C. H. SPURGEON,

at union chapel, islington.

(By request of the Sunday-School Union.)

“And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the son of David; they were sore displeased, and said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?”-Matthew 21:15, 16.

These scribes and Pharisees always come in very conveniently as a sort of shadow to bring out the bright lights of the picture. One feels glad that they are not alive to worry us now, but somewhat glad that they were alive just then to put some of their queer cross-questions to the Saviour, and to arouse his spirit to utter precious truths, which are all the better understood because of the occasion which called for them. Here was their question, “Hearest thou what these say?” I suppose that if interpreted at full length the question means, “Dost thou permit these mere children to salute thee with hosannas? What dost thou think of thyself when thy name is in the mouths of noisy boys and girls who make the temple courts to ring again?” I have met with that spirit in these days, for the Pharisees are not all dead, nor the scribes either. They may be dead literally, but their spiritual successors, are they not still among us? Listen to their criticism,-“It is true that the good man has many converts, but they are only a parcel of young people, mere boys and girls.” Oh yes; I know you, my old friend, I have met with you before! This is the very language of the ancestors of your house: they also enquired sarcastically,-“Hearest thou what these say?” A despising of true religion when it is found among the very young is a pernicious evil which springs up again in each generation however diligently we may pull up the weed.

Explanations are sometimes given of the light esteem in which men hold juvenile godliness: they say, “It is not the children’s youth that we look down upon so much, but they are of course ignorant, and therefore do not know what they are saying.” No doubt the Pharisees would have exclaimed, “They do not even know the meaning of the word ‘hosanna’; and how can they know that it is proper to apply the term to the man of Nazareth? They have never read the Talmud, or the Gemara: what should they know?” I have heard the same thing said of certain people in these modern times. The polite and intelligent, or rather, those who think themselves so, cry,-“Oh, it is a congregation of quite the lower orders. They are ignorant, uninstructed people. Very earnest, very prayerful, very sincere; but still so poor and illiterate that it takes a large quantity of them to make up anything very considerable.” That judgment tallies with the criticism of the Pharisees of old; and I would recommend all friends to steer as far away as they can from the track of those ancient cavillers. The spirit which looks down upon any class of people who sincerely love the Lord is not from heaven, neither would the Lord Jesus sanction it for a moment. One is our Master, even Christ, and all we are brethren; and if some people do not know quite so much as we do, it is just possible that there may be a little conceit in our knowledge, and it were far more commendable to seek their edification than to sneer at them.

Then again, I suppose that the Pharisees would have said, “We do not condemn their youth or their ignorance, but their excessive enthusiasm is quite annoying. If they walked steadily through the court and chanted ‘Hosanna’ in a subdued tone, one could bear it; but to shout at that rate is going too far. These children cry ‘Hosanna’ in the temple in quite a tumultuous fashion. Everything should be decorous and proper there.” Yes, yes, I have heard the same thing often; but there is not much in it. We can be overdone with propriety. Some of us are hampered and hindered by it; and in proportion as we get into that state we, of course, resent anything that looks like enthusiasm. No doubt, fanaticism is a bad thing; but it is the exaggeration of something which is good. When zeal grows to madness it is dangerous; but the stuff that it is made of, if it could be kept in order, might be just the one thing needful in many a church. Fire is a bad master. We all admit that. It is, however, an exceedingly good servant, and it would be a pity to quench all the fires that burn upon our hearths because perchance they might produce a conflagration. Enthusiasm is of God, let us not repress it because we are fearful that it may grow into fanaticism. Is not the very suggestion suspicious? It is so like what the Pharisees would have done. We are pretty sure to be on the down track when we say, “Hearest thou what these say?” I remember what Zwingle said in time of battle, and I have sometimes felt inclined to say the same, though I have not said it. He cried, “In the name of the Holy Trinity, let all loose.” When we get contracted and official; when red tape and decorum tie us hand and foot, I feel inclined to cut the bonds, and let men and women shout and sing as they have a mind to. Especially let the children in the fervour of their spirits have full liberty to cry “Hosanna” in the temple and anywhere else. I demand liberty for life, and double freedom for young life, which will not else be fresh, and bright, and beautiful.

I have nothing more to do with that point just now. I was asked to speak on behalf of the Sunday-School Union, and I must make my discourse suitable to the occasion. I remember hearing a sermon preached on a missionary Sunday which was about everything in the world except missions. I believe the brother thought that as the Missionary Society had the occasion, he needed not give it anything more, but might use the opportunity for discussing something else. Although I may seem to be somewhat confined in my run of thought, I cannot help it, I must keep the service sacred to its purpose. I have never learned the art of hitting two targets with the same shot. I must therefore keep to one theme and preach about the children, to those who are endeavouring to teach them the right way. It is upon the children that the brunt of this sarcastic question still falls, “Hearest thou what these say?” There are still among us those who hardly think that children can be truly converted. They put on their magnifying glasses when there is a child before the church, and they look hard for a flaw in its character! they put the child under a microscope and examine him much more particularly than they would a person of adult years. When the child is received into the church, it is with a kind of feeling that only the generous spirit of Christianity would enable us to be so wonderfully condescending, and so purely unselfish; for of course such young people cannot add much to the church, and it is by no means an occasion for killing the fatted calf, and beginning to eat and be merry. That spirit still lingers among us: I wish we could exterminate it!

The Saviour’s answer to the Pharisees was splendid. Even in its opening words he smote them, “Have ye never read?” Why, they were always reading. They lived on the letter, and reckoned the reading of Scripture to be a very virtuous act. Reading and writing were the business of the scribes and Pharisees, and it hit them hard when the Saviour said to them, “Have ye never read?” Might he not even hint that they did not read after all. They were readers or nothing, yet the Saviour hint that they were not readers in the true sense. “Have ye never read?” You have never reached the inner sense. You have not read so as to understand. Have you never read that wondrous passage in the Psalms, “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength”? It was well to carry the war into the enemy’s country, and to charge them home in such a telling style; and they evidently felt it, for they made him no answer. Jesus, having silenced them, being satisfied that nothing could be done with them, left them and went to Bethany. They were barren ground given up to burning: it was useless to sow them with good seed. Jesus stopped their mouths, prevented their hindering the children, and then went his way to his village retreat.

That text which he quoted seemed to say to them,-God is most glorified in weak things. If praise shall come out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, then is God greatly honoured. If the heavens are telling of his glory, that is something; but if babes are doing it, that is somewhat more. There is more of power displayed in the Lord’s raising up the weak things to confound the mighty than in his using the great things to set forth his majesty. It is very remarkable under the Old Testament dispensation what care the Lord always took of the poor and despised. There was an appointed gift for rich men; the offering was also arranged to suit persons of moderate position; but this was not all, the sacrifice was also accommodated to those of the humblest rank, so that the poorest woman might bring her pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. I think four times in one chapter in Leviticus we read, “He shall bring an offering of what he can get.” The Lord thus accepted the sacrifices of the poor; and we may rest assured that he accepts the offerings of the children. It is according to the spirit of our great Lord to dwell with the lowly and the humble, and to be pleased with the praises of the little ones. Others may despise them, but he never does, for he even enrols them in his kingdom.

