This was one of David’s sayings: “I said.” It was a saying that was worth saying, and it is worth re-saying: “I said, Lord, be merciful unto me.” How often he said it, we do not know; the oftener, the better. There is no day too bright for saying it, and there is no night too dark for saying it. “I said, Lord, be merciful unto me.” Every one of David’s sayings was not worth repeating; for he said some things that he had to retract. “I said in my haste,” said he, on one occasion; and, possibly, what he said in his haste he repented of at his leisure. But this saying in our text needs no retracting, it only needs repeating; and, until we enter heaven, we may keep on saying it: “I said, Lord, be merciful unto me.” I have never heard of Christ rebuking anybody for speaking thus. He who said, “God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are,” received no commendation from the Lord Jesus Christ; but he who said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” went down to his house justified rather than the other. This is a good saying, a true saying, a humble saying, and a gracious saying; and I say again, the oftener it is repeated, the better: “I said, Lord, be merciful unto me.”

Observe that this is a saying to the Lord: “I said, Lord, be merciful unto me.” You hear people say, when they are talking and gossiping, “I said to her, and she said to me,” or, “He said to me, and I said to him,”-so-and-so and so-and-so. Well, what does it matter what you said or what they said? Very likely it is not worth repeating, nor the answer that was made to it; much of what is said may be summed up in the Dunottar Castle motto:-

“They say.

What do they say?

Let them say.”

It all comes to nothing; it is only breath vainly spent, which would be far more wisely expended, if it were, as the poet Cowper said,-

“To heaven in supplication sent.”

How much better it would be if each one of the parties concerned said, “Lord, be merciful unto me”! If we would speak twice to God and only once to men, or if we even reached so happy a proportion as at least to say as much to God as we say to our fellow-men, how much healthier, and happier, and stronger, and more heavenly, and more holy should we become! You need not try to recollect all that you have said to your fellow-men,-probably much of that is best forgotten; but it is good to recollect what you have said to your God, if it be anything like this saying of the sweet psalmist of Israel, “I said, Lord, be merciful unto me.”

Let this be one of our sayings as well as David’s. As he said, “Lord, be merciful unto me,” I am sure I ought to say it, and I think, dear friends, you ought to say it, too. If there is anybody here who thinks that he has grown so good that he does not need to pray, “Lord, be merciful unto me,” I am very thankful for once that I am not as that man is, for he must be eaten up with pride. He cannot be right in his heart who will not pray for mercy, and, surely, he has received no mercy who does not feel his need of more mercy. God can scarcely have begun to work in that man who thinks that he needs no longer make confession of sin, or seek mercy from God. David tells us, “I said, Lord, be merciful unto me,” and I advise you to make this one of your sayings also. People sometimes say, “It is an old saying,” and that is supposed to be its commendation. Well, this also is an old saying. A young man says, “My father used to say so-and-so;” and I have no doubt that, if you had a godly father, he used to say much that was worth remembering, and worth repeating, and you cannot do better than use your father’s words, especially if they were like David’s on this occasion. Let it be reported of you in your biography, if it is ever written, “This was one of his sayings; he often said, ‘Lord, be merciful unto me.’ ”

Notice, also, that this was the saying of a sick man, and of a sick saint. “I said, Lord, be merciful unto me.” It is not written, “I said, Lord, thou art unmerciful to me in chastening me; thou dealest too severely with me in placing me upon this sick-bed, and causing me to lie here till the bed grows hard as a rock beneath me.” No, there is no complaining here, though there is petitioning; there is no murmuring, though there is supplicating. “I said, Lord, be merciful unto me.” When you get well again after an illness, it will be a great comfort if you can look back and feel, “I did not complain, but the chief cry from my sick-bed was, ‘Lord, be merciful unto me.’ ”

I have thus briefly introduced to you one of the sayings of a sick saint,-a sick king, and that king was David, the man after God’s own heart; and I believe that this saying of his was after God’s own heart, and that this prayer was pleasing in the ears of the Most High: “I said, Lord, be merciful unto me.” So now I will try to show you that our text contains, first, a prayer: “Lord, be merciful unto me;” next, a confession: “I have sinned against thee;” and then, thirdly, a plea, and a very singular plea it is: “I said, Lord, be merciful unto me: heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee.”

It may mean,-and I daresay it did mean, at least in part,-“Mitigate my pains.” O beloved, when you feel a heart throbbing and palpitating, or when the swollen limb seems as if it were laid upon an anvil, and beaten with red-hot hammers, when the pain goes through you again and again, till even the strong man is ready to cry out in his agony, and the tears start unwillingly to the eyes, this is a good prayer to present to God, “Lord, be merciful unto me.” I have sometimes found that, where medicine has failed, and sleep has been chased away, and pain has become unbearable, it has been good to appeal to God directly, and to say, “O Lord, I am thy child; wilt thou allow thy child to be thus tortured with pain? Is it not written, ‘Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him’? Lord, be merciful unto me.” I can solemnly assert that I have found immediate respite from paroxysms of extreme pain in answer to a simple appeal to the fatherhood of God, and a casting myself upon his mercy; and I do not doubt that I am also describing the experience of many others of God’s afflicted children. When grieved with sore physical pain, you will find, dear friends, that the quiet resignation, the holy patience, and the childlike submissiveness which enable you just to pray, “Lord, be merciful unto me,” will often bring a better relief to you than anything that the most skilled physician can prescribe for you. You are permitted and encouraged to act thus; when the rod falls heavily upon you, look up into your Father’s face, and say, “Lord, be merciful unto me.”

But that is not all that David meant, I am quite sure, for, next, he must have meant, “Forgive my sins.” You can see, by his prayer, that his sins were the heaviest affliction from which he was suffering: “Be merciful unto me: heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee.” And, believe me, there is no pain in the world that at all approximates to a sense of sin. I said to a dear friend, who is greatly depressed at this time, “I should like you to have a little rheumatic gout, just to take your thoughts off your mental anxiety.” “Oh!” said she, “it would be a great pleasure to me to have that form of suffering rather than my present depression of spirit;” and I am sure that it is so, and if that depression of spirit is mingled with the thought of sinfulness, and you are afraid-although, perhaps, in your case there may be no ground for fear because you really are God’s child,-but if you get afraid that you are not pardoned and forgiven, that fear will cut into you worse than a wound from a sword. It will make your blood boil more than would the poison of a cobra in your veins, for there is nothing so venomous as sin. So David meant, “I said, when I felt my sin,-I said, when my spirit sank within me,-Lord, be merciful unto me. Be merciful unto me.”

Sinners’ prayers suit depressed saints. The prayer of the publican is, after all, my every-day prayer. I have what I may call a Sunday prayer, a prayer for high days and holidays; but my every-day prayer, the one that I can use all through the week, the one that I can pick up when I cannot pick up anything else, is the publican’s prayer, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” That prayer is “the bairn’s prayer,” such as you would teach a child to pray; it is the prayer of the poor harlot, the prayer of the dying thief, “O God, be merciful to me!” It is a blessed, blessed prayer, and I charge you never to cease from using it in the sense that our Lord taught it to his disciples, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.”

