We need but hint at the circumstances under which these words were uttered. Our Saviour was in the Garden of Gethsemane with his disciples; a multitude came with the officers commissioned by the high priest to seize him; he went boldly towards them, and asked, “Whom seek ye?” They answered, “Jesus of Nazareth.” At his words, “I am he,” “they went backward and fell to the ground,” and then Jesus said to them, “I have told you that I am he: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way.”

Now, in a very simple manner, I shall try, first of all, to draw a few lessons from this occurrence; and then, secondly, to bring out a great truth which I think is foreshadowed in this utterance of our Redeemer.

First, let us consider the lessons of the occurrence itself. Our Saviour said to these people, “If therefore ye seek me, let these go their way.”

In this incident, our Master proved his own willingness to die. This word of his was a mandate so powerful that none of the disciples were seized, much less put to death. There was Peter, who had drawn his sword, and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant. We should naturally have expected that he would have been arrested, or smitten to the earth; but so powerful was the command of Christ that not a finger was laid upon his hasty-tempered disciple. Peter and John went afterwards into the judgment-hall,-as it were, into the very teeth of our Lord’s enemies;-but, with the exception of a few jeers, they were suffered to go their way. John did even more than that, for he went within the range of the spears of the Roman soldiers, and stood at the foot of Christ’s cross, and wept; yet not a finger was laid on him, nor on any one of Christ’s disciples,-not for want of will, for, you remember, they seized a young man who left his garment in their hands, and fled naked,-evidently supposing him to have been a disciple of Christ. This shows, then, the power of Christ’s mandate that, in that hour of darkness, not so much as one of his disciples was maltreated, but all were suffered to go their way. If Christ, then, by his simple word, delivered his disciples, how much more could he have delivered himself? And in his not doing so, you cannot fail to see how willing he was to die. One word threw them to the ground; another word would have hurled them into the arms of death; but our Saviour would not speak the word which might have saved himself, for he came to save others, not himself.

There is something very courageous in the Saviour’s saying, “If ye seek me.” You know that, when Adam sinned, God had to seek the culprit; but, in this case, when Christ stood as the Surety for his people, instead of being sought, he seemed to seek his executioners. “If ye seek me,” said he; and he put in an “if”-as though it were not so much their seeking him as his seeking them;-for he had come into their very midst to die. Our blessed Lord was well acquainted with the circumstances of his own death. He sat at the table, at the institution of the Lord’s supper, on that memorable evening; why could he not wait and be seized there? But no; dauntless, “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” steps out, and boldly faces his enemy. He does not wait to be attacked; but goes forth to meet death, to give himself up for us. Scarcely any martyr has done such a deed as this. God has helped them to die, when they have been delivered into the hands of their enemies; but our Saviour goes to his enemies, and says, “Here I am: if ye seek me, I have come to give myself up; I will put you to no trouble in searching for me; there is no necessity to hunt through the length and breadth of Jerusalem to find me out, here I am; if ye seek me, I am ready to die; take me, I have no opposition to make. ‘If ye seek me,’ all I have to say is, ‘Let these go their way;’ as for myself, I am willing enough to die!”

Learn, then, Christian, the readiness of thy Master to suffer for thee. He was no unwilling Saviour. Thou hast sometimes borrowed money of a friend; and when thou hast taken it of him, it was a grief to thee to accept it, for he looked upon thee as a beggar, or even as a robber who had demanded spoil of him. But when thou takest Christ’s favours, there is this sweet consideration with them, that they are all given willingly. The blood that thou drinkest, and the flesh that thou eatest, spiritually, is no dole of a strained benevolence, but the voluntary, munificent gift from the heart of Jesus to thee and to thy brethren. Rejoice, then, in the willingness of Christ to suffer for thee.

In the second place, upon the very face of our text, we read the care of Christ towards his people. “If therefore ye seek me, let these go their way.” Oh! the agony of the Saviour’s heart at that moment. A friend in trouble is frequently forgetful; expect not a man in great grief to remember you; the heart is then so full of its own bitterness, it hath no time to think of others. I would pardon any man for not noticing me in the street, if he were ill; I would easily forgive anyone for forgetting anything when loaded with pain and sorrow; and surely, beloved, we might have thought it not hard of Jesus if he had forgotten his disciples in his hour of grief. But mark how kind his heart is: “ ‘If ye seek me,’-I say nothing about how ye should treat me,-but ‘let these’ ”-these disciples were the only ones he cared about; he cared not for himself;-“let these go their way.” Like the mother in the snowstorm, who takes off her own clothes to wrap around her cold shivering babe; what cares she though the blast should find out her inmost soul, and though her body be frozen like ice, if her babe but lives? Her first thought, after she is restored to consciousness, when she has been well-nigh benumbed to death, but chafed to life by kindness, is concerning that babe. It was even so with Jesus: “Let these go their way.”