And now to our work of dealing with this matter of questioning the blessedness of children’s piety. May the Holy Spirit help me!

Our first head is this: children are capable of a verydeep piety. Instead of saying, “Hearest thou what these say?” with a kind of contumely, we would cry with holy delight, “Lord, we know that thou hearest what the children say. If thou dost turn thine ear away from us by reason of our pollution, yet dost thou hear their simple cries and eager notes of praise, for they are true and hearty.”

I am sure that children are capable of that early grace with which true religion usually begins, namely, that of deep repentance. Have you never heard the sobs and cries of little ones when they have been convinced of sin? I have almost wondered when I have seen their pure lives, and yet have marked their solemn sense of guilt. Outward sin in its grosser forms was scarcely known to them even by name; and yet when they have felt the power of God’s Holy Spirit boys that were usually gay and thoughtless have sobbed and wept as if they could not be comforted, when they felt the evil of their hearts. They have mentioned their little deeds of disobedience to their parents, or their acts of passion with their brothers, or some other fault, and they have cried amain, as if their hearts would burst. Foolish persons have said, “Do not fret, my dear, I am sure you have never been a bad child;” but the child has known better. The conscience aroused within him has revealed to him much more of sin than the unrenewed trifler could perceive, infinitely more than the child ever showed in his outward life. I cannot help remembering how the Lord dealt with me as a child. If ever any lad knew the guilt of sin, I did. I was tenderly cared for, and kept from all sorts of evil company, yet the great deeps within my nature were broken up, and rose in vast waves of sin and rebellion against God, and I was amazed at my own sinfulness. I have met with scores of persons, converted in riper years, who, I am sure, never felt a hundredth part of what I felt as a child when I was under the hand of God’s Spirit. I experienced a thorough loathing of myself, because I had not lived to God and loved and served him as he deserved. I speak upon this point what I do know, and testify what I have seen and felt in myself. Grief for sin and a holy dread of the consequences can be felt by children quite as well as by their seniors. In many children whom I have known, repentance has been true, thorough, deep, intelligent, and lasting: they have found their way to the foot of the cross, and seen the great sacrifice, and have wept all the more to think that they should have offended against the love which so freely forgives.

As to faith, I am sure that no one who has seen converted children will ever doubt their capacity for faith. In the hand of God’s Spirit, a child’s capacity for faith is in some respects greater than that of a grown-up person; at any rate, the faith of children is usually far more simple than that of adults. They take the word of God as they find it, and they believe it to be the very truth. They read it fairly, and they do not put glosses thereon, or degrade it with interpretations gathered from the schools or from the current philosophies. God’s book means to them just what it says. No undertone of doubt mars the music of the promises, but they accept the word as it ought to be accepted-as the sure testimony of God’s mouth. They believe, and have little unbelief to struggle with: they believe and are sure, and, therefore, theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

You must have noticed how vivid their faith is. The gospel is all fact to them, and they seem to see it before their eyes. They feel it and believe it, and in their childlike way they act upon it. They expect great things, and look for them in everyday life. They sometimes look for them in a shape in which they will never see them; but still that is much better than never to expect at all, and so to miss seeing the glory of God. Jesus is to children no mere character in history; he is with them, and their eye beholds him. The Master’s word is to them what he meant it to be; and they expect to realize it and to see it fulfilled in their own experience: hence some holy children are far in advance of us poor questioners, who are cracking the nut while the little ones have eaten the kernel.

And how effective their faith is! Have you never known a child in whose holy life you have seen the reality of his faith? He was a child-God forbid that he should be otherwise-but he was a holy child. For a boy to put on the air and manners of a man is not sanctification; that is to spoil him, not to sanctify him. And for a girl to be other than a girl, and to assume the air and tone of her careful mother, would be very mischievous. God does not sanctify children into men, but he sanctifies children in their own childlike way. I have noticed especially the struggles of some children with whom it has been my great joy to converse. They have been to school, and they have met there with almost the same temptations which you encounter in business, on the market, or in the Stock Exchange, only the temptations have been adapted to their state, according to the subtlety of the evil one who knows how to fit his snares to the birds he would entrap. Converted children have a horror of wickedness. A bad word that they have heard has made them sob themselves to sleep. They have been disturbed by the look of sin, and some wicked thing that has been said about the divine Lord has cut them to the quick. They have not acted quite rightly, they have felt it, and they have not again been easy till they have mentioned it to mother or father, or perhaps to their teacher, and obtained a sense of forgiveness. The dear ones wanted to be clear with everybody, that they might not seem to be better than they were. Oh, the sweet simplicity of childhood! The dear child has said, “Jesus has forgiven me, I know. I stole away into a corner, and I told him that I had done wrong, but that I did love him; and I believe that he has even now blotted out my sin. I hope that I shall not do wrong again. Pray for me that I may be kept right, and may be pure and good, like the holy child Jesus.” Does anybody here despise such desires in a child? If so, my friend, as far as it is right to do so, and perhaps a little farther, I despise you. I cannot help it, for there seems to me something so beautiful in youthful faith that you might as well sneer at a lily for its purity as despise a child for his artlessless. Children may teach some of us how to believe in God. I am sure they may put us all to shame by their unfeigned confidence in the result of prayer. I have smiled at the story of the child who went to a prayer-meeting, which was summoned that they might pray for rain, and took her umbrella with her. Ah, but that is the marrow of true prayer. We pray, but we do not take our umbrellas; yet it is the essence of faith to expect to be heard and to be prepared to be answered. Children often remind us that faith is not to be a show thing, a theme for pious talk, a source of gracious emotion, but a matter-of-fact force, operating upon the ordinary concerns of everyday life.

I am sure that I am not wrong when I say that children are capable of repentance and of a very high degree of faith.

As to love, my dear friends, is it not one of the matters in which children excel? When they learn to love our blessed Lord, they copy closely the love of Mary of Bethany: they sit at his feet and receive; his words. They are not Marthas yet, nor cumbered with much serving. I had almost said, “God grant that they may never grow to be such; but, having chosen the good part, may they keep to it, and still sit and look up into that dear face which they realize in all its beauty far better than we do.” They do love Jesus, and there is no room to question the fact! The Lord never said to a child, “Lovest thou me?” He did say it to Peter, and there was good reason for his doing so; but a child once becoming a disciple of Christ is sure to love, with a pure heart fervently. Childhood is all heart.

I have noticed in children other virtues besides these, when they have been brought to Christ. For instance, courage. We do not always look for that in children, yet they have shown it. This was seen conspicuously when the martyr Laurence, was burned at Colchester. The Popish tormentors had so tortured him in prison that he had to be carried to the stake in a chair, and all the grown-up people were afraid that they might be burned too if they were seen to associate with him; but the little children had no such fears, and so they came round the man of God and cried, “Lord, strengthen thy servant! Lord, strengthen thy servant!” So they were his comforters while he confessed his Lord amid the flames. When one was burned in Smithfield, a boy was seen going home after the burning; and some one said, “Boy, why were you there?” He answered, “Sir, I went to learn the way.” Those were brave days surely, when boys learned the way to witness for Jesus at the stake. Yet they were children, you know, and children like ours. The Brentwood martyr was a holy boy of whom one said to his mother, “Will you not urge him to forsake the faith?” She said, “I have had many children, but I never thought one so well bestowed as this dear boy, though he is to be burned to the death; seeing it is for the Lord Jesus.” He cheered his older companion who stood back to back with him in the flames, and then he died unflinchingly. Children have taken their fair share all along in martyr days. Read the old stories of church history. When the good ship of the church ploughed her way through seas of blood, the children, on board bravely endured their share of the tempest and the tossing. Grace made them heroes before nature had fully made them men.