But that is not all that there is in this prayer. I think that David, when he said, “Lord, be merciful unto me,” also meant, “Fulfil thy promises.” “Thou hast said of the man who considers the poor, ‘The Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.’ Lord, be merciful unto me, and deliver me in the time of my trouble. Thou hast said, ‘The Lord will preserve him, and keep him alive.’ Lord, be merciful unto me, preserve me, and keep me alive. Thou hast said that thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies; Lord, be merciful unto me, and guard me from my foes. Thou wilt strengthen him upon the bed of languishing; Lord, be merciful unto me, and strengthen me. Thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness; Lord, make my bed.” It is a very difficult thing to make a sick man’s bed easy; and I should think that it was still harder to make the kind of bed that David was accustomed to lie upon. We often have a soft bed with plenty of feathers in it, yet, after we have been lying upon it for a month, it gets very hard. No matter if it be a bed of down, it seems as if it were made of stone, and one is apt to think that it is made very badly when it is made exceedingly well. But I should think that the mattresses they used in the East must have been so hard that it needed God himself to make soft beds for sick people then, so the Lord comes in with this gracious promise, “I will make all his bed”-bolster, pillow, covering, and all,-“I will make all his bed in his sickness. I will help him. I will comfort him. I will make him patient. I will enable him to bear all my will.”

Now, then, you dear saints of God who are in trouble, here is a prayer that is suitable for every one of you: “Lord, be merciful unto me.” Should you get very badly off, then plead the promise, “Thou hast said, ‘Bread shall be given him, his waters shall be sure;’ Lord, be merciful unto me.” Are you going down in the world? Remember that it is written, “No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly,” and cry, “Lord, be merciful unto me.” This prayer comes in appropriately at the back of every promise.

I know that I am addressing some who are not yet saved, but I wish that this prayer might get into each one of their hearts: “Lord, be merciful unto me.” Keep on praying it until you obtain the mercy. Every five minutes in the day, wherever you are, let your heart go beating,-beat, beat, beat, beat,-to this tune, “Lord, be merciful unto me. Be merciful unto me. Be merciful unto me.” You cannot have a prayer that will better fit your lips.

So far I have spoken of only half the psalmist’s prayer; the other half of it is, “Heal my soul.” David does not pray, “Heal my eye; heal my foot; heal my heart; heal me, whatever my disease may be;” but he goes at once to the root of the whole matter, and prays, “Heal my soul.” O you sick men, be more anxious to have your soul healed than to have your body cured! What does David mean by this portion of his prayer?

He means, I think, first, “Heal me, Lord, of the distress of my soul! My soul is afflicted with an appalling disease, and is brought very low: ‘Lord, heal my soul.’ I am so sad, so sorely affrighted, such terrors pass before my eyes, my soul has got morbid, melancholic, despondent, hypochondriacal, ‘Lord, heal my soul.’ ” The Lord is the great Soul-healer; therefore go to him with this prayer, “Lord, heal me of the distress of my soul.”

But add also this meaning to the petition: “Lord, heal my soul of the effect of sin.” Every sin brings on another sin; and the continuance in sin makes the tendency to sin stronger. “ ‘Heal my soul, Lord.’ If I was once a drunkard, and I have given up the evil thing, yet the thirst will come; heal my soul of it. If I have been a man of the world, and have made unrighteous gains, the tendency to do so again will be strong upon me when the opportunity occurs; ‘Heal my soul, Lord.’ That I may forget the wanton songs I used to sing, the wanton sights I once delighted in, the wanton lusts that once ate up my life, ‘Heal my soul, Lord.’ ” It is one thing to be forgiven, it is another thing to be delivered from the result of a long life of sin; yet God can do even that, so pray, “Lord, be merciful unto me, and pardon me. Heal my soul, and sanctify me.”

I think that David also meant by this prayer, “Heal me of my tendency to sin.” He seemed to say, “Lord, I shall sin again if I am not healed. I have an evil tendency in me, and an old nature which is inclined to sin; if thou dost not heal me of this disease, there will be another eruption upon the skin of my life, and I shall sin again.” When a man sins outwardly, it is because he has sin inwardly. If there were no sin in us, no sin would come out of us; but there it lies, sometimes, concealed. I do not think it is ever a good thing to sin; that cannot be, but I have known a man to be tempted, and to fall into sin, who has discovered by his fall how much of sin there always was in him. It is something like the breaking out of a disease in the skin; it would not have broken out if it had not been there before; and the outbreak, however grievous it is, may be useful by driving the sufferer to seek a cure, and so he becomes thoroughly healed. This is the meaning of David’s prayer, “Heal my soul, for I have sinned. Heal me, that I may not sin again.”

The second part of our subject is, a confession: “I have sinned against thee.” I do not want simply to have these words in my mouth, to tell them to you; I wish that I could put them into your mouths, O you unconverted ones, that you might say them to God! Let us briefly consider what is meant by this confession, “I have sinned against thee.”

First, it is a confession without an excuse. David does not say, “I have sinned against thee, but I could not help it,” or, “I was sorely tempted,” or, “I was in trying circumstances.” No; as long as a man can make an excuse for his sin, he will be a lost man; but when he dare not and cannot frame an excuse, there is hope for him. “I have sinned against thee,” is a confession without an excuse.

Further, it is a confession without any qualification. He does not say, “Lord, I have sinned to a certain extent; but, still, I have partly balanced my sins by my virtues, and I hope to wipe out my faults with my tears.” No; he says, “I have sinned against thee,” as if that were a full description of his whole life. He bows his knee, and just confesses unto God, “Lord, I give up everything in the way of self-defence or self-justification; ‘I have sinned against thee.’ ”

But notice, also, that this confession is without affectation. When some people say, “We have sinned,” you can tell by their manner that they think they are by their confession complimenting God. You talk with them, and they say, “Oh, yes, sir; we are all sinners!” Yes, they are all sinners, like the monk who said that he had broken all the commandments, and was the wickedest man in the world. So one of his companions asked him if he had broken the first commandment, another asked about the second, then the third, the fourth, the fifth, and all the rest, and to each one he kept saying, “No, I never broke that in my life.” They enquired about the whole ten, and he declared that he had never broken one of them; yet this was the man who had confessed that he had broken all ten, and there are men who say that they are sinners, yet they do not mean it; and a sham sinner will only have a sham saviour; that is to say, a man who only pretends to be a sinner, and does not realize his guilt in the sight of God, will not have a Saviour. Christ died for nobody but real sinners, those who feel that their sin is truly sin.

“A sinner is a sacred thing,

The Holy Ghost has made him so;”

and if I am happy enough to meet with a man who puts himself down with real sinners, I bid him believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and expect, that, by so doing, he will find a real Saviour who will cleanse him from sin by his precious blood.

I wanted you to notice that there was no affectation about David’s confession of sin, for, in the next verse, he says, “Mine enemies speak evil of me.” He was not going to confess sin which he had not committed; and when men spoke against him, he said, “They speak evil of me.” Well, but, David, how can they speak evil of you when you confess that you are so bad? “Ay!” says he, “but I have not done that with which they charge me; I confess that I have sinned against God, but I have not sinned against him in the way they say I have. So far as their charges are concerned, I am innocent and pure. What I confess is that I have sinned against God.” I like a man, when he makes a confession of sin, not to be carried away into the use of proud expressions without meaning, but to speak with judgment, and to acknowledge and confess only what is true. This is the excellence of David’s confession, that he owns to what no sinner will ever admit till the grace of God makes him do it: “I have sinned against thee.” Hear him again in the fifty-first Psalm: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight.” Hear the prodigal: “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” The essence of sin is that it is sin against God. It is wrong to do any harm to your neighbour; but, after all, you and he are only two subjects of the great King and Lord of all. It is high treason to sin against God; and, often, that sin, of which men think the least, God thinks the most. That spiritual sin, of which some say, “Oh, that is a mere trifle!”-that forgetting of the Creator, that ignoring of the only Redeemer, this is the sin of sins, the damning sin which kindles the flames of hell; and it is a good thing, and a right thing, when a man’s confession of sin has David’s confession as the very core of it, “Lord, be merciful unto me: heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee.”

