devout desire to glorify God in the one as much as in the other. Let us worship God in the commonest duties of life, even as they do who stand before his throne and serve him day and night. Pray daily, “Thy will be done in earth as it is done in heaven.” Let us sow the principal wheat in all the fields of our life. May we each one feel, “For me to live is Christ.” I cannot live without Christ, I would not live forgetting Christ, I could not live for anything but Christ. Let your whole nature yield to Jesus and to none else.

We should give to this principal wheat our most earnest labours; I mean for the spread of the gospel. A man ought to consecrate himself to the utmost in the matter of holy work for Jesus. I dread to see a professing man zealous in politics, and lukewarm in devotion; all on fire in the parish vestry, and chill as winter when he comes to a prayer-meeting. Some fly like eagles when they are serving the world, but they have a broken wing when they come into the worship of God. This should not be. If anything could rouse us up and make the lion within us roar in his strength, it should be when we confront the foes of Jesus, or fight for his cause. Our Lord’s service is the principal wheat, let us labour most in connection with it. Lay all your talents under tribute to King Jesus. Nay, lay out your whole body, soul, and spirit for God, who is your all in all. Spend and be spent, that this highest, noblest object of your life may be achieved: if you spend all and win Christ you will be a glorious gainer.

This should also take possession of us so as to lead us to our greatest sacrifices. The love of Christ ought to be so strong as to swallow up self, and make sacrifice our daily joy. For Christ’s name’s sake we should be willing to endure poverty, reproach, slander, exile, death, and count them all joy. Nothing should be precious to a Christian in comparison with Christ, who is preciousness to them that believe. I will put it to you whether it is so with you or not. Is the love of Jesus the principal wheat with you? Are you giving your religion the chief place or not? I am afraid that some people treat religion as certain gentlemen treat a part of their estate. They have a farm away from their dwelling-house which they call an off-hand farm; they put a bailiff into it, and only give an eye to it now and then. Some people hold their religion as an off-hand farm, and their minister is the bailiff, who has to see to it for them. I am sure such spiritual farming never pays. They have religion? Certainly. Yes. Oh, certainly; yes. But I am afraid they are like the man of whom the child spoke at the Sunday school. “Is your father a Christian?” said the teacher. “Yes,” said the child, “but he has not worked much at it lately.” I could point out several of this sort, who are sowing their wheat very sparingly, and choosing the most barren patch to sow it in. They profess to be Christians, but religion is a tenth-rate article on their farm. Some have a large acreage for the world, and a poor little plot for Christ. They are great growers of worldly pleasure and self-indulgence, and they sow a little religion by the roadside for appearance sake. They spend more time at billiards than at prayers. This will not do. God will not thus be mocked. If we despise him and his truth we shall be lightly esteemed. O come let us give our principal time, talent, thought, effort to that which is the chief concern of immortal spirits. May God help us so to do. May we imitate the husbandman who gives the principal wheat the principal place in his farm.

Let us learn a third lesson. The husbandman selects the principal wheat or the best seed when he is sowing his fields. That is another meaning of the text, namely, when a farmer is setting aside wheat for sowing, he does not put by the tail corn and all the worst of his produce; but if he is a sensible man he likes to sow the best grains that he can meet with. Many farmers search the country round for a good sample of wheat for sowing, for they do not expect to get a good harvest out of a bad sowing. The husbandman is taught of God to put into the ground the principal wheat-the selected kernels. If I am going to sow to the Lord and to be a Christian, I should sow the purest form of our holy religion, and I should try to do this, first, by believing the weightiest doctrines. I would like to believe, not this ism, nor that, but the unadulterated truth which Jesus taught; for if I want to produce in my soul a holy character, it will come by the Spirit of God out of true doctrine. Falsehood always breeds sin: truth begets and fosters holiness. You and I, therefore, ought to pick over all our seed carefully, judge and decide between truth and error, and not let our soul receive anything but what is according to the word of the Lord. We ought to choose out the most important truths; for I have known people attach the chief importance to the smallest things, and this is an error in judgment. I know a denomination which has differences amongst itself such as no ordinary person could understand; but the members make no end of warfare over these minute differences: they even exclude one another for not being exclusive enough, and if by vehement effort they all reach one point of exclusiveness they spy out another hopeful reason for quarreling, and commence to exclude again. Some microscopic point of doctrine or ritual suffices for the creation of party upon party. They are like mercury: pour it on a table, and see how it divides into tiny globules: it splits and splits again. They, no doubt, are persons of great precision and discernment; but it were well if their tithing of mint and aniseed led them to attend to the weightier matters of brotherly love and Christian unity. They fight over the fitches, and leave the wheat to the crows. I am not at all of their mind. Those who will may dispute over vials and trumpets, I shall mainly preach the doctrine of the precious blood and the glorious truth of substitution and atonement. These doctrines are the principal wheat, and therefore these shall fall into our furrows.