So, to come nearer to your own hearts. There is another grace which is akin to courage, but more often required by children now, and that is patience. Oh, the patience of pious children! I have known one lie for years upon his back, the most cheerful person in the house. He could never stir: by the order of the doctor he was forced to lie in one position; but never a murmur escaped his lips. You must have seen children behave splendidly when they have had to go to the hospital, or to undergo a painful operation. They have resigned themselves to the great Father, and they have trusted in Jesus in a way that must have made you blush; certainly, if you have been guilty of impatience yourself you must have felt reproved.

Oh, dear friends, I plead for the children’s piety with all my heart; for I am sure that they are capable of being quick of understanding in the fear of the Lord. They are not necessarily ignorant, nor even shallow. It has been my great privilege of late to admit to the church a large number of little children, and I have done so with unreserved confidence in their intelligent apprehension of the gospel. I have talked with them, I hope with gentleness; but I have put questions to them concerning the deep things of God; and wherever the question has been vital there has been no hesitancy as to the answer. I had years ago a good brother in our number who at church-meeting usually felt it necessary to ask a young child some testing question. I did not admire his habit, but I thought he would grow out of it, as indeed he did. He asked this question of a child,-“Have you a good heart?” It was a little boy, and he at once replied, “Yes, sir.” My friend looked at me as much as to say, “There, you see the child’s ignorance!” I knew better, and therefore said to the boy, “What do you mean when you say that you have a good heart?” “Sir,” he said, “the Lord Jesus Christ gave me a new heart when I believed in him, and I am sure that it is a good one.” My venerable friend who put the question was greatly delighted, but completely shut up: he asked no more questions of children for a very considerable time. If he had done so, I might have had more good illustrations to give you.

It is not true that godly children come into the church, believing something or other, not knowing what; for I have marked a maturity of understanding in some children that, I am sure, I have not always seen in persons of riper years. God instructs the babes; he teaches the young men wisdom; he gives the youths knowledge and discretion. Age is wise, undoubtedly, but not always; youth is foolish, but yet the Lord grants a considerable share of wisdom to young Samuels and youthful Davids. Frequently, also, what they know is truer wisdom than that of their elders. I read some time ago that the Jews permit children to read the Scriptures when they are five years old, but they may not read a word of the Talmud till they are fifteen God help me to keep on reading the Scriptures, and never get to the Talmud at all. Alas, many professors are so old that it is all Talmud with them; the Bible is buried under a heap of novel theories. With the children there is no Talmud and much Bible. They just keep to the simple word, and what they know is worth the knowing; whereas much of what others of us know never was worth the knowing, and it would be a great blessing if we could forget it altogether. Children can be quick of understanding in the fear of God.

If you inquire for anything else, Can children know joy in the Lord? Oh, can they not? Would God we had their joy and their delight in divine things. Have you ever seen them on the brink of death, when they have been within hail of heaven? when the golden gate has been in sight? What words they have uttered, priceless as rare gems! A half-a-dozen words from a dying child have been worth a Bodleian for the weight of meaning that has been concentrated therein. If their heavenly Father can bless them in dying, he can bless them in living with joy unutterable; and so indeed he does.

One thing strikes me very strongly about children-that, when men grow old and ripen for heaven, they usually enter upon a child-like career before they die. Their mature tastes and purified hearts bring them into a childhood which is not childish but child-like. Where childhood begins ripe manhood ends. The last words that were said by old Dr. Nott were,-

“And now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”

A child’s verse that his mother taught him served him for a watchword at the gates of death. It is very pleasing to read of our late dear friend Dr. Guthrie, that, just before his departure, he said, “Sing me one of the bairns’ hymns.” Oh, yes, when we become old we grow like children again; we want the bairns’ hymn and the bairns’ faith. The child is in some respects our model and example. “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.” What need of more argument as to the excellence of child religion?

But now, secondly, as children are capable of deep piety, so children are capable in the hands of god of rendering good service. Some children have been chosen for very special service: not many, but some. It would prove the capacity of a child if there were but one Samuel. He ministered before the Lord, and thus was a child-priest. He spoke the word of the Lord to Eli, having received it in a vision of the night, and thus was a child prophet. He was a messenger of God when Eli’s sons were men of Belial.

Little children can, and often do, convey healing messages to those about them. The little maid that waited upon Naaman’s wife did good service to the Syrian hero when she said,” Would God my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria! for he would recover him of his leprosy.” Little children, I have no doubt, often guide blind souls into the light, and even great believers have been indebted to children. Can we ever forget Samson, that brawny, strong-sinewed man, who became blind as the result of his own folly? He could not serve his God without the help of a boy, and therefore, he said to the lad that held him by the hand, “Suffer me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth, that I may lean upon them;” and the boy led the blind hero to the place where, bowing himself with all his might, he avenged his blindness upon the Philistines. How often strong men have been guided to great actions by a child! Most of you can remember times when to you, also, it was true, “A little child shall lead them.” You had not thought of it, had not the boy suggested it to you. You could not have done it aforetime; but somehow the word he said, as he looked up archly into your face, quickened you to energy. A Christian man had never set up family prayer, but his little boy went to visit an uncle, and when he came back he said, “Father, why do you not do as uncle Isaac does?” “What is that, child?” “Why, he reads a chapter every morning and every evening, and prays with his family.” Father attended to family worship after that. The child’s remark was a great help. You may have beheld a scene like that which comes up to my memory:-At a temperance meeting a drunkard came in with a little boy whom he greatly loved, and both of them listened to the speeches. The little boy, turning round, said, “Father, do not drink any more. Come up to the platform and let us both sign the pledge.” “That I will, child.” Putting the boy on his shoulders, he forced his way through the crowd, and they both signed, and put on the blue. He was true all his life to it,-nay, he became a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ after being saved from his drunkenness. Oh, little children, you have done much, and you will do more. We cannot, therefore, thrust you away, and say to our Master, “Hearest thou what these say?” God forbid that we should.

Little children serve the Lord wondrously by their prayers. There are no prayer-meetings to my mind more touching, or more likely to prevail, than the prayer-meetings of little children when they get together and cry unto the Lord. Melancthon thought so, for he said to Luther, when he found him down in the dumps, “Courage, brother, the children are praying for us, and God will hear them.” Mr. Whitefield mentions in his diary the great encouragement that he received at Moorfields from the children. He says that he was pelted with mud and stones, but he was greatly comforted, for a company of little children always sat around the platform and passed him up the requests for prayer. When mud and stones fell fast about them they never stirred, but still kept looking up to the man of God, and offering their prayers that God might help him. The Lord God will hear children: he heareth young ravens when they cry, will he not much more hear the young of the human race? That perfect praise which he brings out of their mouths he must accept, for he has himself put it there. He will accept their childish pleadings: blessings must descend when children pray.