“When justice, by our sins provoked,

Drew forth its dreadful sword,

He gave his soul up to the stroke

Without a murmuring word.

“This was compassion like a God,

That when the Saviour knew

The price of pardon was his blood,

His pity ne’er withdrew.

“Now though he reigns exalted high,

His love is still as great;

Well he remembers Calvary,

Nor lets his saints forget.”

They are all recollected, all borne upon his heart, and still cared for. Therefore thou art cared for, thou lamb of the flock; thou art cared for, poor Ready-to-halt; thou art remembered, Miss Despondency; thou art regarded with the eyes of love, timid Mr. Fearing; though thou stumblest at every stone, yet thy Saviour’s love faileth not; he remembereth thee, for he cared for his disciples in his hour of greatest sorrow.

In the next place, learn from this incident our Saviour’s wisdom. When he said, “Let these go their way,” there was wisdom in it. How? Because they were not prepared to suffer, and it would have been unwise to have allowed them to suffer then, if they had been prepared; for if they had suffered then, it would have been thought that at least they shared the honour of our redemption; therefore Christ would have none but thieves upon the mount of doom, lest any should suppose that he had a helper. He did tread the winepress alone, and of the people there were none with him. Besides, these disciples were but infants in grace; they had not received the plenitude of the Spirit; they were not fit to suffer. Therefore Christ said, “If ye seek me, let these go their way.” These raw recruits must not yet bear the brunt of the battle; let them tarry until, by a longer experience, and by greater grace, they shall be made brave to die, and shall each of them in his turn wear the crown of martyrdom; but not now. Christ spared his people at that moment, since it would have been unwise to have suffered them to die then.

Learn also, Christians, from your Master’s example, the duty of putting yourselves in the way of suffering when you can save your brethren. Oh! there is something glorious in the spirit Christ manifested in placing himself first. “If ye seek me, let these go their way.” That is the spirit all Christians ought to catch,-the spirit of heroic self-sacrifice for the disciples’ sake. The mere professor says, “Let me go my way, seek another to be put to death;” but if we were what we should be, we should each one say, “If ye seek me, let these go their way.” How many of us would be ready to escape martyrdom, and allow our brethren to be burned! But that would not be the spirit of our Master. How frequently you are ready to allow opprobrium and shame to fall upon the church if you can but be yourself screened! How very frequently you will allow a brother to perform a duty, at much inconvenience, which you could do without any trouble to yourself! Now, if you were like your Master, you would say, “ ‘Let these go their way;’ if there is sufficient ground for it, let me suffer; if there be a painful duty, let me do it; let others escape, let them go free; lo, I will give myself a willing substitute for them in this matter.” Oh! we want everywhere more of this spirit, to be able to say to the poor saint, “Poverty is seeking thee, I will in some degree bear the inconvenience that thou mayest be screened. Thou art sick, I will watch thee; thou art naked, I will clothe thee; thou art hungry, I will feed thee; I will stand in thy stead as far as I am able, that thou mayest go thy way.”

These seem to me to be the lessons to be learned from our Saviour’s words, “If therefore ye seek me, let these go their way.”

Now I come to notice, secondly, the great doctrine which this incident seems to foreshadow.

Will you please to observe the next verse to the text? “That the saying might be fulfilled, which he spake, Of them which thou gavest me have I lost none.” If I had quoted this passage in such a connection, you would have told me it was a misquotation; you would have said, “Why, my dear sir, that has nothing to do with the disciples going their way or not!” Ah! but you would be quite in error if you talked like that; God’s Spirit knows how to quote, if we do not. Very often, we refer our hearers to a text which we think is exactly adapted and pertinent to the point before us, when it has really nothing to do with the matter; and, often, the Holy Spirit quotes a text which we think unsuitable; but, on closer examination, we find that the very gist of it bears directly upon the subject. This was the beginning of Christ’s deliverances, which he would through eternity vouchsafe to all his children. Inasmuch as he then said, “Let these go their way,” it was the foreshadowing, the picturing, of the great deed of substitution whereby Christ would be able to say, “If therefore ye seek me, let these go their way.” This point will appear clearly if we look at how Christ treats his people in Providence and at the bar of Justice.