Next to that, we ought to sow the noblest examples. Many men are dwarfed because they choose a bad model to start with. They imitate dear old Mr. So-and-so till they grow wonderfully like him, only the best of him is left out. One minister happens to be of a gloomy turn of mind, and he preaches the deep experience of the children of God, and in consequence a band of good people think it to be their duty to be melancholy. How unwise! We should never copy any man’s infirmities. To be like Paul there is no need to have weak eyes; to be like Thomas there is no necessity to doubt; to be like Peter we need not be rash. If you copy any good man, there is a point at which you ought to stop short. Yet, if I must have a human model, I would like to have one of the bravest of the saints of God; but, oh, how much better to imitate that perfect pattern which you have in Christ Jesus. Thus when you are sowing the wheat of holy living, sow the best seed you can, by having Christ Jesus himself as the example by which you shape your life.

We shall sow the best wheat by seeing that we have the purest spirit. Alas, how soon do spirits become soiled by self, or pride, or despondency, or sloth, or some other earthly taint. But what a grand thing it is to try and live to God in the spirit of Christ Jesus. May we be humble, lowly, bold, self-sacrificing, pure, chaste, and holy: this can only be produced by the Holy Ghost.

And, then, there is one more mode of sowing selected seed. We should endeavour to live in the closest communion with God. One dear brother prayed in our little meeting before the present service that we might have as much grace as we were capable of receiving, and that God would work in us all that he willed to work in us, and bring us into such a state that we might not hinder him in any good thing which he willed to do by us. This is to be our desire: we should rise to the highest form of spiritual life. If you do sow the principal wheat, get the best sort of wheat. There is religion and religion. There is a spirit and a spirit; and there is a system of divinity and another system of divinity. The best is always good enough for me. I exhort you not to rest content with anything short of the best that can be had. O young men, if you mean to follow Christianity, go in for it thoroughly. If you mean to serve the devil, serve him. He is a pretty master! Remember his wages! But if you wish to serve Christ, do not go sneaking through the world as if you were ashamed of your Lord. If you are Christ’s, show yourself. If you are worthy of so great a captain, put on your regimentals. Rally to his banner, gather to his trumpet call, and then stand up, stand up for Jesus. If there is any manhood in you, this great cause calls for it all. Exhibit it, and may the Spirit of God help you so to do.

Fourthly, the husbandman attends to the principal crop with the principal care. This Hebrew language always astonishes me, for it conveys such a mint of meaning. Sometimes when I study a verse I find that the critics say that it means this, that, and the other, until I have thought, “This language is miraculous, so full, so deep: very different from our poor English tongue. It teaches us many truths in a few words, and, like a diamond, it has a hundred facets, each flashing forth a distinct ray of light. This plenitude of meaning leads us to reflect upon a far more weighty matter. It is wonderful how much God can put into a word. Why, he put himself into one. The name of our divine Lord is “the Word of God.”

Some critics insist upon it that the proper translation of our text is, that the farmer plants his wheat in rows. I do not know whether our farmers often plant wheat. They sow the seed in due order, but I do not hear much of planting it. It is said that the large crops in Palestine in old time were due to the fact that they planted the wheat, absolutely putting it in root by root, so that there might be no more wheat in a row than there ought to be, and they set it in lines so that it was not checked or suffocated by its being too thick in one place, neither was there any fear of its being too thin in another. The wheat was planted, and then streams of water were turned by the foot to each particular plant of wheat. No wonder, therefore, that the land brought forth abundantly.

We give our principal care to the principal thing. Our godliness should be carried out with earnest thought: our service of God should be performed with great care. Brethren, are we careful enough as to our religious walk? Have you ever searched to the bottom of your profession? Have you ever enquired into the reason of your belonging to your present denomination? Why do you happen to be members of a certain church? Your mother was. Well, there is some good in that reason, but not enough to justify you in the sight of God. Why do you happen to profess, as you do, such and such a form of Christianity? Did you ever look into it? I do pray you judge your standing. If any Christian minister is afraid to urge you to this duty I should stand in doubt of him. I am not at all afraid. I wish you to examine all that I teach you. I beg you to do it, for I would not like to be responsible for another man’s creed. Like the Bereans, search and see whether these things be according to Scripture or not. One of the greatest blessings that can come upon the church would be a searching spirit which would refer everything to the Holy Scriptures. If they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them; therefore try the spirits by this infallible test. In all things render service to God as carefully as the Eastern farmer planted his wheat. You serve a precise God, therefore be precise in his service. He is a jealous God, therefore be jealous of the least taint of error or mistake in anything that you do unto him.

Take care, also, that you nourish every part of your religion with prayer, even as the farmer watered each plant. Pray for grace from on high that your soul may never be parched and dried up. Perform to your faith, to your hope, to your love, and to all the graces that are in your soul every needful service which the husbandman renders to his wheat. Watch, weed, ward, and water every gracious principle: give your graces your principal care, for they are to yield your principal harvest.