The children of London, I do verily believe, are the best city missionaries that we have, and the best evangelists that we shall ever find. They come to our schools, and everything is happy and holy there; but they often go home to houses from which they have been sent to get rid of them, and for no better reason; but when they go home what do they do? If you were to turn a singing pilgrim, and visit certain homes with the wish to sing gracious hymns, the door would be shut in your face. But little Tommy will sing at home, and father will say, “Come and sing me one of your little pieces”; for in his opinion Tommy’s voice is much sweeter than yours. And little Ruth, when she goes home, tells her father what her teacher said. Father does not care for parsons, and he does not believe in religion; but then, you see, he is very fond of Ruth, and Ruth prattles so prettily that he loves to listen to her, and even tells his mates what she says. Even her breakings down and her lispings are pretty to him; his heart must be impressed, now that Ruth sings to him. In many hundreds of cases it has been so. When children are converted, they do more than sing and tell what they have heard. I heard of a little child whose father was wont to curse and swear, and when he had indulged in a fit of horrible language, she went behind the door in terror. Her father fiercely demanded, “What are you doing there? Come out.” When she came out her eyes were red with weeping. “What are you crying for, child? What are you crying for?” “Because, dear father, I could not bear to hear you swear!” “Well, child, you never shall hear me swear again. Mother, I think that child goes to a good school. What school is it? I must go and hear the minister.” How many cords of love God is binding about hearts by means of the children from our Sabbath-schools!

If you ever become weary in teaching, because you think you are not doing much, do recollect that you do not know how much you are doing. You are teaching the children, but you are also teaching the fathers and the mothers, and through them the word is entering where none of us can go. God will bless the word which the children carry home. They are capable of great service, even as children. Therefore do not pray that they may be converted when they grow up, but pray that they may be converted while they are children. Pray that while they are yet little ones they may be spiritually girded with a linen ephod, and may spend their earliest days in the house of the Lord.

Lastly, lest I weary you, the third head shall be this: children’s piety and service are peculiarly glorifying to god.

It glorifies God’s condescension when he takes a little child and instructs it in his fear, and manifests himself to it as he does not unto the world. I have heard some speak of condescending to children. Oh, brothers! we go up when we talk to children. It is almost condescension on the little children’s part to consort with such poor creatures as we are. But for God to stoop to children is indeed wonderful. His great condescension is seen in the nursery and the infant class.

So, too, I think is his sovereignty-that while he permits the wise of this world to be foolish in their wisdom, and not many great men after the flesh, not many mighty are called, he has chosen the weak things of this world. I feel deep sympathy with our blessed Lord to-night, while I say, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that, thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.” He passes the towers of haughty princes, and he comes down to accept a babe kneeling at its mother’s knee, and there works a miracle of grace. He will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and he wills to give that mercy to children. Condescending sovereignty takes a child from its little cot and leads it to the eternal throne.

And, oh, what power is manifested in the conversion of a child! Perhaps that did not strike you. I will tell you how it may strike you. If you have any doubt about it, will you kindly try to convert a child yourself? There are teachers here, perhaps, who have performed the experiment. You have found yourselves baffled at every point. You find the little sinner as hard to subdue as the greatest rebel on earth. You find the same unbelief in its little heart as in your own, though it takes its own peculiar form. There, too, you see the same waywardness, the same fickleness, after their own form and fashion. You find the same hardness of heart, the same forgetfulness, the same carelessness, the same indifference in a child as in those who are grown up. For a child to become a saint is a mighty instance of divine power, as you will say after you have once tried to make your child into a saint by your own endeavours. The wisest and tenderest efforts, apart from divine grace, must end in utter failure; and therefore when God works the miracle let his name be praised.

By the conversion of little children the Lord gets to himself much glory, because they so admirably rebuke his enemies. Do I address any man who has not yet given his heart to God? You will be rebuked, I am sure, if you find that your children have done so. I know fathers now whose children, though they are but little, pray for them every day, saying, “God save dear father.” I know mothers who gather their little children about them, and they pray together for father: perhaps father is very kind, but yet not a Christian; or else father is cruel when he is intoxicated, and they are all afraid when he enters the house in such a state. Oh, how they pray for father that he may come home sober! The prayers of the mothers and the children are bringing the fathers and the husbands to Christ; for who can see what some of us have seen in children and not feel ashamed of living so long in opposition to the Redeemer’s love?

Ay, and I may add, I think, that children sometimes rebuke God’s own people, and so glorify God. Some of God’s people here to-night have never made a confession of their faith. What would you think if I introduced six children to you whom I saw one after another last week, and who all came forward with eagerness to say, “We have been washed in the blood of Jesus, and we want to join his church.” I said, “Come along, my children; I am glad to see you.” When I talked with them, and heard what God had done for them, I had great confidence in proposing them to the church. I have not found young converts turn back. I usually find that these young ones who are introduced early to the church hold on, and become our best members. Do not refuse to receive them, lest it should ever happen to you as it did to one who was cruelly prudent. A child had loved the Saviour for some two or three years, and she desired to make a confession of her faith. She begged of her mother that she might be baptized. The mother said that she thought she was too young. The child went to bed broken-hearted, and in the morning a great tear stood in her eye. She had joined the church triumphant above! Do not let your child ever have to complain of you that you will not believe in its truthful love to Jesus. Do you expect perfection in a child before it joins the church? Then I hope you are perfect yourself, and, if you are, pray go to heaven, because I am sure you will fall to quarrelling with everybody here on earth. Few of the perfect people are agreeable neighbours; I suppose they are so good that they have no patience with us who are not up to their standard. No, dear friend, a converted child will give you evidences of true religion, not of perfect religion, for that you ought not to expect. Let the child avow its faith in Christ, and, if you have not confessed him yourself, stand rebuked that a child is ready to obey its Lord while you are not.

Dear Sunday-school teachers, allow me to congratulate you upon the blessed work in which you are engaged. It is very hard work if you do it thoroughly, especially to you who are busy all the week, and really want the Sabbath for rest. You teach the children while suffering from a headache, and they do not always behave as you would wish; but pray work on for poor London’s sake, for the church’s sake, and for Christ’s sake, and for the children’s sakes. I put that in last because it has most to do with my sermon. Labour on for the children’s sake. Do, for the love of them, never give up Sunday-school teaching. “Oh, but I am getting into middle life!” Do you think that Sunday-school teaching ought to be done by nobody but boys and girls? “Oh, but I have done enough!” It is a mercy for you that the sun does not say that he has done enough, or else he would not shine to-morrow; or that God and his Christ do not say they have done enough. What would become of you if the Lord ceased blessing you? We are wanting Sunday-school teachers almost everywhere in London. Our people who get on in the world are too respectable to teach children. What a wretched pride is this! Those who talk so are disreputable creatures; I am sick of them! In America, a president has taught a Sunday-school: it was to his honour. In England chancellors and prime ministers have thought such service no disgrace. Let queens and princes teach Sunday-school; it shall be for their renown. If you are the most wealthy man in London you are the person who should take a class; that is to say, if you are a true Christian. You of knowledge, you of understanding, you of intelligence, you should come to encourage the rest. Do not leave this sacred service to our second-best people. I do not say that you have done so; but do not begin to move in that direction. Let those who know most, teach most; and let those who have grown most in Christ themselves be most earnest that others should grow up in his fear.