It has always seemed to me as if Christ had borne the brunt of Providence for his people, so that now all things work together for their good. When Christ came into the world, he did, in spirit, say something like this, “Ye wild beasts of the field, ye are against my people; come, now, be against me; and, then, let these go their way.” This was according to the ancient prophecy: “I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground.” Christ seemed to say, “Stones, ye are enemies to my flock; now take me for their Substitute, and be at enmity against me; and then it shall be written, ‘The stones of the field shall be in league with, them.’ ” Christ, as it were, said to Providence, “Thy black and bitter face shall look on me; thy quiver, full of fiery darts, shall be emptied, and they shall all find their target here in my bosom; thy dread aspect shall be seen by me;” but, “Let these go their way.”

Providence has inflicted its evils on Christ, and has now only good for God’s people. “What! sir, only good?” you say, “why, I am poor, I am sick!” Yes. but it is only good; for that is good which worketh good. “All things work together for good to them that love God.” Christ saith even to kings, “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.” “Let these go their way.” The kings of the earth have been seeking Christ’s Church, to destroy and to devour it; so Christ lets them find him, and put him to death; and before he dies, he turns round to the kings, and says, “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.” He speaks to trouble, to trial, to grief, to accident, and to peril, and he says: “Ye have sought me; now let my people go their way.” We should never have known the sweetness of the psalm,-

“He that hath made his refuge God,

Shall find a most secure abode,”-

if Christ had not died. The only way that you and I can have a refuge is by Christ bearing the brunt of our trouble. How does a shield save me? It saves me by bearing the blows itself. The shield doth, as it were, say to the swords of the enemy, “If ye seek me, let this warrior go his way.” So Christ, our Shield and God’s Anointed, beareth the brunt of Providence, the evil and the woe thereof; and he saith now to the mysterious dispensations of God, concerning all the children of the Lord, “ ‘Let these go their way.’ Never, never work ill to them, but let them have only good.”

The other thought is, Christ hath said this of his people even to Justice. Before the throne of God, fiery Justice once drew his sword, and went out after sinners, to find full many, and to cast them into the pit. His sword thirsted for the blood of all that had sinned; but there stood a chosen multitude, reserved by love and chosen by grace; and Justice said, “They are sinners; I will have them, I will sheathe this sword in their hearts, for they are sinners, and they must perish.” Then Christ came forward, and asked him, “Whom seekest thou?” “Sinners,” answered Justice. Then said Jesus, “They are not sinners; they were sinners once, but they are righteous now, clothed in my righteousness; if thou seekest the sinner, here am I.” “What!” said Justice, “art thou the sinner?” “Nay, not the sinner, but I am the sinner’s Substitute; all the sinner’s guilt was imputed to me; all his unrighteousness is mine, and all my righteousness is his; I, the Saviour, am the sinner’s Substitute; take me.” And Justice accepted the substitution; took the Saviour, crucified him, nailed him to that cross whose agonies we commemorate at the communion table. In that hour Jesus cried, “If ye seek me, let these go their way.” Who are they that are to go their way? Why, the very men whose former way was one of iniquity, and whose end would have been destruction, if the curse had not been made to fall upon the head of Jesus!

“Let these go their way.” Oh, that wonderful sentence! I never knew its sweetness till I found the Lord; but I did know something of its power. Do you ask, “How was that?” Why, long before you know the Lord, you have some of the power of the blood of Christ resting upon you. “How so?” do you enquire. Why, do you not know it to be a fact that,-

“Determined to save, he watched o’er our path,

When, Satan’s blind slaves, we sported with death”?

And so, some of the benefits of Christ’s death were ours before we knew him, and before we loved him. The reason why I was not damned before I knew the Saviour was that he had said, “Let him go his way; I have died for him.” You would have been in hell these twenty years, saint, for you were then unregenerate; but Christ said, “Let him go his way; if ye seek me, he shall go his way, sinner though he be;” and now, when gloomy fears arise, and dark thoughts roll over our mind, let this be our comfort. Sinners we are still, guilty and vile; but the same voice says, “Let these go their way.” It is the “let” of command; and who can hinder when God letteth in this sense? “Let these go their way.” You are going up Bunyan’s Hill Difficulty, and there are lions at the top. Christians, remember this message, “Let these go their way.” You will, perhaps, get into Giant Despair’s dungeon; here is a key that will fit the lock: “Let these go their way.” You will be tumbling about in the Slough of Despond; here is a stone to put your foot on to help you to get out: “Let these go their way.” What for? Because they pray? No. Because they serve God? No; the mandate was given before they did either the one or the other. “Let these go their way,” because Christ died in their stead.