Now I close by noticing a plea, and a very singular plea it is. The psalmist’s prayer is followed by a confession, and, strangely enough, the confession is the argument of the prayer. Listen to the text again: “I said, Lord, be merciful unto me: heal my soul.” Why? “For I have sinned against thee.”

That is a very startling and remarkable way of pleading, but it is the only right one. It is such a plea as no self-righteous man would urge. The Pharisee keeps to this strain, “Lord, be merciful unto me, for I have been obedient, I have kept thy law.” O foolish, self-righteous man, do you not see that you are shutting the door in your own face? You say, in effect, “Be merciful unto me, for I do not need any mercy.” That is what it practically comes to, and therefore you are contradicting your own prayer. If you have kept the law from your youth up, and you have been so good and so obedient, you do not need any mercy from God; why, therefore, do you ask for it? No man who thinks himself better than his neighbours, strictly upright, honourable, and worthy of reward, will ever bow his knee, and cry to God, “Have mercy upon me, for I have sinned against thee.” He pleads, on the contrary, “Have mercy upon me, for I am a most respectable man; I pay everybody twenty shillings in the pound; I have brought up my family most admirably; have mercy upon me.” I say again, he asks for charity, and then says, “I do not want it; give me of thy charity, O God; but I am not one of the poor beggars that crawl about the street, I am as well-to-do as anybody.” None but the poor will value the charity of men, and none but the guilty will value the charity of God. If you are not a sinner, Christ as a Saviour has nothing to do with you. He came into the world to save sinners; and as for you who count yourselves righteous, this is what he says about you, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” As Mary sang, “He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.” Let them feed themselves if they have such an abundance as they say. This, then, is the sort of plea that a self-righteous man would not urge.

This is, further, such a plea as a carnal reasoner could not urge, for he could not spy out any reason or argument in it. “Am I to appeal to my God for mercy, and for soul-healing, on the ground that I have sinned? Why!” says he, “there is no plea in that.” But he who has been to Christ’s school, and learnt the logic of the cross, will know that there is no argument equal in force to this: “Lord, I have sinned, I need mercy; give it me, Lord. I have sinned, and therefore I have no right whatever to expect anything of thee; therefore, glorify thyself by the freeness and spontaneity of thine abounding grace. Lord, I have sinned, and this sinning has destroyed me; therefore, have pity upon me. This sinning is like a deadly disease within my soul; therefore, great Physician, come and heal me. This sinning has killed me; therefore, make me alive. This sinning has damned me; therefore, come and save me.” That is the best pleading in all the world; and, after all, it is the common pleading that men make use of with their fellow-men. When one comes begging of me, what does he say? In nine cases out of ten, he tells me what is not true; that I can vouch for, but I always notice that he never pleads thus: “Now, sir, I want you to give me help because I do not need it very much; I am not at all badly off, I have about as much already as I want; but I thought that I would take to begging because it is a genteel kind of occupation.” You never hear him talk like that. I remember giving a man, who came begging of me with bare feet, a pair of patent leather boots. They were nearly done with, but I thought that he might make some use of them, and he put them on; but he was not so foolish as to go begging in them. At the first gateway he came to, he pulled them off, and I met him, ten minutes afterwards, without the boots, except that he had them slung over his back, ready to sell to the first likely customer. He knew that rags are the best livery for a beggar; if he would succeed in his calling, then the fouler and the more ragged he looks the better for him, for so he appeals to our sense of pity. At any rate, that is the way to beg of God. Do not go and smarten yourself up, and say, “Lord, I am pretty decent as I am; be merciful unto me.” No; but go in your rags, go just as you are, in all your sin, and filthiness, and weakness, and poverty, and insignificance, and so appeal to the pity and the mercy of God. This is sound common sense that I am talking. Suppose there had been a battle, and I were a soldier who had been wounded, and lay upon the plain, and the surgeon and the men with the ambulance were going round to see who needed their help; if they came to me, I do not think I should say, “Well, doctor, I have got a bullet in here somewhere; but it has not gone in very far, I daresay it will be all right; you can leave me here.” Oh, no! I should say, “I am afraid, doctor, that this bullet is very near my heart; you had better let your men pick me up, and attend to me quickly, or I may be dead very soon.” I certainly would not try to make myself out to be better than I was, and I would be glad to be attended to at once; and what folly it is when a man tries to comfort himself, as a sinner, by looking up all his filthy rags of self-righteousness, and saying, “Lord, I do not think there is very much the matter with me.” O soul, if you did but know it, the whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint, from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet you are covered with wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores. There is but a step between you and death,-between you and hell, if you have never been washed in Jesu’s precious blood. Therefore, do not set up your lying pretences; do not paint yourself up, like Jezebel, for you cannot in that way make yourself beautiful in the sight of God. You must go to him with all your wrinkles, and all your foulness, and everything else that is hideous, and say, “Lord, I have no beauty, I have no merits, nothing to plead, nothing to urge, but my guilt. ‘Heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee.’ ” Then you shall be saved. When a man cannot pay to God a penny in the pound of all his debts, then he will be frankly forgiven all; but as long as he promises that he will make a composition, and do his best to pay what he owes to divine justice in the hope that Jesus Christ will make up the rest, there is no hope for him. The Lord Jesus Christ will not be a mere makeweight for you. Do you think that you are to get into the scale, with your beautiful righteousness, and that you are to be accounted somebody of great importance, and that Christ is to do the little that you cannot do; that it is to be “Christ & Co.,” or rather, “Self & Co.,” and that you are to be the head of the firm, and Christ to be a kind of sleeping partner? He will not do it; it would be a disgrace to Christ to yoke you with him in such a fashion. You might as soon yoke a gnat with an archangel as think of your going in to help Christ to save you. To join a filthy rag from off a dunghill with the golden garments of a king or a queen, cannot be permitted. Christ will be everything, or else he will be nothing; you must be saved wholly by mercy, or else not at all. There must not be even a trace of the fingers of self-righteousness upon the acts and documents of divine grace. It must be all of grace; “and if by grace, then is it no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace.” There can be no more mingling of the two together as the ground of hope than oil will mix with water, or fire will burn beneath the sea. You cannot be saved by your own merits. Oh, then, I implore you, breathe this prayer to God, “Lord, be merciful unto me; pardon me, for thou dost have mercy upon sinners, and here is one. Thou dost heal the sick, and here is one. Lord, I trust thee; I lay my sins on Jesus, I lay my soul-sickness at his dear feet. Lord, save me.” It is all done if you trust Jesus; you are a saved man. Just before I came in to this service, I saw a young brother whom I mean to propose to the church, and who last Sunday came to me, after the morning sermon, and said, “Sir, I am saved, and I know I am;” and as I spoke to him, I thought that I knew it, too. Why should there not be many others in the same blessed condition? What is the use of preaching, what is the use of this crowd coming together, and going away again, unless men believe in Christ? Look unto Jesus, and be ye saved. If you look, you shall be saved now. The Lord lead you to look at this very moment, and unto him be praise for ever and ever! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

PSALMS 41, and 42

You will see, dear friends, from these holy songs, that the saints of God in those olden days were not screened from trials and troubles, but were tempted in all points like as we are. If we happen to be in similar trying circumstances, let us take comfort from their experiences; the footsteps of the flock that has gone before should make the sheep feel that it is not lost.