If you love my Master I leave this subject with you in fullest confidence. If not, I do not ask you to attempt to teach what you do not know. Jesus does not say to Judas or to Pilate, “Feed my lambs;” but he does say it to you. Peter, because you can say, “Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee.”

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Psalm 78:1-35.

OUR SANCTUARY

A Sermon

Preached on Lord’s-day Morning, June 15th, 1884, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary. O Lord, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters. Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise.”-Jeremiah 17:12, 13, 14.

This book of Jeremiah is a very thorny one: it might be called, like his smaller work, “The Book of Lamentations.” Our text is as a lily among thorns, as a rose in the wilderness; the solitary place shall be glad for it, and the desert shall rejoice. The words sound like sweet music amid the crash of tempest. The bitter tree yields us sweet fruit. The weeping prophet wipes away our tears. I do not know that the whole of Scripture contains more delightful promises than those which fell from the lips of this son of sorrow, who has been to so many a son of consolation. May God grant that this lily to-day may be exceeding lovely in your eyes as you see it in the sunlight of the Holy Spirit.

It seems to me that in this passage the mourning prophet is sitting alone in communion with his God, speaking out his steadfast faith, and washing the feet of his sorrows in the laver of the promises. The singular change of the pronoun from thee to me shows how near the Lord was to him; so near, indeed, that Jehovah not only speaks by the prophet, but breaks in with personal language, and speaks himself. All men who have to deal with great multitudes of people for God must be much alone, or they will lose their power. Jeremiah was sick at heart, for he prophesied but he was not believed; he entreated and persuaded, but his affectionate appeals were rejected; he saw the nation hastening to destruction, and he could not avert the doom: all this made him cry out in the anguish of his soul, “I am the man that hath seen affliction.” Hence he could not have lived if he had not found sanctuary in his God. He often stole away into secret places that he might pour out his breaking heart before the Lord, and commit himself to the tender care of him whom he so faithfully served. Let us imitate him, and overcome our griefs by secret fellowship with the happy God.

The passage before us is a very broken one. Those who are acquainted with the original tongue will tell you that it is difficult to construe it. It is a fragmentary passage, and several meanings have been given to it. Do you not know the reason of this? Should not a broken heart use broken words? When have you been in great trouble, and have drawn nigh to God, you have often had to pour out your heart in faltering accents. Nor does this destroy our prayer, or even shorten its power. Our God can put our speech together when we cannot put it together ourselves. A sigh here and a cry there, an utterance of faith at one moment and a groan of sorrow at the next: these make up a singular patchwork to ourselves, perhaps; more singular still to anyone who should overhear us in our solitary sighs; but such supplications are not at all singular to God. He reads the meaning of his saints, and understands the language of their sighs. However, it seems to me that the translators of the Authorised Version have given us the true meaning of the original, as I think they generally do. The men are not yet born who will give us a better rendering either of the Old or the New Testament than is to be found in our old English Bibles, and it is my belief that they never will be born. These men wrote a marvellously pure English, and really translated the Bible into our mother tongue, being helped of God not only to see the meaning, but to write it in words which are understood of the people. Learned men in our day for the most part know every tongue except English; and they fall into the error of mistaking long Latinized words for our native language. Give me plain expressive Saxon. You may place every confidence in your grandmother’s Bible; whatever small improvements the translation may require, it is in the main so good that its rivals have had but short lives, while it retains all its primitive power.

In this text no doubt the prophet had in his eye the temple at Jerusalem. Seated upon the summit of a hill, with deep valleys surrounding it, the temple stood aloft, above all, a noble structure, seen from afar. To the Jew it was “Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth.” When God dwelt in it the temple might be fitly described in the language of Jeremiah as “A glorious high throne” for God. That glittering temple of snow-white marble, adorned with abundance of gold, seemed as it gleamed in the sun to be the lofty seat of Jehovah, whereon he reigned in the midst of his people. The temple, I say, may have been in the prophet’s eye, but I do not think that it was in the heart of his meaning. The passage which we read just now, in the seventh chapter of Jeremiah, shows you that Jeremiah was by no means a devotee for the material temple, nor did he rest his confidence in its outward ceremonial. He had reached a more spiritual region. That evangelical spirit which spake by Isaiah also rested upon Jeremiah. He had come to understand that God is not to be worshipped as if he dwelt in temples made with hands, nor to be served by merely outward rites; but that God is a spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. It seems to me to be clear that the prophet here speaks of God himself as being to his people the place of their sanctuary and a glorious high throne. With this I shall begin,-the true place of our sanctuary. Secondly, I shall have a little to say about the departers from God, the true place of our sanctuary,-they are to be ashamed, and written in the dust. Then, thirdly, the comers to God as the true sanctuary. How do they come? They come with the language of the fourteenth verse; “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved.”

First, let us consider the true place of our sanctuary. It is not at Jerusalem, nor yet at Samaria; it is not at Rome, nor yet at Canterbury. The place of our sanctuary is not the meeting-house wherein we gather; the place of our sanctuary is our God himself. “God is our refuge and strength.” “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.”

He is viewed under the aspect of a sovereign reigning in majesty-“A glorious high throne is the place of our sanctuary.” Many refuse to worship God as reigning: they have not yet grasped the idea that the Lord is King, so that they cannot understand the song, “The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice.” For that includes, first, divine sovereignty, and some men grow black in the face with rage against that truth; they cannot endure it. Not even over his own mercy will they allow God to exercise any sovereignty: he is to be bound by their rules and compelled to deal alike with all; so they say. But he will not have it so; for this is his word: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” The crown rights of God include this amongst the rest, that he hath the power of life and death, and can punish or pardon according to his royal pleasure. While he will deal justly with all mankind, yet he hath a special favour towards his chosen, passing by their iniquity through the sacrifice of Calvary. He will make his own election, and he will distribute his mercy as seemeth good in his sight. To all who rebel against this sovereignty he makes this answer: “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?” When any cavil at his acts, his only answer is: “Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?” Now this God whose sovereignty is so much disputed is our God; a glorious high throne for absolute dominion and sovereignty is the place of our sanctuary. To him whose sovereign grace is the hope of the undeserving we fly for succour.

Besides sovereignty, of course, his glorious high throne includes power. A throne without power would be but the pageantry of vanity. There should be power in the King who ruleth over all: and is there not? Who shall stay his hand, or say unto him, “What doest thou?” God is ruler even at this hour. The floods lift up their voices, yea, the great waves of the raging sea roar in their pride, but “the Lord sitteth upon the flood; yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever.” Hallelujah. Do not imagine that Jehovah has vacated his throne or left the affairs of his kingdom to chance, or to the free-will of man. Whatever you think you see of chance has an underlying order about it which shows that God is there: whatever you see of man’s free agency, and you do see it, yet over it and above it there is the overruling hand of him that worketh all things according to the counsel of his will. “Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.” Oh, it is such a blessed thing to me that the place of our sanctuary is the reigning God, as long as he is on the throne it must be well with the righteous. Oh, but they say, evil reigneth. Yes, but God reigneth over the evil, and through the evil still produces good. Do not imagine that Satan is an independent power, a sort of second Deity, outside of the dominion of the Lord, for even he is subordinated to the eternal purpose. “Alas,” cries despondency, “sorrow reigneth, and the effect of the curse!” I know it; but the Redeemer also reigneth, lifting up his people from that curse; and the creation itself also, which has been made subject to vanity, shall be delivered, and rise into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Wherefore, rejoice in this, that the Lord reigns as absolute monarch, full of power to execute his own purposes of infinite love. In all times of disturbance and trouble flee ye to the Lord of all as to a sanctuary, and find your comfort in him.