With one more lesson I close. Do this, because from your principal care you may expect your principal crop. If religion be the principal thing, you may look to religion for your principal reward. The harvest will come to you in various ways. For instance, you will make the greatest success in life if you wholly live to the glory of God. Success or failure must much depend upon the suitableness of the endeavour. I shall never be able to conduct a choir, but I may succeed in preaching, for that is my proper work. Now you, Christian man, if you try to live to the world you will not succeed, for you are not fitted for it. Grace has spoiled you for sin. If you live to God with all your heart you will succeed in it, for God has made you on purpose for a holy sphere. As he made the fish for the water, and the bird for the air, so he has made the believer for holiness, and for the service of God; and you will be out of your element, you will be a fish out of water, or a bird in the stream, if you leave the service of God. The Eastern farmer’s prosperity hinges on his wheat, and yours upon devotion to God. It is to your faith and love that you must look for your joy. Is there any bliss like the bliss of knowing that you are in Christ, and are the beloved of the Lord? It is to your religion that you must look for comfort on a sick and dying bed; and you may be there very soon. “Ay, and the sooner the better,” you may say, if you have grown this principal wheat, and have sown to the Spirit that you may reap life everlasting.

In the world to come what a crop, what a harvest will come of serving the Lord! What will come out of all else? Nothing but vanity of vanity. A man has made a million of money, and he is dead. What is he the better for his gold? A warrior becomes an emperor, his fame rings throughout all the earth: he dies. What has he of all his honours? What will any of you have at the last if you live to the world? To live to the world is like playing with boys in the street for halfpence, or entertaining yourself as children do with bits of platter and oyster shells. A life devoted unto God yields real and substantial results, but all else is waste. Let us think so, and gird up our loins to serve the Lord. May the divine Spirit help us to sow the principal wheat, and live in joyful expectation of reaping a joyous harvest in due season, according to the promise, “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” That which was the cause of our principal anxiety here shall be the source of our endless felicity hereafter.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Matthew 6:19-34.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-660, 463, 805.

BAPTISM-A BURIAL

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, October 30th, 1881, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”-Romans 6:3, 4.

I shall not enter into controversy over this text, although over it some have raised the question of infant baptism or believers’ baptism, immersion or sprinkling. If any persons can give a consistent and instructive interpretation of the text, otherwise than by assuming believers’ immersion to be Christian baptism, I should like to see them do it. I myself am quite incapable of performing such a feat, or even of imagining how it can be done. I am content to take the view that baptism signifies the burial of believers in water in the name of the Lord, and I shall so interpret the text. If any think not so, it may at least interest them to know what we understand to be the meaning of the baptismal rite, and I trust that they may think none the less of the spiritual sense because they differ as to the external sign. After all, the visible emblem is not the most prominent matter in the text. May God the Holy Spirit help us to reach its inner teaching.

I do not understand Paul to say that if improper persons, such as unbelievers, and hypocrites, and deceivers, are baptized they are baptized into our Lord’s death. He says “so many of us,” putting himself with the rest of the children of God. He intends such as are entitled to baptism, and come to it with their hearts in a right state. Of them he says, “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?” He does not even intend to say that those who were rightly baptized have all of them entered into the fulness of its spiritual meaning; for if they had, there would have been no need of the question, “Know ye not?” It would seem that some had been baptized who did not clearly know the meaning of their own baptism. They had faith, and a glimmer of knowledge sufficient to make them right recipients of baptism, but they were not well instructed in the teaching of baptism; perhaps they saw in it only a washing, but had never discerned the burial. I will go further, and say that I question if any of us yet know the fulness of the meaning of either of the ordinances which Christ has instituted. As yet we are, with regard to spiritual things, like children playing on the beach while the ocean rolls before us. At best we wade up to our ankles like our little ones on the sea shore. A few among us are learning to swim; but then we only swim where the bottom is almost within reach. Who among us has yet come to lose sight of shore and to swim in the Atlantic of divine love, where fathomless truth rolls underneath, and the infinite is all around? Oh, may God daily teach us more and more of what we already know in part, and may the truth which we have as yet but dimly perceived come to us in a brighter and clearer manner, till we see all things in clear sunlight. This can only be as our own character becomes more clear and pure; for we see according to what we are; and as is the eye such is that which it sees. The pure in heart alone can see a pure and holy God. We shall be like Jesus when we shall see him as he is, and certainly we shall never see him as he is till we are like him. In heavenly things we see as much as we have within ourselves. He who has eaten Christ’s flesh and blood spiritually is the man who can see this in the sacred Supper, and he who has been baptized into Christ sees Christ in baptism. To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundantly.

Baptism sets forth the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and our participation therein. Its teaching is twofold. First, think of our representative union with Christ, so that when he died and was buried it was on our behalf, and we were thus buried with him. This will give you the teaching of baptism so far as it sets forth a creed. We declare in baptism that we believe in the death of Jesus, and desire to partake in all the merit of it. But there is a second equally important matter, and that is our realized union with Christ which is set forth in baptism, not so much as a doctrine of our creed as a matter of our experience. There is a manner of dying, of being buried, of rising, and of living in Christ which must be displayed in each one of us if we are indeed members of the body of Christ.

First, then, I want you to think of our representative union with Christ as it is set forth in baptism as a truth to be believed. Our Lord Jesus is the substitute for his people, and when he died it was on their behalf and in their stead. The great doctrine of our justification lies in this, that Christ took our sins, stood in our place, and as our surety suffered, and bled, and died, thus presenting on our behalf a sacrifice for sin. We are to regard him, not as a private person, but as our representative. We are buried with him in baptism unto death to show that we accept him as being for us dead and buried.