Psalm 41. To the chief Musician. A Psalm of David.

Verse 1. Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.

David delivered others, and God will deliver him. When he is poor and needy, God will think upon him, even as he considered the poor and the needy when they cried unto him.

2, 3. The Lord will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he shall be blessed upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies. The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.

God will be condescendingly gentle to such as are kind and gentle to the poor. If we love God first, and then exhibit the result of that love in our care for the poor and the needy, we shall certainly be recompensed, for he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord, and the Lord will pay him back,-sometimes in his own coin, and oftener in a coin of heavenly currency. Let us take note of this, and let us never harden our heart against the poor and the needy in the time of their extremity.

4. I said, Lord, be merciful unto me:

David had been very kind to the poor at all times; but when he gets into trouble, he does not plead that, he just mentions it, but the main stress of his pleading is quite in another direction, namely, for mercy: “I said, Lord be merciful unto me.”

4, 5. Heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee. Mine enemies speak evil of me, When shall he die, and his name perish?

But good men do not die to please wicked men, and sometimes, when the good men have been dead, and buried, and their memory has been insulted by the wicked, they have risen up again in their posthumous influence Good men live too long for the wicked, but they live as long as God wills that they should; they are immortal till their work is done. The story of Wycliffe is but a typical case of what has often happened. When the monks gathered round his bed, and expected that their opponent would soon be gone, he said, “I shall not die, but live,” and so he did; and even after he had died, he continued to be a living power in the land; indeed, we know not how much of the blessings we enjoy is the result of the light that was shed upon England by “the morning star of the Reformation.”

6. And if he come to see me, he speaketh vanity: his heart gathereth iniquity to itself; when he goeth abroad, he telleth it.

Those are bad visitors to the sick who, when they speak, talk only nonsense or that which galls the sufferer; and then, when they go out, begin to tell an idle tale against him to his injury.

7-9. All that hate me whisper together against me: against me do they devise my hurt. An evil disease, say they, cleaveth fast unto him: and now that he lieth he shall rise up no more. Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.

Many a child of God has had his character whispered down by slanderers, many a man has had a hard time of it through the evil speaking of men of the world; yea, even the Lord of saints and the King of pilgrims knew what it was to find a traitor in his most familiar friend, and to receive the basest ingratitude from one who had eaten of his bread. Do not be carried away with too much sorrow if you are slandered or betrayed; better men than you have suffered through this fearful evil. Therefore, take the trouble to your Lord, and bear it with such patience as he will give you.

10, 11. But thou, O Lord, be merciful unto me, and raise me up, that I may requite them. By this I know that thou favourest me, because mine enemy doth not triumph over me.

“He may think that he shall triumph over me, he may even begin in his mind to divide the spoil; but he shall never really get it: ‘Mine enemy doth not triumph over me.’ ”

12, 13. And as for me, thou upholdest me in mine integrity, and settest me before thy face for ever. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting, and to everlasting. Amen, and Amen.

That is the sick man’s praise; it is full of fervour and full of life. Let us never rob God of the revenue of his praises; let us not have such a cupboard love for him that we only praise him when he gives us good things. Let us bless his name just as much when he takes away, when he afflicts, when he chastises. That is true praise which comes from the bed of affliction, and from a heart that is sore broken with sorrow.

Now in the next Psalm we find the good man in trouble again.

Psalm 42 Verse 1. As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.

“As the hart panteth” or “brayeth.” And if such be your soul’s panting after God, you shall have what you pant for. Sooner or later, God will manifest himself in grace to the man who cries after him in this fashion.

2. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God:-

“My soul, my very soul, thirsteth for God, the living God.”

2, 3. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?

That is another of the taunts of the ungodly. Just now, they said, “When shall he die and his name perish?” Now they cry, “Where is thy God? You said that he would help you; you were sure that he would comfort you; you were confident that he would draw near to you; and now you are crying and panting after him, and have not got what you want: ‘Where is thy God?’ ”

4. What I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me:-

That is not a good thing to do; if you do pour your soul out, do not pour it into yourself again. There is little gain when you merely empty your grief out of yourself into yourself. I have known many a man lay his burden down, and then take it up again directly. That is poor economy; the way to get rid of the sorrow is to pour out your hearts before God. There is no wisdom in doing what the psalmist says he did: “I pour out my soul in me:”-

4, 5. For I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me?

You see, the psalmist here talks to himself. Every man is two men; we are duplicates, if not triplicates, and it is well sometimes to hold a dialogue with one’s own self. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” I always notice that, as long as I can argue with myself about my depressions, I can get out of them; but when both the men within me go down at once, it is a downfall indeed. When there is one foot on the solid rock, the other comes up to it pretty soon.

5. Hope, thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.

“I know I shall; he will yet look at me. I shall not always be in the dark; wherefore, let me begin at once to praise him.” It is well sometimes to snatch a light from the altars of the future, and with it to kindle the sacrifices of the present: “I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.”

6. O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.

From the little hill I will think of all thy former love,-all the sacred spots where thou hast met with me, all the lonely places where thou hast been my comfort, and all the joyful regions where thou hast been my glory. I will think of these, and take comfort from them, for thou art an unchanging God; and what thou didst for me aforetime, thou wilt do for me again and yet again.

7. Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

Here is a great storm; here is a man, not merely on the sea, but in the sea; with not only some waves beating upon him, but with all of them going over him; and those not common waves, but God’s waves. That is a Hebraism for the biggest waves, Atlantic billows; all these have gone right over him, yet see how he swims. Hope in God always crests the stormiest billow.

8, 9. Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life. I will say unto God my rock. Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

See what liberties saints take with God; how they reason with him, how they argue with him; and God loves them to do so. Are you not pleased with your child when he urges reasons why you should do this or that for him? You are glad to see that he has mind enough to think of these things, and confidence enough in you to expect you to be affected by his pleadings; and the Lord loves his people to discourse with him. “Put me in remembrance,” saith he, “let us plead together.” “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord.” If we reasoned more with God, we should reason less with ourselves. There is a good reason for reasoning with God, but it is often unreasonable to reason with yourself.

10, 11. As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God? Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.

It is curious to see the duplicate man here; he talks to himself as “thou”, and yet he says “I.” “Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance.” First, he said, “I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance;” now it is “the health of my countenance.” When God helps us with his countenance, then our own countenance soon grows bright and healthy. “Who is the health of my countenance,” says the psalmist; and then he comes to the sweetest note of all, “and my God.”

“For yet I know I shall him praise,

Who graciously to me,

The health is of my countenance,

Yea, mine own God is he.”

Oh, sweet word that! May each of us be able to reach it! Amen.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-537, 594, 607.