Forget not that the Lord reigns in exceeding glory. The excellence of his dominion surpasses all other, for he is the blessed and only Potentate. Every act of his empire exhibits his glorious character, his justice, his goodness, his faithfulness, his holiness. Other kings need the tinsel of pomp, and the trickery of policy to make them great, but the Lord God is essentially glorious, and those who know him best are most struck with his grandeur. The chronicles of Jehovah’s kingdom are honourable and glorious, the forces of his throne are infinite, the purposes of his majesty are holy, and his name is to be praised from generation to generation. We shelter beneath no insignificant princedom-a glorious high throne is the place of our sanctuary.

The text teaches more than this, however. It says, “A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary.” It is a very blessed thing to come back to the fact that the Lord has not newly assumed a throne, from which he has newly cast out some former king. Nay, “A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary.” As his is the most potent of empires, so is it the most ancient. There was a time before all times when there was no day but the Ancient of Days, and then God was supreme, purposing, determining, counselling, arranging all things according to the good pleasure of his will. “With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him?” Then there came a day when he had created worlds, I know not how many, but in them all he found no rival. Perhaps all the stars we see are worlds full of inhabitants who worship the infinite Creator, and perhaps all the stars that have ever been seen by the telescope are to the whole universe of God as a little dust behind the door might be to a large room. But in all these worlds from the beginning the Lord is a glorious high throne. When he made this world and put man upon it, he did not make it without a plan and a purpose from the beginning. He never lifted his finger upon any work of his hand without first knowing what he was going to do, and what would come of it. God is never taken by surprise, he has foreseen all things and worked them into his grand plan. The arrangements of providence which seem so complex to us are not complex to him; they are simple, direct, and effective. God is working evermore for a glorious purpose, which shall one day make the universe and all eternity to sing with rapturous joy that ever God determined to do what he is now doing. Let us rest in that truth. From the beginning a glorious high throne ordained everything, and it arranges all things to-day: this is the place of the sanctuary of God’s people. Oh, be ye not cast down and troubled, for the Lord reigneth: beneath his royal pavilion we may rest in peace. There is evil and there is sorrow, there is sin and there is bold rebellion; but infinite goodness is still regnant upon the throne of glory. Be ye not worried as though truth would be defeated by falsehood, and goodness would be exterminated by evil; for the Lord of holiness wears the crown, and he will break the hosts of wickedness with his sceptre, as with a rod of iron. A glorious high throne, higher than the throne of Satan, higher than the heights of pride, higher than the loftiness of ambition, higher even than the heaven of heavens, is still the throne of God for ever and ever, and this is the refuge of all his saints. The Lord hath graciously said of his people, “Although I have scattered them among the countries, yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary”; and he has also said, “Sanctify the Lord of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he shall be for a sanctuary.”

When the prophet alludes to the place of our sanctuary, our mind is naturally led to feel that there must be some kind of place where God especially reveals himself. We all know that he manifests himself in heaven; and we expect ere long to be there to swell the number of his courtiers; but he has also revealed himself on earth, and very significant are the places where he has done so. The place where he mainly revealed himself among men was the temple, to which I have said Jeremiah somewhat alludes. Now, where was the temple built? It was built upon that mountain whereon Abraham took his son Isaac to offer him up as a sacrifice. Wonderful scene! There, all in lonely quietude, the servants left at the foot of the hill, the great patriarch, the father of the faithful, laid the wood upon the altar and unsheathed the knife to slay his only son. There the scene ends, and the curtain drops; but what a wonderful picture it was of the greater Father, the everlasting God, who did in very deed and truth offer up his Son, the heir of the promise, that we might live through him! A ram caught in the thicket was the substitute for Isaac; but there was no substitute for Jesus, the Son of God. He died the just for the unjust to bring us to God. But there, where the most instructive of all types of the heavenly Father’s love was exhibited, there must be the temple wherein God would converse with men and make for men a place of sanctuary. The temple itself was built upon that site, and there it was that God dwelt visibly between the wings of the cherubim, above the ark of the covenant, over that golden lid which was called the mercy-seat. What was that ark of the covenant, but a type of our Lord Jesus Christ in a most instructive way? There stood the cherubim above the golden lid of that coffer; and Jesus also was “seen of angels.” The cover made the mercy-seat, or propitiatory, and this the Lord Jesus is to us. He, as the blood-besprinkled mercy-seat, is the place where God meets with us, hears our prayers, and accepts our persons and our praises. Look within the lid with holy reverence, and first you see two tables of stone upon which the law of God was engraven. Did not Jesus say, “I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart”? Looking again, you observe a golden pot filled with manna, and you remember him who is the bread which came down from heaven, whereof if a man eat he shall live for ever. Nor may we fail to notice a rod, a rod that has budded and blossomed and brought forth almonds; for by it we are reminded that the sceptre of rule is with the Lord Jesus Christ, and the government shall be upon his shoulder. This is his living and productive sceptre, with which he rules the souls of his people. Do you wonder that the Lord in meeting his people ordained as the trysting place such an eminent type of his dear Son? The ark of the covenant was made according to the pattern which Moses saw in the holy Mount; and above its mercy-seat was the place where God dwelt, and where he communed with his people.

But the sacrifice of Isaac and the ark of the covenant were only types of that greater sacrifice when he who is the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, went up to the cross, and on Calvary “it pleased the Lord to bruise him.” It is natural that the Lord should meet with us in grace in the place where he put his Son to grief. There, where he made his soul an offering for sin, the Lord becomes well pleased with us. O friends, the cross is the place where God hath his throne of salvation, and truly we may say of it-“A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary.” In the great plan of salvation by the sacrifice of the Son of God, God is indeed enthroned. Upon the cross he is extolled and made very high. Would you see his majesty? Behold, it in the person of the Only Begotten, full of grace and truth. Would you see his justice? Read it written in crimson lines upon the dying person of the Son of God. Would you see his love? Ah, I will not speak of it, but simply say-Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us! In giving us his own dear Son, he has glorified his grace by an unspeakable gift. God is never so revealed in all the works of his hands as in the cross of Christ. That is a glorious high throne indeed. Its moral excellence, its infinite love, its spiritual beauty, can never be equalled. Earthly kings and princes often rule by injustice, breaking the laws which they pretend to make; but he, our God, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, is lifted high, high above all censure as to his justice, his holiness, his grace, his truth, his love. “A glorious high throne is the place of our sanctuary.”

Now then, dear friends, the place where we worship is God himself revealed in the person of his dear Son. I pray you, never try to worship anywhere else. Christ is the one altar, the one temple, the one sanctuary. Set not up your high places of will-worship; erect not images to Baal in the form of self and sin. God in Christ Jesus should absorb all the worship of all the sons of men.