The day is coming, and shall soon be here, when you and I shall stretch our wings, and fly away to the land that is very far off. I think I might picture in my imagination the soul when it has left the body. The believer speeds his way up to his native city, Jerusalem, “the mother of us all.” But at the gate one standeth; and he saith, “Hast thou a right to admission here? It is written, ‘He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil; he shall dwell on high.’ Art thou such an one?” “Ah!” saith the soul, “I hope by grace I have been made so; but I cannot claim to have always been so, for ‘I the chief of sinners am.’ ” “Then how camest thou here? This gate gives no admission to those who are sinners.” While the angel is thus parleying, I hear a voice crying, “Let these go their way;” and, forthwith, the gates of heaven are opened, and every soul for whom Christ died doth enter into Paradise.

Come, saint, close up this simple meditation by looking yonder. See Christ, with justice, vengeance, wrath, all seeking him. Lo, they have found him; they have slain him; he is buried; he hath risen again. Oh! see them seeking him; and as you sit down at his table, think, “When they sought him, they let me go my way.” And what a sweet way it is! I am allowed to come to his table of communion. Why? Because they sought him. I am invited to hold fellowship with Jesus. Why? Because they sought him. I am permitted to have a good hope through grace; and, more than that, “I know that when this earthly house of my tabernacle is dissolved, I have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” Why am I to go that way? Why? Because they sought him, and found him. Else, where had I been now? My place might have been on the alehouse bench, or, perhaps, in the seat of the scorner; and what would have been my prospect? Why, that, at the last, I should be in hell amongst the fiends and the lost spirits of the pit; but now I tread the paths of righteousness and the ways of grace. Oh, let me remember why I do so; it is because they sought thee, O thou precious Lord of mine! They sought thee, my dear Redeemer and my God; they sought thy heart, and broke it; they sought thy head, and crowned it with thorns; they sought thy hands, and nailed them to the tree; they sought thy feet, and pierced them; they sought thy body, they slew and buried it. And now, though the roaring lion may seek me never so much, he cannot devour me; never can I be rent in pieces, never can I be destroyed, for I carry with me this sweet passport of the King of heaven, “Let these go their way.” O child of God, take this with thee for thy safe conduct everywhere! When men travel abroad, they carry with them a permit to go to this town and the other. Take this little sentence, brother or sister in Jesus, and when unbelief stops thee, draw it out, and say, “He hath said, ‘Let these go their way.’ ” And when Satan stops thee, hold out to him this divine mandate, “Let these go their way.” And when death shall stop thee, take out this sweet permit from thy Master, “Let these go their way.” And when the throne of judgment shall be set, and thou standest before it, plead this sentence, plead it even before thy Maker, “My Master said, ‘Let these go their way.’ ” Oh, cheering words! I could weep them all out; but I will say no more. I hope many of you will enjoy the sweetness of them while we gather around the Lord’s table, in obedience to his gracious command, “This do in remembrance of me.”

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

JOHN 17; and 18:1-9

Chapter 17 Verse 1. These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:

Jesus is going forth to die, and he knows it; yet he prays to his Father, “Glorify thy Son.” There was no way of his coming to that glory except by passing through tears, and blood, and agony, and death. He only asks that he may be glorified in what he is about to do, and to suffer, and he is ready for it all: “Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.”

2. As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

In that saying of our Lord we have an explanation of what he did by his redemption. There was a universal aspect of it: “Thou hast given him power over all flesh.” There was a special design in it: “That he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.” Sometimes, two views of the same thing may appear to contradict each other; but when we are taught of God, we soon discover that they do not really do so, and that a grand truth may be contained in the two descriptions of it. Christ had, by virtue of his death, power over all flesh; but it was for a distinct purpose: “that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.”

3. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

By this, then, dear friends, we can know whether we have eternal life or not. Do we know the Father? Do we know Jesus Christ as the Messiah-the Sent One? Are we resting in that blessed knowledge? If so, he has given to us eternal life.

4, 5. I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

In deep humility, Jesus had laid that glory aside for a while. He had tabernacled in human flesh; and when he spoke these words, the time was approaching when,-

“All his work and warfare done,”-

he should go back to his pristine glory with something more added to it.

6. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world:

They had not all of them clearly seen that manifestation. Jesus had to ask the question, “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?” Still, that was not the fault of the manifestation; Christ had manifested the name-that is, the character-of God unto those who had been given to him out of the world.

6. Thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.

We might have expected that the verse would end, “and I have kept them.” But their keeping God’s Word is the evidence that Christ has kept them. Whenever a soul loves the Word of God, delights in the teaching of Christ, glories in those things which the world calls dogmas,-as if they were so much dog’s meat,-when you and I can feed upon these things,-when every utterance of Christ is dear and precious to us,-that is good evidence of our being called out of the world, and separated unto Christ; it is one of the marks of divine grace which Jesus works in those whom the Father has given him: “Thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy Word.”

7. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.

The Father gives Christ the truth which Christ gives to us. The Father gives Christ the souls which Jesus keeps until the day of his power. There is mutual communion between God the Father and his blessed Son; let us never say a word that might look as if we did not understand the oneness-the everlasting and infinite oneness-which there is between the sacred persons of the Divine Unity.

8. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me;

You know how men talk against “verbal inspiration.” Yet Christ says, “I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me.” Many are trifling with the teaching of God’s Word, as if it were of no importance at all. Not so did Christ: “I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me.”

8. And they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.

Firmly do we believe this, and in our heart of hearts we do accept every part of the teaching of Christ, no matter what it is. I hear people say, sometimes, “Oh, but that is not essential!” There is a great deal of mischief hatched out of that egg. O friends, it is essential that Christ’s disciples should treasure whatever he has said! Never trifle with that part of the Word of God which seems to be less essential to salvation than another portion; for if it is not essential to salvation, it may be essential to your comfort, or your holiness, or your strength, or your usefulness; and if it be essential to God’s glory, let us never trample it in the mire, or in any way dishonour it. Who am I that I should say, “This which God has spoken is important, but that other is not”? It does not do for us to presume to judge the Word of God; we should rather let the Word of God judge us.

9. I pray for them:-

Blessed word! Christ prays for his own people: “I pray for them:”-

9. I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me;-

In that last hour, just before his Passion, his thoughts were separating the precious from the vile; and his prayer ascended for his own people: “I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me;”-

9, 10. For they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.

It is a wonderful thing that Christ should be glorified in his people. Can it be that he shall be glorified in me? Dear child of God, you sometimes sit in the corner, and think to yourself, “How insignificant I am! The church on earth would not miss me if I were taken away; and the choirs of heaven cannot need me.” Oh, but your Lord is glorified in you! If you are one of his chosen and redeemed people, in your very weakness and need he finds opportunity to glorify his strength and his fulness. He knows the truth about this matter, and he says, “I am glorified in them.”

11. And now I am no more in the world,-

He was going away; he has gone now.

11. But these are in the world,-

We know we are; do we not, brethren? We have a thousand things-some of them very painful and humiliating to us,-to remind us that we are still in the world.

11. And I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.

Oh, what blessed keeping is that,-to be kept in spiritual oneness! I do not expect to see the people of God in visible oneness; but as there was a secret, invisible union, most real and most true, between the Father and the Son, so there is, at this time, a secret union in the hearts of all believers, most deep, most real, most true. I may never have seen that good friend before; but as soon as ever we begin to talk of Jesus and his love, if we are the living children of the living God, the bond of unity is felt at once by both of us. “One is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.”

12. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

What a blessed Shepherd is this who never lost a sheep! Judas crept in among the flock, but he never was truly one of the flock. He was never a son of God, he was “the son of perdition” all along. Christ has kept all his sheep, and all his lambs; and he will do the same, dear friends, even to the end.

13. And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

What an unselfish Saviour! His heart is ready to break with his impending sufferings, and yet he prays for us, that we may be filled with his joy. I suppose that it is true that the Man of sorrows was the happiest man who ever lived. “For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame;” and, notwithstanding his boundless and bottomless grief, yet there was within him such communion with God, and love to men, and the certainty of his ultimate triumph, that kept him still joyous above the seas of tribulation. He prays that that same joy may be fulfilled in us; may God graciously grant it to all of us who believe in Jesus!

14, 15. I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.

There is a reason for God’s elect being allowed to remain in the world. They are never left, like wheat in the field, to perish through the damp and cold, or to be devoured by the birds of the air. Oh, no! We are left for God’s glory, that men may see what the grace of God can do in poor frail bodies; for the service of Christ’s Church, that we may be here for a while to carry on the cause of God, to be the means of comforting the little ones, and to seek the conversion of sinners. We are to be like salt to prevent putrefaction. We are God’s preventive men, to prevent as much of the evil as we can; and we are to fight with the evil that cannot be prevented, and to seek to overthrow it in Christ’s name.

16. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

Many, nowadays, say that we ought to blend the church with the congregation, and that it is a great pity to have any division between them. A great many good people are outside the church; therefore try to make the church as much like the world as ever you can! That is a silly trick of the devil which the wise servants of God will answer by saying, “To whom we give place for subjection, no, not for an hour.” There must ever be a broad line of demarcation between the Church of Christ and the world, and it will be an evil day when that line is abolished. The sons of God took to themselves wives of the daughters of men, but that kind of union brought mischief with it, and it will ever do so.

17. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

We cannot afford to give up God’s inspired Word, because it is a means of our sanctification; and if this be taken away, it is not such-and-such a dogma, as they call it, put into the background, but it is truth that would sanctify us which is discarded, it is God’s own Word that is flung to the dogs; and that must never be.

18, 19. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.

“I set myself apart unto holiness, that they also might be set apart unto holy uses through the truth.”

20. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;

Our Lord knew that the little circle around him would grow into a multitude that no man can number, out of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues; so he prayed for all whom his Father had given him,-

21, 22. That they all may be one; as thou. Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:

The Church will never know her true glory till she knows her perfect oneness; the One Church will be the glorious Church.

23. I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

That is a grand expression: “Thou hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.” What! with the same love? It is even so;-a love without beginning, a love without change, a love without bounds, a love without end: “Thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me.”

24-26. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.

This blessed prayer was heard by the Father; all of it must be fulfilled, and untold blessings do and shall come to us through this intercession of our Lord, blessed be his holy name!

Chapter 18 Verse 1. When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the which he entered, and his disciples.

Our Lord could not cross that “brook Cedron” without being reminded of the time when David went that way in the hour of his sorrow, though he knew that he had to face a far greater trial than that of David. The very brook would remind him of his approaching sacrifice, for through it flowed the blood and refuse from the temple.

2. And Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place: for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples.

The place of our Lord’s frequent retirement for private prayer was well known to Judas, who had often gone there with his Lord and his fellow-disciples.

3. Judas then, having received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons.

How completely the traitor must have been in the power of Satan, and how hardened and callous he must have grown, that he could lead “thither” the men who were going to arrest the Saviour! Truly it was by wicked hands that Christ was taken, and crucified, and slain; yet, unconsciously, these evil men were carrying out “the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.” How strangely were they equipped for their deed of darkness! “With lanterns and torches and weapons.” They were coming to the Light of the world bearing “lanterns and torches”; and armed with “weapons” that they might use against “the Lamb of God”! If he had wished to deliver himself, all their “weapons” would have been in vain, and their “lanterns and torches” would not have revealed him, even with the help of the full moon, which was probably shining at the time.

4, 5. Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye? They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he. And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them.

Notice, dear friends, that the word “he” is in italics, showing that it is not in the original. Our Lord here twice used the name of Jehovah,-I AM,-as he did on certain other memorable occasions. It was most fitting that, as he was going out to die, he should declare that it was no mere man who was about to suffer on the cross, but that, while he was truly man, he was also “very God of very God.”

6. As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground.

The simple utterance of his name drove them from him, and smote them to the earth; what would have happened if he had put forth his almighty power?

7-9. Then asked he them again, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have told you that I am he: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way: that the saying might be fulfilled, which he spake, Of them which thou gavest me have I lost none.

SHINING CHRISTIANS

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day, April 9th, 1899,

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Lord’s-day Evening, January 1st, 1882.

“Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.”-Isaiah 60:1.

I believe that this text refers to the Church of God. I am aware that it is considered by some to have a special reference to Israel; but I also know that “no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation,” and that this particular Scripture may be most justly and fitly applied to every child of God. I pray the Holy Spirit to bear witness to that fact, even while I am speaking, by applying the text to all believers who are assembled here.

The first word of it is “Arise.” There is much need, dear friends, that we should be, sometimes at least, aroused. Here are persons in the light; the day has dawned upon them, but they are fast asleep; so the trumpet is sounded in their ear, and the watchman shouts aloud, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come.” I believe that there are some Christian men who have wasted a large part of their lives for want of somebody or something to wake them up. There is more evil wrought in the world by want of thought than by downright malice, and there is more good left undone through want of thought than through any aversion to the doing of good. Some Christians appear to have been born in the land of slumber, and they continually live in their native country of dreams. They rub their eyes occasionally, and suppose themselves to be wide awake; but they are in the Enchanted Ground, and though they know it not, they are little better than sleepwalkers the most of their days.