THE ETHIOPIAN

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day,September 26th, 1897,

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Thursday Evening, May 15th, 1884.

“Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.”-Jeremiah 13:23.

Jeremiah had a friend who was a black man. Ebed-Melech, the Ethiopian eunuch, had a great and tender concern for Jeremiah when he was shut up in the miry prison, and he took ropes, and covered them with rags that they might not cut the poor prophet’s arm-pits, and drew him up out of that filthy well into which he had been cast for the truth’s sake. I suppose, from the way Ebed-Melech afterwards treated the prophet Jeremiah, that they were great friends; and as we usually talk of people of whom we are fond, it was natural that Jeremiah should use the Ethiopian as an emblem. I do not know that any other prophet did so. Perhaps there was no other prophet who took to a negro so thoroughly as Jeremiah did; but, anyhow, he had that black man’s face imprinted on his mind, and when he was speaking to the people, the Holy Spirit moved him to use a simile with which he had become familiar. I wish that every thought and experience I have ever had could be used in speaking for my Lord. I would like never to set my eyes on anyone or anything without trying to turn all to good account for the Master’s work; and if those of us who are teachers of others will only go about with our eyes open, we shall find plenty of illustrations of the truths we have to proclaim. There will not be a black man cross our path but we shall learn something or other from him.

Let us go at once to our text, and notice that it contains a question which admits of only one answer: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin?” Of course he cannot; and this fact suggests to us a spiritual question,-Can a man, who is accustomed to do evil, so change himself as to do good? Of course he cannot, any more than the Ethiopian can change his skin. When we have talked over that question which admits of only one answer, I shall put another question which admits of the opposite reply. In that latter part of our subject, may the Lord be pleased to send comfort to those who are despairing, and who know that they can no more change their own nature than the Ethiopian can change his skin, or the leopard his spots!

First, we are to consider a question which admits of only one answer: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin?”

No one ever heard of such a thing being done. Very wonderful things have occurred, but no one has ever yet heard of a blackamoor who has been able to wash himself white. It was an old fable of Æsop as to the absurdity of attempting to do anything of the kind; and, often, when we want to point out that a thing cannot be done, we use this simile, and say, “You cannot change the blackamoor’s skin.”

There are some things that men can do. A white man may be made almost black, as far as his skin is concerned. There are certain medicines that operate upon the skin, and give it a very strange colour; you may have seen a few such cases in your lifetime. But, though you can put the colour in, you cannot take it out. The man who is white, or the woman who is very fair, may either of them sit in the sun till they become browned so that they might almost say with the spouse in the Song of Solomon, “I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me;” but you could not turn a black man white, though you can turn a white man black. You can do what you please by way of spoiling, but you can do nothing by way of mending. You can make yourself filthy by sin, but you cannot make yourself spiritually clean, do what you will. There is an ease about going down; you can jump down a precipice quickly enough, but who could stand at the bottom of a high cliff, and leap to the top at one bound? Man can come down against his will, but he cannot go up even with his will. You can do evil all too readily; you can do it with both hands, greedily, and do it again and again, and not grow weary of it; but to return to the right path, this is the difficulty. As Virgil said about his arduous task when he went down to the land of shades, “Easy is the descent to Avernus, but to return to the clear air again,-this is the work, this is the difficulty.” You have all seen persons make themselves black externally; the chimney sweep, in pursuit of his lawful calling, becomes quite as black as a negro; yet, with a basin of water, he can change the look of his face very speedily, because the blackness is only something outside of him which merely adheres to him for a time. But the question of our text is, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin?” That is a part of himself, and he cannot alter it. The Ethiopian can wash himself clean, and he ought to do so, it is his duty to do so; and a man can keep himself moral, and he ought to do so, it is his duty. If the negro is ever so black, he may be clean; but he cannot wash himself white, neither can a sinner cleanse himself from the stains of his guilt.

But remember, dear friends, that, even if an Ethiopian could change his skin, that would be a far smaller difficulty than the one with which a sinner has to deal, for it is not his skin, but his heart, which has to be changed. There are some creatures in which, if they lose a limb, it will grow again, or another will come in its place; but there is no creature living that could lose its heart, and then grow another. There is a tree of a certain sort, and you can, if you please, graft upon it, and it will produce a different kind of fruit; or you can take off one limb of a tree, and another branch may grow; but you cannot change the tree’s heart. Even if it were possible for the Ethiopian to change his skin, that would be a change, as we say, only skin-deep, and that is no parallel to the sinner and his sin, the leprosy lies deep within. It is the heart that is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” It is the centre and source of thought and action which is polluted, and a change must be wrought there. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin?” No; but if he could do so, could a sinner change his heart? Assuredly not.

Observe, dear friends, that the question is about an Ethiopian changing his skin himself. That cannot be done, certainly; but, if it could be done, a man could not himself change his own heart. For an evil heart to make its own self good, is inconceivable. Darkness never did beget light. You may sit as long as you like in the sepulchre amid the dry bones, but life will never be born of death; life must come from quite a different source. The earth warms the seeds in her bosom, and nourishes them into growth; but if those seeds were dead, all the genial seasons could not make them spring up; and even if the earth could make dead seeds to live, that is not the kind of miracle of which we are speaking, the miracle would be for the dead seed to make itself alive. That must be utterly beyond the bounds of possibility. The figure in our text is a very strong one; as I have said before, the Ethiopian cannot change his own skin; but even that figure is not strong enough to express the utter helplessness of human nature as to its own renewal, for the change is greater and deeper, and it is quite impossible that it ever should come from fallen human nature.

Let me try to set forth, in some small measure, the difficulty of this business. The first difficulty is, because the evil that man has is in his nature. If sin were merely an accident, then it might be prevented; but it is not so. If sheep were to fall down into the mire, they might soon be up again, and it would be possible to keep them from falling; but when the swine go down into the mud, they roll in it, because they delight in wallowing. As long as there is any mire about, and the sow can get there, she will return to her wallowing as long as she remains a sow, for the filthiness is in her nature as well as in that which surrounds her; and it is so with us so far as sin is concerned. The Ethiopian could wash himself clean, but the blackness of his skin is a part of his Ethiopian nature, and he cannot get rid of that. The leopard’s spots are not accidental to it, but it has spots because it is a leopard; so, sin is not accidental to human nature, but it is part and parcel of ourselves. When you see a man, you see a sinner; and if you could look into his heart, you would see the seed-plot of all manner of mischief, which only needs congenial surroundings fully to develop itself. How can a man change his own nature? I do not suppose that, by any possibility, I could ever become an Ethiopian. I do not think that, if I were to set my mind to the task, I could ever, by any possibility, turn into a Dutchman, because I was not born so, it is not according to my nature. I must remain an Englishman, Essex-born, as long as ever I live; only a miracle could make me anything different from that, and the sinner is a sinner right through. Wherever you look at him, he is a sinner; and so he always will be, unless a superior power shall intervene to change him.