Baptism as a burial with Christ signifies, first, acceptance of the death and burial of Christ as being for us. Let us do that at this very moment with all our hearts. What other hope have we? When our divine Lord came down from the heights of glory and took upon himself our manhood, he became one with you and with me; and being found in fashion as a man, it pleased the Father to lay sin upon him, even your sins and mine. Do you not accept that truth, and agree that the Lord Jesus should be the bearer of your guilt, and stand for you in the sight of God? “Amen! Amen!” say all of you. He went up to the tree loaded with all this guilt, and there he suffered in our room and stead as we ought to have suffered. It pleased the Father, instead of bruising us, to bruise him. He put him to grief, making his soul an offering for sin. Do we not gladly accept Jesus as our substitute? O beloved, whether you have been baptized in water or not, I put this question to you, “Do you accept the Lord Jesus as your surety and substitute?” For if you do not, you shall bear your own guilt and carry your own sorrow, and stand in your own place beneath the glance of the angry justice of God. Many of us at this moment are saying in our inmost hearts-

“My soul looks back to see

The burdens thou didst bear,

When hanging on the cursèd tree,

And hopes her guilt was there.”

Now, by being buried with Christ in baptism, we set our seal to the fact that the death of Christ was on our behalf, and that we were in him, and died in him, and, in token of our belief, we consent to the watery grave, and yield ourselves to be buried according to his command. This is a matter of fundamental faith-Christ dead and buried for us; in other words, substitution, suretiship, vicarious sacrifice. His death is the hinge of our confidence: we are not baptized into his example, or his life, but into his death. We hereby confess that all our salvation lies in the death of Jesus, which death we accept as having been incurred on our account.

But this is not all; because if I am to be buried, it should not be so much because I accept the substitutionary death of another for me as because I am dead myself. Baptism is an acknowledgment of our own death in Christ. Why should a living man be buried? Why should he even be buried because another died on his behalf? My burial with Christ means not only that he died for me, but that I died in him, so that my death with him needs a burial with him. Jesus died for us because he is one with us. The Lord Jesus Christ did not take his people’s sins by an arbitrary choice of God; but it was most natural and fit and proper that he should take his people’s sins, since they are his people, and he is their federal head. It behoved Christ to suffer for this reason-that he was the covenant representative of his people. He is the Head of the body, the Church; and if the members sinned, it was meet that the Head, though the Head had not sinned, should bear the consequence of the acts of the body. As there is a natural relationship between Adam and those that are in Adam, so is there between the second Adam and those that are in him. I accept what the first Adam did as my sin. Some of you may quarrel with it, and with the whole covenant dispensation, if you please; but as God has pleased to set it up, and I feel the effect of it, I see no use in my controverting it. As I accept the sin of father Adam, and feel that I sinned in him, even so with intense delight I accept the death and atoning sacrifice of my second Adam, and rejoice that in him I have died and risen again. I lived, I died, I kept the law, I satisfied justice in my covenant Head. Let me be buried in baptism that I may show to all around that I believe I was one with my Lord in his death and burial for sin.

Look at this, O child of God, and do not be afraid of it. These are grand truths, but they are sure and comforting. You are getting among Atlantic billows now, but be not afraid. Realize the sanctifying effect of this truth. Suppose that a man had been condemned to die on account of a great crime; suppose, further, that he has actually died for that crime, and now, by some wonderful work of God, after having died he has been made to live again. He comes among men again as alive from the dead, and what ought to be the state of his mind with regard to his offence? Will he commit that crime again? A crime for which he has died? I say emphatically, God forbid. Rather should he say, “I have tasted the bitterness of this sin, and I am miraculously lifted up out of the death which it brought upon me, and made to live again: now will I hate the thing that slew me, and abhor it with all my soul.” He who has received the wages of sin should learn to avoid it for the future. But you reply, “We never did die so; we were never made to suffer the due reward of our sins.” Granted. But that which Christ did for you comes to the same thing, and the Lord looks upon it as the same thing. You are so one with Jesus, that you must regard his death as your death, his sufferings as the chastisement of your peace. You have died in the death of Jesus, and now by strange, mysterious grace you are brought up again from the pit of corruption unto newness of life. Can you, will you, go into sin again? You have seen what God thinks of sin: you perceive that he utterly loathes it; for when it was laid on his dear Son, he did not spare him, but put him to grief and smote him to death. Can you, after that, turn back to the accursed thing which God hates? Surely, the effect of the great grief of the Saviour upon your spirit must be sanctifying. How shall we who are dead to sin live any longer therein? How shall we that have passed under its curse, and endured its awful penalty, tolerate its power? Shall we go back to this murderous, villainous, virulent, abominable evil? It cannot be. Grace forbids.