All of us may be conscious that, at times, we are startled into something better than our ordinary mode of life. We have been going on quietly, doing some good; but, all at once, we have been impressed with the value of an immortal soul, we have been struck with the nearness of eternity by the sudden death of a friend, or we have been aroused by the special application to our conscience of some eminently-powerful Scripture, or even the sight of some grievous sin has shocked us into holy action. For a time, we have been quite different from our ordinary selves, and those who have observed us have thought that there was more in us than they ever expected to see. Certainly, more came out of us than we had ever seen before; but, alas! we have soon slipped back into our former quiescent state until, perhaps, something else of an unusual character has happened, and startled us again. I have known some in whom, happily, the process of arousing has been a really effectual one. There came, once, to a meeting I was addressing, a brother who had been, for years, earnest after the ordinary fashion of Christian young men; and the Lord so guided me that I spoke about the usefulness that some men might acquire if they would but bestir themselves. I urged the desirability of some attempting to preach in the street, who might find their gifts abundant for that work. Well, this young man went back, and tried what he could do for Christ, and God greatly blessed him. That young man was Mr. W. P. Lockhart, of Liverpool, who is, at this moment, pastor of the church meeting in the Toxteth Tabernacle, a large edifice erected by the people whom he gathered by his preaching. Our friend has, with much, acceptance, occupied this pulpit, and been of great service to our denomination; but, if it had not been for God’s awakening him under that particular address, he might have remained just the ordinary trader that he was, serving the Lord in a very proper way, but nothing noteworthy might have come of it. I wonder whether there is anybody here, who needs, as it were, to be dragged out, and impressed into the service of Christ,-some brother, perhaps, from Liverpool, or Manchester, or Birmingham, or Glasgow, or from this great London itself,-someone who is “not slothful in business,” yet not “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” Such a man may be, really, a fine fellow, with great capacity; but most of his talent is latent and dormant so far as the work of God is concerned. My dear friend, you have been sluggish quite long enough. Is it not time for me to cry to you, “Arise”; and is it not time for you to lift yourself up from that couch of indolence, and to say, “Yes, I have been hearing sermons for a good long while; I have been a member of a Christian church, and have been attending communions for many years; it is high time that I ceased from sloth, and began to do something to show that God is with me, and in me; and, by his grace, so it shall be”? Happy will the preacher be if that shall be the result of calling your attention to this first word of the text: “Arise.” We all need to hear the clarion call of Charles Wesley’s hymn,-

“Soldiers of Christ, arise,

And put your armour on,

Strong in the strength which God supplies

Through his eternal Son.”

It is high time that all of us did arise. “Let us not sleep, as do others.” Loved by our God from all eternity, predestinated unto everlasting life, bought with the precious blood of Jesus, helped by the Spirit of God, and indwelt by him; it is indeed time that we did something worthy of our pedigree, something worthy of the price with which we have been bought, something worthy of the love which set us apart unto itself or ever the world was. I have no doubt that I am addressing some who do not lack grace; God has given them that. They are not without a saving knowledge of the truth; they do know Christ, but what they want is somebody to start them on a higher and nobler career. There are some who are just like Elijah’s sacrifice, with the wood all laid in order on the altar, and the bullock on the wood. O Lord, send the fire from heaven, that the sacrifice may be completely consumed! Let the man be given to thee as a whole burnt-offering unto the Most High! It may be that this poor weak hand may strike the match that shall set that sacrifice on a blaze. So may it be, and God shall have all the glory!

The text says, “Arise;” but then it goes on to say, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.” In these words I see three things for me to do; first, to remind you of your privilege: “thy light is come;” secondly, to rouse you to your service: “Arise, shine;” and then, thirdly, to rally you to this work, by a few remarks which the context will suggest.

I am speaking now only to the people of God. There are some of you whose light has never come, but you are in darkness even until now. The Lord have mercy upon you; but, to God’s own people who have believed in the Lord Jesus, this is my first message, Remember your privilege. Your light has come.

Recollect, first, out of what darkness that light has delivered you. You are no longer in the darkness of sin, the darkness of spiritual ignorance, the darkness of spiritual death; neither are you any longer in that darkness of distress and despair which might be felt. You are now in the light; but think a little while of what your state of darkness used to be. It is not so many years ago that there was a young man, who did not know his right hand from his left in spiritual things; he put darkness for light, and light for darkness, bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter; and that man, not sc young now, knows the Saviour, he has learnt the evil of sin, and he has rejoiced in all the delights of pardon. Was that young man yourself? If so, you may well prize your present privileges. It is not so long ago that there was a man who was in the darkness of soul-agony. His sin was heavy upon him; God’s hand pressed him till all the moisture of his being seemed to exude, and he was like a plant withered in the long droughts of autumn. He cried to the Lord, but for a while he received no response to his petitions. He begged for mercy, but it did not come. Now, that same person is sitting here, thankful that he is pardoned, and that he knows how he has been delivered from the wrath of God, and he blesses that Divine Substitute who took upon himself his sin, and with it that sin’s penalty, and so delivered the guilty one from the wrath to come. Oh, what a change there is in that young man! That young man is yourself; is he not? Sister, it has been the same with you, too. Oh, what a difference there is between the knowledge which God the Holy Spirit has imparted to you, and the blindness in which Satan held you captive! Oh, the difference between the misery into which conviction and despair had brought you, and the peace and restfulness which you feel at this moment through faith in Jesus Christ your Lord and Saviour! Is it not true that your light has come, and do you not bless God for it? Oh, methinks you must do so, and that you will use that blessed fact to help me in my argument when I come to enforce the lesson of the text: “Arise, shine; for thy light is come.” If God has given you light out of such horrible darkness, it well becomes you to shine to his praise as brightly as ever you can.