Alas! also, this evil nature of man brings with it the fact that his will is altogether perverted. A man will not cease to do evil, and learn to do well, because he has no heart to do it. Sinners do not want to be saved. “Oh!” says one, “I do.” But do you understand what it is to be saved? Every sinner would like to escape from going to hell, but that is not what is meant by salvation. To be saved means, to be saved from loving evil, from seeking after it, and living in it. Do you want to be saved from that? Do you want to be saved from falsehood, saved from the indulgence of your passions, saved from strong drink, saved from pride, saved from covetousness? The most of men have not a heart inclined to that; there is some sweet sin of theirs which they would like to sip, at least now and then upon the sly. That is to say, evil, as evil, is not abhorrent to the natural will, but the natural will of man goes after that which is evil as surely as ever children seek after that which is sweet. Sin is sweet to man, and he will have it if he can. How, then, can his nature be changed while he has no will to it? The will is, as it were, the rudder of the ship. My Lord Will-be-will, according to John Bunyan, is the Lord Mayor of the town of Mansoul; and so he is, and he carries it in a very lordly way. He will have this, and he will have that, and he will not have the other, and he is the master of the man. Till the will is changed, till what is called “free will” is made in truth to be free will,-free from the chains of evil, and the love of sin,-the man cannot rise to happiness and God, any more than the Ethiopian can change his skin.

Moreover, in connection with this natural depravity, and the perversity of the human will, there comes to be the power of habit. Oh, what an awful force the power of evil habit has upon a man! It begins at first only like a cobweb; he can break it when he pleases. It grows into a thread, and he is somewhat restrained by it. It changes to a cord, and he is in a net. It hardens into iron, and the iron becomes further hardened into steel, and the man is shut up in it; he becomes like the starling that cried, “I cannot get out; I cannot get out.” The sad thing is that the man is in a cage of his own making; it is a sort of living cage which has grown up all round him, and he cannot escape from it. How often is this the case with strong drink! The man at first only took a very little, but how much does he take now? Mr. Wesley, when dining once with a friend of his who had greatly helped him in the district, saw him, after dinner, rise from the table, and get just a little brandy and water; and Mr. Wesley said to him, “My friend, what is that?” “I am very much troubled with indigestion,” he answered, “but I only take a tablespoonful of brandy in a little water.” “Well,” said Mr. Wesley, “that is certainly very little; but, my friend, you will want two tablespoonfuls before long to do for you what you think that one does; and then you will want four, and then you will want eight, and unless you give it up, I fear that you will become a drunkard, and disgrace the cause of God.” After Mr. Wesley was dead, that man still lived a drunkard; he had lost his reputation, disgraced the people with whom he had been connected, and brought untold sorrow upon himself. Now, as it is with that one particular sin, so it is with every other. If a sin comes to your house the first time alone, it will come the next time with seven other devils more wicked than itself, and those seven will very soon bring seven each, and you will have a legion of devils; and when you get one legion, it is highly probable that another legion will come into the barracks of your heart, and stop there. The beginning of sin is like the letting out of water; just a little drop trickles through the wall of the dyke, then it becomes a tiny rivulet which a child’s hand can stop, then it increases to a stream, and soon the dyke begins to heave, and break, and crack; and by-and-by it is broken down, and a torrent rushes over town and village, and carries away multitudes of men with it. Beware! That evil habit is a dreadful thing; he who yields to an evil habit is preparing himself for the bottomless pit.

In addition to this habit, I grieve to say that there generally springs up a kind of delight in sin. There are, no doubt, some men who, for a time, feel an intense satisfaction in sin; ay, and not only in their own sins, but they take pleasure in the sins of others. I hope you never hear them talk; if it has ever been your misfortune to do so, you know that they will talk about some piece of filthiness as if it were a brave thing. They will boast about what some boy has done under their abominable tuition, and they seem to take a delight in seeing how precocious he is in everything that is vile. Some men are never happy except when they are destroying souls; and, while the divinest pleasure under heaven is to bring a soul to God, the most diabolical pleasure out of hell is certainly that of helping to damn a soul. Yet there are many who seem to take a delight in that terrible work. How some sceptics endeavour to entrap a youthful believer! How some licentious persons seem to lay themselves out to try and seduce others! How many there are who have become ripe in iniquity, and their evil seed is scattered broadcast, sowing sin and everlasting ruin upon every wind that blows! Can such an Ethiopian as that change his skin, or such a leopard as that his spots? Of course he cannot; the case is utterly hopeless so far as his own power is concerned.

Further than this, the force of sin increases upon men. If a stone is let fall from a tower, it multiplies the pace of its fall in a mathematical ratio; it drops very much faster the last part of its descent than it did at the first. Set anything rolling down a hill, and see how the momentum increases. A railway truck has got on a decline; it is running down; it starts slowly enough at first, you might easily stop it; but let it go on, and see how it accumulates force as it rushes along, till it breaks through every obstacle. Well, just such is the power of sin in men; they seem as if they cannot sin enough. Having once given themselves up to the demon power, it comes upon them stronger and yet stronger, till the appetite grows within them into a passion, and a fury, and a fire that burns like the flame of Gehenna that cannot be stayed or quenched. I know what they think at first,-that they will go just so far and then stop. Well, try it; no, do not try it. It would be an awful experiment to set a house on fire, intending to let it burn just so much and no more. Can you say to the fire, “Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther”? If you could say it to fire among standing corn, blown of the wind, yet you would say it in vain to sin. Sin swiftly grows from a pigmy to a giant, and ever increasing in its awful power, it crushes down the man who is in its grip, and holds him under its dreadful sway. There are many drunkards who now have within them a compulsion to drink; they seem as if they could not pass by the door of the drink-shop. There is many an adulterer who cannot glance without a lascivious thought. As for the gambler-and I dare to say that there is no sin that does more swiftly send men down to hell than gambling,-having once begun with his shilling and his pound, he will plunge till he has lost his all. There is an awful infatuation about this evil; it is a stream that catches the boat, and bears it swiftly along, noiselessly, but with irresistible force, till it comes to the cataract of endless ruin. Oh, that you could escape! But there are some who never can and never will; and there is not one of us who can escape unless he who is mighty to save shall come in with his own right hand and his holy arm, and get unto himself the victory; for when once the force of sin really grasps a man, we may ask concerning him, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin?” and answer, “No, he cannot.”

Added to all this there is another horrible evil, that is, after a while, the understanding refuses to see. The man who, at first, knew a thing to be wrong, may continue in it till he does not believe it to be wrong at all. There are men who can utter language which would have chilled their blood when they first began to swear; but now it drops from them as an ordinary word. I do believe that the filthy talkers of our street, or the most of them, do not mean anything by what they say; they have got so hardened in misusing the Lord’s name, and using obscene language, that really their understanding does not convict them of having done wrong. They have given Mr. Conscience so much opium that he has gone to sleep. Now and then, perhaps, he wakes up, and makes a great noise; but they soon lull him to sleep again, and they go on sinning without compunction. We read of David, on one occasion, that his heart smote him. It is an ugly knock when your own heart smites you, for that blow comes home; but it is also a blessed knock, and if any of you have never felt it, I am very sorry for you. If your heart never smites you, it must be because your conscience has fallen into a dead sleep, or is seared as with a red-hot iron. When a man reaches that stage that he can lie and swear, and then can wipe his mouth, and say that there is nothing in it, oh, how shall such a man be changed? “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.”