In addition, the Lord God is our refuge; for a sanctuary was a place to which men fled in the hour of peril. Is not Jesus our refuge from present guilt and from the wrath to come? Does he not deliver us from the guilt of sin? Ay, he is our refuge from temptation, our refuge in the hour of trial, our sanctuary in every season of sorrow, distress and pain. This glorious high throne affords us an abiding shelter under the assaults of the enemy. I do not think I can preach on such a text,-so there I must just leave it for you to think it over, or, better still, for you to flee to it, and fleeing to it to abide in it, worshipping in spirit and in truth.

Secondly, I am to speak but a few words, but those very solemnly, concerning those who depart from God. Alas, that there should be such!-men who leave the river for the desert, the living for the dead! Who are they? The text says, “All that forsake thee,” and “they that depart from me.” See, then, that this text has a bearing upon us, because these people of whom we are now going to speak were not an ignorant people who did not know God, or how could they be said to forsake him? They were not like the heathen who have never heard his name. You cannot forsake a person with whom you have no acquaintance. They were a people who knew a great deal about God, since he had given them his law and sent his prophets among them. They were the people of Israel: God had dwelt among them: in open type and visible glory he had been in the midst of their host; they had seen the sacrifice, they had beheld the great wonders which the Lord wrought for them in Egypt and at the Red Sea; and yet they forsook him. Alas! there are among his own professed people a company that forsake him. They mix for a time with the people of God, but they ultimately go out from them because they are not truly of them. In this land we have a people to whom God has been very gracious in sending the gospel to them; but they are forsaking Christ for Rome, turning aside from faith in the Redeemer’s merit that they may trust in priestcraft. It will not do, my brethren, it will not do. But there are many such, and many that did run well for a time; what did hinder them that they should not still obey the truth? They went back to the world for gain or for ease: because of poverty, or because of riches, or because of fear of man, they turned aside and went away from God. We still sorrowfully know that an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God remains amongst us. Those who forsake the Lord are not an infidel people altogether, they are not a people who refuse even to hear his name; but their hearts are not right with Jehovah, neither are they steadfast in his covenant. At one time evidently these people had something to do with the Lord, but after awhile they forsook him. What did they do? They no longer sought unto the Lord as once they did, but ceased to be fervent in their service. At first they ceased to worship him, they took no delight in his ways; they tried to be neutral, they were lukewarm, careless, indifferent, they forgot God. After thus declining in zeal, and refusing outward worship, they went further; for he says they had departed from him-they could not endure the Lord, and therefore went into the far country. They said unto God, “Depart from us; we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.” They went into open sin; they disowned their God and broke his commands: some of them even dared to blaspheme him. The course of sin is downhill. The man who once forgets his God soon forgets himself; and then he throws the reins on the neck of his lusts and goes from sin to sin, forgetting his God more and more. I may be addressing such this morning; I fear I am. To such I have to tell what will become of them one of these days. This will become of you,-you “shall be ashamed.” I do not know a more painful feeling to a true man than to be ashamed, when he feels-“I was foolish and wrong”: it makes his cheeks crimson, his heart swells, his eyes overflow. The most hardened of sinners will one day be ashamed, saying, “I acted unprofitably to myself.” Such shame will come over you forgetful ones one of these days. You that live without God will ere long be disgusted with yourselves for it. It may not come upon you till you die, but it is very probable that it will assail you then. When in your dying hours, what a dreadful thing it will be to be filled with shame at the remembrance of the past, so as to be afraid to meet your God, ashamed to think that you have lived a whole life without caring for him! What will it be to wake up in the next world and to see the glory of God around you-the glory of the God whom you despised! Oh, the shame that will come over the ungodly in judgment! It is written, “They shall wake up to shame and everlasting contempt.” Every intelligent being that is right towards God will despise the man that forsook God and turned away from him. “They shall wake up to shame and everlasting contempt.” What a waking! It is as terrible as our Lord’s word, “In hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments.” How fearful to think that the contempt will never end! Everlasting contempt! What a word! I hope you have never acted so as to feel ashamed before your fellow-men; for it must be a dreadful thing when such a charge is brought against a man that he has to appear before the judgment-seat of his own country, and knows that he is guilty. He has only his fellow-men to face; but what a hang-dog look he has! He cannot face the the jury; he is afraid to cast his eyes upon the judge! He is ashamed to be seen even by the meanest wretches in the court. In the next world there will be none of that hardihood which enables big villains to brazen it out before their neighbours. Conscience will be awakened then, and therefore shame will have all the greater power. Great men and proud men will be small enough ere long; and careless and profane persons will be miserable enough when that word shall be fulfilled-“All that forsake thee shall be ashamed.”

And then it is added that they “shall be written in the earth;” that is, if they turn away from God they may win a name for awhile, but it will be merely from the earth, and of the earth. They may obtain a fortune, and enjoy outward prosperity; they may be like David’s green bay-tree that spread itself far and wide; but in the end it will turn out that they were like bullocks fattened for the slaughter, or like the swine that lie down in their sty, too well filled to move, but all the more sure to be killed. What an awful thing that a man should have his portion in this life and nothing to come hereafter! O worldlings, you have your riches in this poor country which is soon to be burned with fire. Your pleasures and treasures will melt in the fervent heat of the last days. Your life’s pursuits are a short business, ending in eternal misery. They that have forsaken God will have their little day; but the more they prosper, and the richer they become, and the more famous they grow, so much the worse for them; for the higher they mount the more desperate shall be their fall.

We read that they “shall be written in the earth,” and that means that they shall go into oblivion. If you were to go to a school in the East you would find that the children have no slates, and very few of them have wax tablets, for these are rather expensive; and so the schoolmaster spreads the floor with sand or earth, and you see the boys writing their copies on the ground. Then, of course, when they had finished their writing the master would just sweep the floor, and all the writing disappeared. Was this the meaning of our Saviour when he stooped down and wrote on the ground? When they brought to him the woman taken in adultery, hypocrites that they were, you remember he stooped down and wrote on the ground as though he heard them not; as much as to say, “I shall rub it all out again: all that you have to say will be forgotten.” So will it be with men who do not trust in God. Their names will be written in the sand, and in a little time the great foot of Providence will obliterate them all, and they will be quite forgotten. If you get honour in this life by sin, your fame carries its death within its own bowels. The greatest name that ever rung forth from the clarion of fame shall die out into oblivion or infamy if its honours are earned by an evil life. Oh, ye who dread a cold forgetfulness, live unto God, and then your names shall shine on for ever; but if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die, and leave your names for a curse unto the Lord’s people!