This doctrine is not the conclusion of the whole matter. The text describes us as buried with a view to rising. “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism unto death,”-for what object?-“that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Be buried in Christ! What for? That you may be dead for ever? No, but that now getting where Christ is, you may go where Christ goes. Behold him, then: he goes, first, into the sepulchre, but next out of the sepulchre; for when the third morning came he rose. If you are one with Christ at all, you must be one with him all through; you must be one with him in his death, and one with him in his burial, then you shall come to be one with him in his resurrection. Am I a dead man now? No, blessed be his name, it is written, “Because I live ye shall live also.” True, I am dead in one sense, “For ye are dead”; but yet not dead in another, “For your life is hid with Christ in God”; and how is he absolutely dead who has a hidden life? No; since I am one with Christ I am what Christ is: as he is a living Christ, I am a living spirit. What a glorious thing it is to have arisen from the dead because Christ has given us life. Our old legal life has been taken from us by the sentence of the law, and the law views us as dead; but now we have received a new life, a life out of death, resurrection-life in Christ Jesus. The life of the Christian is the life of Christ. Ours is not the life of the first creation, but of the new creation from among the dead. Now we live in newness of life, quickened unto holiness, and righteousness, and joy by the Spirit of God. The life of the flesh is a hindrance to us; our energy is in his Spirit. In the highest and best sense our life is spiritual and heavenly. This also is doctrine which is to be held most firmly.

I want you to see the force of this; for I am aiming at practical results this morning. If God has given to you and to me an entirely new life in Christ, how can that new life spend itself after the fashion of the old life? Shall the spiritual live as the carnal? How can you that were the servants of sin, but have been made free by precious blood, go back to your old slavery? When you were in the old Adam life, you lived in sin, and loved it; but now you have been dead and buried, and have come forth into newness of life: can it be that you can go back to the beggarly elements from which the Lord has brought you out? If you live in sin, you will be false to your profession, for you profess to be alive unto God? If you walk in lust, you will tread under foot the blessed doctrines of the Word of God, for these lead to holiness and purity. You would make Christianity to be a by-word and a proverb, if, after all, you who were quickened from your spiritual death should exhibit a conduct no better than the life of ordinary men, and little superior to what your former life used to be. As many of you as have been baptized have said to the world,-We are dead to the world, and we have come forth into a new life. Our fleshly desires are henceforth to be viewed as dead, for now we live after a fresh order of things. The Holy Spirit has wrought in us a new nature, and though we are in the world, we are not of it, but are new-made men, “created anew in Christ Jesus.” This is the doctrine which we avow to all mankind, that Christ died and rose again, and that his people died and rose again in him. Out of this doctrine grows death unto sin and life unto God, and we wish by every action and every movement of our lives to teach it to all who see us.

So far the doctrine: is it not a precious one indeed? Oh, if you be indeed one with Christ, shall the world find you polluting yourselves? Shall the members of a generous, gracious Head be covetous and grasping? Shall the members of a glorious, pure, and perfect Head be defiled with the lusts of the flesh and the follies of a vain life? If believers are indeed so identified with Christ that they are his fulness, should they not be holiness itself? If we live by virtue of our union with his body, how can we live as other Gentiles do? How is it that so many professors exhibit a mere worldly life, living for business and for pleasure, but not for God, in God, or with God? They sprinkle a little religion on a worldly life, and so hope to Christianize it. But it will not do. I am bound to live as Christ would have lived under my circumstances; in my private chamber or in my public pulpit, I am bound to be what Christ would have been in like case. I am bound to prove to men that union to Christ is no fiction, or fanatical sentiment: but that we are swayed by the same principles and actuated by the same motives.

Baptism is thus an embodied creed, and you may read it in these words: “Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.”

But, secondly, a realized union with Christ is also set forth in baptism, and this is rather a matter of experience than of doctrine.

1. First, there is, as a matter of actual experience in the true believer, death. “Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?” It must be contrary to all law to bury those who are yet alive. Until they are dead, men can have no right to be buried. Very well, then, the Christian is dead,-dead, first, to the dominion of sin. Whenever sin called him aforetime he answered, “Here am I, for thou didst call me.” Sin ruled his members, and if sin said, “Do this,” he did it, like the soldiers obedient to their centurion; for sin ruled over all the parts of his nature, and exercised over him a supreme tyranny. Grace has changed all this. When we are converted we become dead to the dominion of sin. If sin calls us now, we refuse to come, for we are dead. If sin commands us we will not obey, for we are dead to its authority. Sin comes to us now-oh, that it did not,-and it finds in us the old corruption which is crucified, but not yet dead; but it has no dominion over our true life. Blessed be God, sin cannot reign over us, though it may assail us and work us harm. “Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under law, but under grace.” We sin, but not with allowance. With what grief we look back upon our transgressions! How earnestly do we endeavour to avoid them! Sin tries to maintain its usurped power over us; but we do not acknowledge it as our sovereign. Evil enters us now as an interloper and a stranger, and works sad havoc, but it does not abide in us upon the throne; it is an alien, and despised, and no more honoured and delighted in. We are dead to the reigning power of sin.

The believer, if spiritually buried with Christ, is dead to the desire of any such power. “What!” say you, “do not godly men have sinful desires?” Alas, they do. The old nature that is in them lusteth towards sin; but the true man, the real ego, desires to be purged of every speck or trace of evil. The law in the members would fain urge to sin, but the life in the heart constrains to holiness. I can honestly say, for my own self, that the deepest desire of my soul is to live a perfect life. If I could have my own best desire, I would never sin again; and though, alas, I do consent to sin so that I become responsible when I transgress, yet my innermost self loathes iniquity. Sin is my bondage, not my pleasure; my misery, not my delight; at the thought of it I cry out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?” In our heart of hearts our spirit cleaves steadfastly to that which is good, and true, and heavenly, so that the real man delights in the law of God, and follows hard after goodness. The main current and true bent of our soul’s wish and will is not towards sin, and the apostle taught us no mere fancy when he said, “For he that is dead is freed from sin.”