Then, again, as a man’s conscience is sent to sleep, so his heart is hardened, against every holy influence that might move him. He used to go to a place of worship once, he will not go now; he rails at such places, and pours contempt upon gospel ministers and all Christian people. Though he is as bad as he can be, yet he thinks that he is better than they are, and he tries to trample under his feet the saints of God; though such a wretch as he is not worthy even to unloose the latchets of their shoes, he cannot have sufficiently bad names for them. In former times, when there came sickness into the house, he used to pray; and in time of trouble, he sought the Lord. He has had many a trouble since, but he is not at all disturbed about it; he only gets angry against God, and becomes more and more hardened in sin. His dear wife used to have a wonderful influence over him for good, but he has broken away even from that; and there is that dear girl of his; he loves her very much, and she has pleaded with her father; and there is somebody else there, for a little child has led him, but now he feels that all that is a kind of weakness, and he will get beyond it. Ah! he is hardening himself. As for his Bible,-alas! he never reads that. If there is a word spoken to him by some kind friend who takes an earnest interest in his welfare, he lets it go in at one ear, and out at the other; or else he gets into a furious passion, and asks who he is that he is to be talked to like that; he is as good as anybody else, though he knows all the while that he is rotten right through.

What is to be done with a man like that? He is determined to go over hedge and ditch to hell. His father, a dear grey-headed old saint, has blocked the way; but he has pushed him aside. His mother has come, and said, “My boy, do not ruin yourself;” and she has hung about his neck, and tried to keep him from sin; but he has shaken her off. In spite of wife, child, and friends, he is determined to destroy himself; and do you tell me that such a man is able to change himself? Yes, when Ethiopians change their skins, and when leopards change their own spots, then will it be done, but not till then. The case is hopeless if it remains with the man himself, the work cannot be accomplished.

You will say that now, surely, I have gone far enough in my description of this man, and so I have, painfully far; but what can he do by which he can change his nature, and make a new man of himself? All outward means are unavailing. He may go and hear sermons. Well, I know that sermons of my preaching will never turn a heart of stone into flesh; without the Spirit of God, there will be no result whatever produced. The man may be christened, or he may be baptized; but what is there in water drops or water floods that can alter his sinful nature? Why, there have been villains upon earth who have gone through every religious ceremony, and yet have ended at the gallows. You may scrub an Ethiopian till you scrub his skin away, but he will be as black as ever when you have done with him. So is it with the sinner. You may put him through every form and ceremony of the church, and you may make him think that he has accepted the orthodox creed, and you may even alter his outward life to a considerable extent, yet, when it is all done, nothing at all will really have been done towards his soul’s salvation.

Somebody perhaps asks, “Why, then, do you preach to these people?” Well, I do it principally because I am sent to do it. You see, if God were to send me to preach to the mountains, and to bid them move, I would go and do it, and expect to see them move. If he were to bid me go and stand on the shore, and say to the salt sea waves, “Turn into fresh water,” I should do it; not because I think the sea, which is salt, can make itself fresh, but because my Lord never sent me on a fool’s errand, and he will honour the message he tells me to deliver. I heard somebody say that, to tell a dead sinner to live was as if you were to stand at a grave, arid bid a dead body live. That is exactly it, my dear friends, and you say it is ridiculous. Yes, it is very ridiculous if you leave God out of account; but as we are told to do it, we leave the responsibility of it with the Lord, and we intend to go on with this thing which men call ridiculous. Like Ezekiel, we are commanded to say, “O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.” Somebody objects that dry bones cannot hear; that does not matter to us, we are bidden to tell them to hear, and we expect that the Lord will enable them to hear what he has commanded us to say to them.

Another reason why we do it is because, when we have been preaching the gospel to these blackamoors, when we have been holding up Jesus Christ and him crucified to these Ethiopians, we have seen them turn white. So we shall keep on, dear friends, for, though they could not turn themselves white, yet when we have come in the name of the Lord, and said to the Ethiopian, “Be white,” he has become white before our very eyes. I have seen, not only hundreds, but I have seen many thousands of persons, from whose lips I have heard the story that, though they formerly were persecutors of Christ and his people, they have become his followers; or, though they were fond of drink and every evil thing, they have been washed, and made white in the blood of the Lamb. So I shall keep on bidding sinners do this impossible thing, for, God working with me, the withered hand shall be stretched out, and the dead Lazarus shall come forth from the grave at the bidding of the Lord.

I said that I would finish up with another question and another answer. I have only two or three minutes in which to speak about them. The question of the text is, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin?” The answer is,-No, no, no, no, no, no. Here is the other question,-Can the Ethiopian’s skin be changed? The answer to that is,-Yes, yes, yes, as emphatically as we have just now said no, no, no. Can the Ethiopian’s skin be changed? Can the sinner’s nature be renewed? Yes, for God can do everything. He changed primeval darkness into light, he changed chaos into order, and God can turn that poor ruined man-that wretched drunkard, swearer, adulterer, into one who is chaste, and pure, and lovely, and honest, for all things are possible with God. He who made us can new-make us. There is nobody who can put your clock in order so well as the man who made it; if your clock has gone wrong, you had better send it to the maker if you can find him out; and there is nobody who can put a heart in order like the God who made the heart. Send your heart to him, for he can make it new by his blessed Spirit.

Remember, also, that it is provided in the covenant of grace that the Holy Spirit should make us new. It is written, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.” God the Holy Ghost, as a Spirit, is master of our spirits. My dear friend with a bad temper, the Holy Ghost can conquer that evil. You who have such a forgetful memory, he can conquer that. You who are so proud, he can make you humble. You who feel so hard, he can dissolve the heart of stone, or take it altogether away. Do not doubt that the Ethiopian can have his skin changed by a power without him and above him.

Further, know you this: the Lord Jesus Christ has come to save the lost. If thou believest that Jesus is the Christ, thou art born of God. If thou believest that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, thou shalt be saved. To put it in other words, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life;” or, to give you the whole gospel as Christ told us to preach it, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” If thou wilt come, not to do, but to have all done for thee,-not to merit salvation, but to receive it as a gift of God’s free favour,-if thou wilt come just as thou art, altogether without desert or anything to plead before God, and thou wilt just say in thy heart, “Lord, I adore the love which moved thee to give thy Son to die for sinners, and I believe in the great propitiation which he offered for sin,” go thy way, thou art a saved man. If thou thus believest, it is not only that thou shalt be saved, but thou art saved. Hast thou anything to trust to beside Christ? Then thou art lost, for thou hast a mingled faith that is not of God’s making; but dost thou wholly, solely, alone, heartily, and entirely, fix thy hope on the blood and righteousness of him whom God has set forth to be a propitiation for sin? Then thou art a saved man, and I know that thy heart says, “Blessed be God for that! Now that I love God, what can I do for him?” That is the way. I noticed, yesterday, when I was talking to some forty persons who had recently found Christ, that they were all of them either hard at work for the Lord, or they were asking what they could do for him. Could I tell them something they could do for their dear Lord who had saved them? There is far more done out of love than there is out of law. Men will not, cannot, do anything to be saved; but, when saved, what is there that we cannot do? Live, and then do; not, do and live. Live in Christ, and then serve him; but do not put the cart before the horse. Come, dear friends, and trust in Christ. The Lord bless you by his Divine Spirit leading you so to do, for Jesus’ sake! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

PSALM 78:9-72

This story of the children of Israel, after they came out of Egypt, is like a looking-glass in which we may, with great sadness, see ourselves reflected.

Verse 9. The children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle.

They had every opportunity of serving their God; he had provided them with fit weapons for the war, but they were cowardly, so they “turned back in the day of battle.”