The text tells us that there shall come something besides this: they that forsake God shall one day be sore athirst even unto death, “because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters.” There is for the soul but one fountain of water, flowing, cool, clear, ever refreshing. “All my springs are in thee,” said David; and so may we say, for our only source of supply is the Lord our God. If a man turns away from God then he forsakes the cool fountain, he goes to broken cisterns that hold no water, and he will perish of thirst. Oh, my well-beloved hearers, I wish I were able to put this very strongly before you! You are such creatures that you must trust and love God, or else you will never possess that which you were created to enjoy; you must always be without the grand necessary of your being. You are vessels, but what will be the use of you if you are not filled? You are denying yourselves bread when you deny yourselves God-I mean bread for your souls. You must have God in Christ Jesus or else you will be as one that is parched with thirst in the Sahara. He looks around him eagerly for a well, but sees nothing save an ocean of sand. He rushes this way till the hot sand beneath his feet burns out of him all power to move; anon he struggles to his feet, and turns in the other direction, but with equal disappointment. He lifts his hands; he cries; he tears his hair in utter despair; he stoops down, he scoops a hole in the ground, he would fain dig to the very centre to find drink, but all in vain, he must pine away and die. His mouth is an oven, his tongue a firebrand, himself the victim of death. So, poor heart, there is nothing for you but God: if you forsake him you die. Young man, you are miserable to-day; you used to enjoy the theatre, and even baser amusement; but you cannot rejoice in them now, and I am thankful you cannot. You are becoming dissatisfied and wretched, but you need not remain so. Here is the living water fresh and free, and the Spirit bids me cry, “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” The supply for your soul is only to be found in this one well, the well of Bethlehem, the well which springs up from the depths of eternal love in Christ Jesus our Lord. God still sits enthroned in Jesus as upon a glorious high throne; he there receives thirsty sinners to himself, and gives them to drink till they are filled to the full.

Oh, when I take hold of my God I do not seem as if I wanted anything else. If I have God in Christ then am I all content, filled with all the fulness of God. “But troubles will come.” Never mind troubles as long as you have your God. I feel sometimes like Rutherford when he said he could swim through seven hells to get at Christ. So a man might well do. You will not mind the trials of life when once you know that God is yours. A boy once said to his fellow, “John, would you like to have been Elijah? Would you have dared to get into that chariot of fire with horses of fire?” “Yes,” said the other, “I would not mind if God drove.” That is how believers feel about everything. If God drives let us be fully at ease, for all must be well: if the Lord be King, those who trust in him are safe. Since Jehovah rules, and over-rules, we mount the chariot of fire or walk the waves of the sea and we are secure in either case. If the worst comes to the worst, we shall be wafted to the best place of all, up to the throne of God, to the right hand of the Most High. Wherefore, comfort one another with these words all ye who find sanctuary in your God; but if you trust not in the hope of Israel, you must thirst for ever and never attain to satisfaction.

Thirdly, and lastly, let us look at the comers to God. Those who come to God-how do they come? Very briefly, they come away from all the world. Poor Jeremiah had nobody to help him or comfort him: the best of the men that he met with were sharper than a thorn hedge, they only wounded him; therefore he came right out from them, and confessed that Jehovah, the hope of Israel, was his God and his sanctuary. He set himself quite alone for God and his fear. Come, then, you that wish to come to God, and find him to be your sanctuary; come right out from the world. I do not ask you just now, as my dear brother Moody does, to stand up, but I believe that if I were to say, “Let those that follow after God stand up,” the bulk of you would gladly rise and acknowledge your Lord. If we do not at this moment adopt that mode of confessing Christ, yet we will do it in some way. Oh, brethren, own your Lord! “Come out from among them, and be ye separate; touch not the unclean thing.” Come away, Lot, you cannot prosper and be happy in Sodom; you do not know or love the ways of the place. Lot settled there and thought he was going to get on first rate; but he was never happy. His righteous soul was vexed by the wicked citizens. I am glad it was so. Their ungodly conversation vexed righteous Lot, and he deserved to be vexed. If you try to be like worldlings, I hope they will not welcome your imitation. Whenever I am told of a man’s holding with the have and running with the hounds, I am always glad to hear that the dogs bite him. What business has he with the dogs? Come right out! O soul, if thou wouldst have peace, come away to your God. Never take your place with those who shall be written in the earth.

How did believers come to God of old? Jeremiah came sick and needing to be saved, for he cried, “Heal me, O Jehovah, save me.” That is the way to come. If you want to have God and his glorious high throne to be your shelter, come just as you are, sick and sorry. Do not stop till you have bettered yourself; all bettering is mere battering till we come to Christ; then he betters us in real earnest, for he makes us new creatures in himself. Come along then, and say, “Heal me, and save me.”

But come to God with faith. It was grand faith of Jeremiah which enabled him to say “Heal me, and I shall be healed.” Sick as I am, if thou wilt act as physician to me I shall be cured: if thou save me, lost as I am, I shall be saved. Come along, poor sinner. “Where, sir?” say you. To God in Christ Jesus. This is the gospel: “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.” “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Come to your God, come to your God in Christ Jesus with the full conviction that he can and will heal you. “Heal me, and I shall be healed: save me, and I shall be saved.”

And come with this acknowledgment on your tongue,-“For thou art my praise.” Some of you can say already, “Thou art my praise.” “O Lord, I will praise thee.” “Jehovah is my strength and my song.” Oh, I think if I were worn out with disease, and if I had to a large extent lost my powers of speech, and powers of thought too, I could, if I were startled at the dead of night sit up in my shirt sleeves and speak to the praise of the Lord my God. That is a subject upon which a child of God can surely talk in his sleep. We have a good God, a loving God, a tender God, a gracious God, a God full of long-suffering and mercy and faithfulness to us poor sinners.

“I’ll praise him in life, I’ll praise him in death,

I’ll praise him as long as he lendeth me breath;

And say when the death dew lies cold on my brow,

If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.”

This is good argument in prayer;-“I have made my boast in thee, O God, I pray thee let not my glorying be stopped. Be to me as I have declared thou wilt be.”

But suppose you cannot say so much as that, then put it this way:-“Heal me, O Lord; heal me this morning; save me, O Lord; save me at once, and thou shalt be my praise. Lord, I promise that I will never rob thee of the honour of my salvation; if thou wilt but save me thou shalt have all the glory of it.” Oh, how I used to feel when I first sought the Lord, that if saved it must be all of grace; I felt that I should never have a word to say in my own praise, but every syllable should be for Jesus. I was ashamed and confounded, and could never open my mouth any more in my own defence, but all must be to my Redeemer’s praise? When I get to heaven how I will bless and magnify his name; meanwhile I would practise the holy exercise even here. O troubled ones, come to him just as you are; trust him, and he will save you. Then will your heart say-

“Now for the love I bear his name

What was my gain I count my loss;

My former pride I call my shame,

And nail my glory to his cross.”

Henceforth I give myself up wholly to that one work of praising and magnifying and adoring the name of the Most High. After fifty years of life I have no ambition but to glorify my Lord. Beloved, if you get the glorious high throne to be your sanctuary, I am sure you will praise the Lord your King for ever and ever.

How is the preacher going to close with an appeal for the hospitals? This is the day for the Hospital Collection, and I hope you will give largely: I think the text suggests it. If you pray for healing, help others who need healing. If your prayer is, “Save me,” if you expect the Lord to have mercy upon you, have mercy upon others. As you serve a great God, have large hearts, and give liberally, like followers of the generous Lord Jesus. If the beloved Physician has healed all your diseases, show your gratitude by what you do for the sick poor in the hospitals of London this day. Amen.

Portions of Scripture read before Sermon-Jeremiah 7:1-14; 17:1-14.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-113, 148 (Part II.), 148 (Part I.)