Moreover, in the next place we are dead as to the pursuits and aims of the sinning and ungodly life. Brethren, are any of you that profess to be God’s servants living for yourselves? Then you are not God’s servants; for he that is really born again lives unto God: the object of his life is the glory of God and the good of his fellow-men. This is the prize that is set before the quickened man, and towards this he runs. “I do not run that way,” says one. Very well, then you will not come to the desired end. If you are running after the pleasures of the world or the riches of it, you may win the prize you run for, but you cannot win “the prize of our high calling in Christ Jesus.” I hope that many of us can honestly say that we are now dead to every object in life, except the glory of God in Christ Jesus. We are in the world, and have to live as other men do, carrying on our ordinary business; but all this is subordinate, and held in as with bit and bridle; our aims are above yon changeful moon. The flight of our soul, like that of an eagle, is above these clouds: though that bird of the sun alights upon the rock, or even descends to the plain, yet its joy is to dwell above, out-soaring the lightning, rising over the black head of the tempest, and looking down upon all earthly things. Henceforth our grace-given life speeds onward and upward; we are not of the world, and the world’s engagements are not those upon which we spend our noblest powers.

Again, we are dead in this sense, that we are dead to the guidance of sin. The lust of the flesh drives a man this way and that way. He steers his course by the question, “What is most pleasant? What will give me most present gratification?” The way of the ungodly is mapped out by the hand of selfish desire: but you that are true Christians have another guide, you are led by the Spirit in a right way. You ask, “What is good and what is acceptable in the sight of the Most High?” Your daily prayer is, “Lord, show me what thou wouldst have me to do?” You are alive to the teachings of the Spirit, who will lead you into all truth; but you are deaf, yea, dead to the dogmas of carnal wisdom, the oppositions of philosophy, the errors of proud human wisdom. Blind guides who fall with their victims into the ditch are shunned by you, for you have chosen the way of the Lord. What a blessed state of heart this is! I trust, my brethren, that we have fully realized it! We know the Shepherd’s voice, and a stranger we will not follow. One is our teacher, and we submit our understandings to his infallible instruction.

Our text must have had a very forcible meaning among the Romans in Paul’s time, for they were sunk in all manner of odious vices. Take an average Roman of that period, and you would have found in him a man accustomed to spend a large part of his time in the amphitheatre, hardened by the brutal sight of bloody shows, in which gladiators slew each other to amuse a holiday crowd. Taught in such a school, the Roman was cruel to the last degree, and withal ferocious in the indulgence of his passions. A depraved man was not regarded as being at all degraded; not only nobles and emperors were monsters of vice, but the public teachers were impure. When those who were regarded as moral were corrupt, you may imagine what the immoral were. “Enjoy yourself; follow after the pleasures of the flesh,” was the rule of the age. Christianity was the introduction of a new element. See here a Roman converted by the grace of God! What a change is in him! His neighbours say, “You were not at the amphitheatre this morning. How could you miss the sight of the hundred Germans who tore out each other’s bowels?” “No,” he says, “I was not there; I could not bear to be there. I am totally dead to it. If you were to force me to be there, I must shut my eyes, for I could not look on murder committed in sport!” The Christian did not resort to places of licentiousness; he was as good as dead to such filthiness. The fashions and customs of the age were such that Christians could not consent to them, and so they became dead to society. It was not merely that Christians did not go into open sin, but they spoke of it with horror, and their lives rebuked it. Things which the multitude counted a joy, and talked of exultingly, gave no comfort to the follower of Jesus, for he was dead to such evils. This is our solemn avowal when we come forward to be baptized. We say by acts which are louder than words that we are dead to those things in which sinners take delight, and we wish to be so accounted.

2. The next thought in baptism is burial. Death comes first, and burial follows. Now, what is burial, brethren? Burial is, first of all, the seal of death; it is the certificate of decease. “Is such a man dead?” say you. Another answers, “Why, dear sir, he was buried a year ago.” You ask no more whether he is dead when you know that he is buried. There have been instances of persons being buried alive, and I am afraid that the thing happens with sad frequency in baptism, but it is unnatural, and by no means the rule. I fear that many have been buried alive in baptism, and have therefore risen and walked out of the grave just as they were. But if burial is true, it is a certificate of death. If I am able to say in very truth, “I was buried with Christ thirty years ago,” I must surely be dead. Certainly the world thought so, for not long after my burial with Jesus I began to preach his name, and by that time the world thought me very far gone, and said, “He stinketh.” They began to say all manner of evil against the preacher; but the more I stank in their nostrils the better I liked it, for the surer I was that I was really dead to the world. It is good for a Christian to be offensive to wicked men. See how our Master stank in the esteem of the godless when they cried, “Away with him, away with him!” Though no corruption could come near his blessed body, yet his perfect character was not savoured by that perverse generation. There must, then, be in us death to the world, and some of the effects of death, or our baptism is void. As burial is the certificate of death, so is burial with Christ the seal of our mortification to the world.