10, 11. They kept not the covenant of God, and refused to walk in his law; and forgat his works, and his wonders that he had shewed them.

Let each one of us ask, “Does the psalmist describe me?”

12, 13. Marvellous things did he in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan. He divided the sea, and caused them to pass through; and he made the waters to stand as an heap.

What a marvellous miracle that dividing of the Red Sea was! Did it not make an abiding impression upon them? I will be bound to say that many of them said, “We shall never doubt, God again.” Yet, soon they did doubt, and murmur, and rebel against him!

14-16. In the daytime also he led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire. He clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths. He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers.

It seemed as if there was nothing that the Lord would not do for them; all that they needed for food and refreshment was given to them freely.

17, 18. And they sinned yet more against him by provoking the most High in the wilderness. And they tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their lust.

He had given them food for their necessities, but now they must have meat for their lusts.

19. Yea, they spake against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?

So you see, dear friends, what speaking against God really is; I am afraid that we also have often done that. To question God’s power, is to speak against him. Perhaps you have thought lightly of your unbelieving speeches, but God does not think lightly of them; to my mind it seems that there is hardly anything that so grieves him as the doubts of his people concerning him.

20. Behold, he smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed; can he give bread also? Can he provide flesh for his people?

There ought to have been no question as to the Lord’s power; the God who could fetch water out of a rock could, if he pleased, make loaves of bread out of the sand under their feet, or cause the very stars to drop with meat for them if necessary.

21. Therefore the Lord heard this, and was wroth:

He was really angry with his people because they doubted him. He loved them, and because he loved them, it cut him to the quick that they should have questioned his power to bless them.

21-23. So a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel; because they believed not in God, and trusted not in his salvation: though he had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven,

Unbelief is very hard to kill. God opens the doors and windows of heaven to feed his people; yet, nevertheless, the next time they are in trouble, they begin to stagger at the promise. Oh, shameful unbelief!

24-29. And had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven. Man did eat angels’ food: he sent them meat to the full. He caused an east wind to blow in the heaven: and by his power he brought in the south wind. He rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea: and he let it fall in the midst of their camp, round about their habitations. So they did eat, and were well filled: for he gave them their own desire;

Yet that was not a blessing to them; and, brethren, let us ever be afraid of our own desire, unless that desire comes from the Lord. You know how David puts it in the 37th Psalm: “Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” If, however, thou findest thy delight in any earthly thing, it shall be a plague to thee to have the desire of thy heart: “He gave them their own desire;”-

30. They were not estranged from their lust.

For the more lust gets, the more lust wants. It is like the daughter of the horse-leech, that always cries, “Give! Give!” God can satisfy the longing soul, but all the world cannot satisfy the cravings of lust.

30, 31. But while their meat was yet in their mouths, the wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them, and smote down the chosen men of Israel.

They received what they pined for, but they had a curse with it. Affliction with a blessing is far better than prosperity with a curse.

32. For all this they sinned still, and believed not for his wondrous works.

They were dyed ingrain with unbelief, so that it seemed as if it could not be washed out of them.

33. Therefore their days did he consume in vanity, and their years in trouble.

A great part of our trouble is the fruit of our own unbelief. It is like hemlock in the furrows of the field. They who distrust God are making a rod for their own back; and before they have done with it, they will have to rue the day in which they thought themselves wiser than God.

34-36. When he slew them, then they sought him: and they returned and enquired early after God. And they remembered that God was their rock, and the high God their redeemer. Nevertheless they did flatter him with their mouth, and they lied unto him with their tongues.

Some men are like dull animals that will not go without the whip. Many of us cannot be kept right without constant affliction; if our God gives us a little smooth walking, we go half-asleep, or we trip and stumble; so he is compelled, as it were, to make our way very rough, and often to strike us with the rod, to keep us from falling altogether into sinful slumber. How many there are who, when they do seem to turn to God, in times of sickness, are not truly penitent! A death-bed repentance may be true; but, oh, what a risk there is that it may be false!

37-51. For their heart was not right with him, neither were they stedfast in his covenant. But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not; yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath. For he remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again. How oft did they provoke him in the wilderness, and grieve him in the desert! Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. They remembered not his hand, nor the day when he delivered them from the enemy. How he had wrought his signs in Egypt, and his wonders in the field of Zoan: and had turned their rivers into blood; and their floods, that they could not drink. He sent divers sorts of flies among them, which devoured them; and frogs, which destroyed them. He gave also their increase unto the caterpillar, and their labour unto the locust. He destroyed their vines with hail, and their sycomore trees with frost. He gave up their cattle also to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts. He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, by sending evil angels among them. He made a way to his anger; he spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence; and smote all the firstborn in Egypt; the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham:

This is what God did with their enemies who had oppressed them, that he might set his people at liberty. After all that, ought they not to have trusted him as a little child trusts its mother, without ever a question or a doubt? While he thus overthrew their enemies, see what he did for his own people.

52-56. But made his own people to go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock. And he led them on safely, so that they feared not: but the sea overwhelmed their enemies. And he brought them to the border of his sanctuary, even to this mountain, which his right hand had purchased. He cast out the heathen also before them, and divided them an inheritance by line, and made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents. Yet they tempted and provoked the most high God, and kept not his testimonies:

This sad note seems to come over and over again, as if they never could have too much of grieving God; yet the Lord was still tender towards them. Well may we sing,-

“Who is a pardoning God like thee?

Or who has grace so rich and free?”

57-64. But turned back, and dealt unfaithfully like their fathers: they were turned aside like a deceitful bow. For they provoked him to anger with their high places, and moved him to jealousy with their graven images. When God heard this, he was wroth, and greatly abhorred Israel; so that he forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which he placed among men; and delivered his strength into captivity, and his glory into the enemy’s hand. He gave his people over also unto the sword; and was wroth with his inheritance. The fire consumed their young men; and their maidens were not given to marriage. Their priests fell by the sword; and their widows made no lamentation.

They were dumb with excess of grief. When God chastises his children, he does not play at it. Sometimes, when he is angry at their sin, he lays on the blows fast and heavily, till their very bones are broken, so that they may hate sin as God hates it, and seek after holiness even as God loves it. So, dear friends, I pray that, if any of us have lost the consolations of God, and are feeling the weight of his rod, we may begin to enquire what secret thing it is in us which has angered him, and go back to him, and seek to stand before him as once we did; for, otherwise, he will smite, and smite, and smite yet again and again. But, notice, that the Lord never delights in chastening his children; he is glad to have done with the necessary correction. So, when their enemies were most cruel with them,-

65-69. Then the Lord awaked as one out of sleep, and like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine. And he smote his enemies in the hinder parts: he put them to a perpetual reproach. Moreover he refused the tabernacle of Joseph, and chose not the tribe of Ephraim: but chose the tribe of Judah, the mount Zion which he loved. And he built his sanctuary like high palaces, like the earth which he hath established for ever.

You see that we are getting into clear water now; it was all broken water, storm and hurricane, while we heard of what Israel did; but when we come to deal with God in Christ, of whom David is the type, then how sweetly everything goes!

70-72. He chose David also his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds: from following the ewes great with young he brought him to feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance. So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart; and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands.

Blessed be God who puts away the sin of his people, because he delighteth in mercy!

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-489, 474, 448.