But burial is, next, the displaying of death. While the man is indoors the passers-by do not know that he is dead; but when the funeral takes place, and he is carried through the streets, everybody knows that he is dead. This is what baptism ought to be. The believer’s death to sin is at first a secret, but by an open confession he bids all men know that he is dead with Christ. Baptism is the funeral rite by which death to sin is openly set forth before all men.

Next, burial is the separateness of death. The dead man no longer remains in the house, but is placed apart as one who ceases to be numbered with the living. A corpse is not welcome company. Even the most beloved object after a while cannot be tolerated when death has done his work upon it. Even Abraham, who had been so long united with his beloved Sarah, is heard to say, “Bury my dead out of my sight.” Such is the believer when his death to the world is fully known: he is poor company for worldlings, and they shun him as a damper upon their revelry. The true saint is put into the separated class with Christ, according to his word, “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” The saint is put away in the same grave as his Lord; for as he was, so are we also in this world. He is shut up by the world in the one cemetery of the faithful, if I may so call it, where all that are in Christ are dead to the world together, with this epitaph for them all, “And ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”

And the grave is the place-I do not know where to get a word-of the settledness of death; for when a man is dead and buried you never expect to see him come home again: so far as this world is concerned, death and burial are irrevocable. They tell me that spirits walk the earth, and we have all read in the newspaper “The Truth about Ghosts,” but I have my doubts on the subject. In spiritual things, however, I am afraid that some are not so buried with Christ but what they walk a great deal among the tombs. I am grieved at heart that it should be so. The man in Christ cannot walk as a ghost, because he is alive somewhere else; he has received a new being, and therefore he cannot mutter and peep among the dead hypocrites around him. See what our chapter saith about our Lord: “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more: death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.” If we have been once raised from dead works we shall never go back to them again. I may sin, but sin can never have dominion over me; I may be a transgressor and wander much from my God, but never can I go back to the old death again. When my Lord’s grace got hold of me, and buried me, he wrought in my soul the conviction that henceforth and for ever I was to the world a dead man. I am right glad that I made no compromise, but came right out. I have drawn the sword, and thrown away the scabbard. Tell the world they need not try to fetch us back, for we are spoiled for them as much as if we were dead. All they could have would be our carcases. Tell the world not to tempt us any longer, for our hearts are changed. Sin may charm the old man who hangs there upon the cross, and he may turn his leering eye that way, but he cannot follow up his glance, for he cannot get down from the cross: the Lord has taken care to use the mallet well, and he has fastened his hands and feet right firmly, so that the crucified flesh must still remain in the place of doom and death. Yet the true, the genuine life within us cannot die, for it is born of God; neither can it abide in the tombs, for its call is to purity and joy and liberty; and to that call it yields itself.

3. We have come as far as death and burial; but baptism, according to the text, represents also resurrection: “That like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Now, notice that the man who is dead in Christ, and buried in Christ, is also raised in Christ, and this is a special work upon him. All the dead are not raised, but our Lord himself is “the firstfruits of them that slept.” He is the First-begotten from among the dead. Resurrection was a special work upon the body of Christ by which he was raised up, and that work, begun upon the Head, will continue till all the members partake of it, for-

“Though our inbred sins require

Our flesh to see the dust;

Yet as the Lord our Saviour rose,

So all his followers must.”

As to our soul and spirit, the resurrection has begun upon us. It has not come to our bodies yet, but it will be given to them at the appointed day. For the present a special work has been wrought upon us by which we have been raised up from among the dead. Brethren, if you had been dead and buried, and had been lying one night, say, in Woking Cemetery, and if a divine voice had called you right up from the grave when the silent stars were shining on the open heath-if, I say, you had risen right out from the green mound of turf, what a lonely being you would have been in the vast cemetery amid the stilly night! How you would sit down on the grave and wait for morning! That is very much your condition with regard to the present evil world. You were once like the rest of the sinners around you, dead in sin, and sleeping in the grave of evil custom. The Lord by his power has called you out of your grave, and now you are alive in the midst of death. There can be no fellowship here for you; for what communion have the living with the dead? The man out there in the cemetery just quickened would find none among all the dead around him with whom he could converse, and you can find no companions in this world There lies a skull, but it sees not from the eyeholes; neither is there speech in its grim mouth. I see a mass of bones lying in yon corner: the living one looks at them, but they cannot hear or speak. Imagine yourself there. All that you would say to the bones would be to ask, “Can these dry bones live?” You would be a foreigner in that home of corruption, and you would haste to get away. That is your condition in the world: God has raised you up from among the dead, from out of the company among whom you had your former conversation. Now, I pray you, do not go and scratch into the earth, to tear up the graves to find a friend there. Who would rend open a coffin and cry, “Come, you must drink with me! You must go to the theatre with me”? No, we dread the idea of association with the dead, and I tremble when I see a professor trying to have communion with worldly men. “Come ye out from among them; be ye separate; touch not the unclean thing.” You know what would happen to you if you were thus raised, and were forced to sit close to a dead body newly taken from the grave. You would cry, “I cannot bear it; I cannot endure it”; you would get to the wind side of the horrid corpse. So with a man that is really alive unto God: deeds of injustice, oppression, or unchastity he cannot endure; for life loathes corruption.

Notice that, as we are raised up by a special work from among the dead, that rising is by divine power. Christ is brought again “from the dead by the glory of the Father.” What means that? Why did it not say, “by the power of the Father”? Ah, beloved, glory is a grander word; for all the attributes of God are displayed in all their solemn pomp in the raising of Christ from the dead. There was the Lord’s faithfulness; for had he not declared that his soul should not rest in hell, neither should his Holy One see corruption? Was not the love of the Father seen there? I am sure it was a delight to the heart of God to bring back life to the body of his dear Son. And so, when you and I are raised out of our death in sin, it is not merely God’s power, it is not merely God’s wisdom that is seen, it is “the glory of the Father.” Oh, to think that every child of God that has been quickened has been quickened by “the glory of the Father.” It has taken not alone the Holy Spirit, and the work of Jesus, and the work of the Father, but the very “glory of the Father.’ If the tiniest spark of spiritual life has to be created by “the glory of the Father,” what will be the glory of that life when it comes into its full perfection, and we shall be like Christ, and see him as he is! O beloved, value highly the new life which God has given you. Think of it as making you richer than if you had a sea of pearls, greater than if you were descended from the loftiest of princes. There is in you that which it required all the attributes of God to create. He could make a world by power alone, but you must be raised from the dead by “the glory of the Father.”

Notice next, that this life is entirely new. We are to “walk in newness of life.” The life of a Christian is an entirely different thing from the life of other men, entirely different from his own life before his conversion, and when people try to counterfeit it, they cannot accomplish the task. A person writes you a letter and wants to make you think he is a believer, but within about half-a-dozen sentences there occurs a line which betrays the imposture. The hypocrite has very nearly copied our expressions, but not quite. There is a freemasonry among us, and the outside world watch us a bit, and by-and-by they pick up certain of our signs; but there is a private sign which they can never imitate, and therefore at a certain point they break down. A godless man may pray as much as a Christian, read as much of the Bible as a Christian, and even go beyond us in externals; but there is a secret which he knows not and cannot counterfeit. The life divine is so totally new that the unconverted have no copy to work by. In every Christian it is as new as if he were the very first Christian. Even though in every one it is the image and superscription of Christ, yet there is a milled edge or a something about the real silver that these counterfeits cannot get a hold of. It is a new, a novel, a fresh, a divine thing.

And, lastly, this life is an active thing. I have often wished that Paul had not been so fast when I have been reading him. His style travels in seven-leagued boots. He does not write like an ordinary man. I beg to tell him that if he had written this text according to proper order, it should run, “Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should be raised from the dead.” But see; Paul has got over ever so much ground while we are talking: he has reached to “walking.” The walking includes the living, of which it is the sign, and Paul thinks so fast when the Spirit of God is upon him that he has passed beyond the cause to the effect. No sooner do we get the new life than we become active: we do not sit down and say, “I have received a new life: how grateful I ought to be. I will quietly enjoy myself.” Oh dear, no. We have something to do directly we are alive, and we begin walking, and so the Lord keeps us all our lives in his work; he does not allow us to sit down contented with the mere fact that we live, nor does he allow us to spend all our time in examining whether we are alive or no; but he gives us one battle to fight, and then another; he gives us his house to build, his farm to till, his children to nurse, and his sheep to feed. At times we have fierce struggles with our own spirit, and fears lest sin and Satan should prevail, till our life is scarce discerned by itself, but it is always discerned by its acts. The life that is given to those who were dead with Christ is an energetic, forceful life, that is evermore busy for Christ, and would, if it could, move heaven and earth and subdue all things unto him who is its Head.

This life Paul tells us is an unending one. Once get it, and it will never go from you. “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more.”

Next, it is a life which is not under the law or under sin. Christ came under the law when he was here, and he had our sin laid on him, and therefore died; but after he rose again there was no sin laid on him. In his resurrection both the sinner and the Surety are free. What had Christ to do after his rising? To bear any more sin? No, but just to live unto God. That is where you and I are. We have no sin to carry now; it was all laid on Christ. What have we to do? Every time we have the headache, or feel ill, are we to cry out, “This is a punishment for my sin”? Nothing of the kind. Our punishment is all done with, for we have borne the capital sentence, and are dead: our new life must be unto God.

“All that remains for me

Is but to love and sing,

And wait until the angels come

To bear me to the King.”

I have now to serve him and delight myself in him, and use the power which he gives me of calling others from the dead, saying, “Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life.” I am not going back to the grave of spiritual death nor to my grave-clothes of sin; but by divine grace I will still believe in Jesus, and go from strength to strength, not under law, not fearing hell, nor hoping to merit heaven, but as a new creature, loving because loved, living for Christ because Christ lives in me, rejoicing in glorious hope of that which is yet to be revealed by virtue of my oneness in Christ.

Poor sinner, you do not know anything about this death and burial, and you never will till you have power to become sons of God, and that he gives to as many as believe on his name. Believe on his name, and it is all yours. Amen and Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Romans 6.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-775, 762, 646.