Please to notice, next, that this light, which God has given you, is his own glory: “and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.” Oh, but that is wonderful,-that God should not only give us light, but that that light should be his own glory. Creation is a part of God’s glory, but it is only a moonlight glory compared with that of redemption. God, in the gift of Jesus Christ, displayed the whole of his nature. Creation is not a canvas large enough for the whole image of God to be stamped upon it. Byron speaks of God’s face being mirrored in the sea; but there is not space enough for the face of Deity to be fully reflected in the broad Atlantic, or in all the oceans put together. The image of God is to be fully seen in Jesus Christ, and nowhere else; for there you behold attributes which Creation cannot display. Creation can manifest love, power, wisdom, and much else; but how can Creation manifest justice, and justice lying side by side with mercy, like the lion and the lamb? It is only in Christ that you can see this wondrous sight,-God hating sin with perfect hatred, but yet loving sinners with much more than the tenderness of a mother towards her child.

It is upon you, dear friend, that this light of the glory of God has fallen. In your history, in your case, the glory of God’s attributes has been illustrated. You have seen it yourself in a measure, and others are also to see it in you. Your light has come, the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Henceforth, God’s glory is to shine through you; and in you, and by you, and through you, God shall manifest himself to angels and principalities and powers in the ages yet to come. I confess that I am talking about what I do not fully understand; I am quite out of my depth here. I see the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, but to describe it is quite impossible. When first I saw the electric light, if you had asked me what it was like, I could only have told you something about its candle-power or its brilliance in comparison with gas, but I could not have made you understand it. But what is the electric light compared with the glory of the sun to one who sees it for the first time? And what are all the suns that could ever be created compared with the wondrous blaze of the glory of God? Yet such a marvellous light as that has fallen upon you, my brother, my sister,-“the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

There is also this blessed thing to be said about this light; you will never lose it. I dwell upon that thought for a minute, that you may rejoice in it. Read the 30th verse: “Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.” The light that God has given you will never be taken away from you. Ah! you have feared a good many times that it would be; but it never has, and it never will be. You have put your hand before your eyes, and then you have thought that the sun was blotted out; but it was not. Clouds have sometimes arisen between you and your God, but the light of his everlasting love has gone on shining all the while; so it always will. We bless God that we have not to preach to you of temporary salvation, a salvation that saves people for a quarter of a year, or that saves them for a few years, and then away they go back again to the world. Nay, nay, our comforts may be slower in the making than are those of others; but they last when they are made, for they are made by the grace of God. We are not saved by a sudden jump into something,-we know not what;-but by a new creation, by a new birth, by a total and radical change. Now, if the light of God has risen upon you in that way, so as to change your very heart, and the whole nature of your being, that light will go on shining for ever. Just drink in that thought. You have, by grace, laid hold of that which you will never lose; and One has laid hold of you, who will never let you slip out of his grasp, for it is written, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” I must not get on to that glorious theme of the final preservation of the saints, because it is one that always sets my heart leaping with delight whenever I turn to it; but I protest to you that, if you take away from me the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints, and all that is involved in it, I have not anything left that is worth keeping. I should not care about the gospel if that essential feature of it were gone; that truth seems to me to be the very soul of it,-everlasting love making an everlasting covenant, and taking the objects of that everlasting love into everlasting union with Christ, and giving them everlasting life by virtue of that union with him. So, believer, that light of yours will never burn out; it shall shine on for ever and ever. “Thy light has come,” and it shall never go away. Oh, joy, joy, joy! Let God be praised continually for such a blessed boon as this.

Now I must leave that part of my subject, only asking you to turn it over in your minds, and to rejoice if the text is true of you, “Thy light is come.” I wish that some here, who have been in the dark up till now, might know it to be true in their case, and each one be able to say, “I do believe, I will believe, in Christ Jesus as my Saviour.” If you do, your light has come.

But I am going to speak further to those who know that their light has come. Dear friends, as soon as ever you have received this light of the glory of God,-this very same light that makes heaven what it is,-this light which never will be dim, and which you will never lose,-I want to push you on to my second point, which is this, to rouse you to service: “Arise, shine; for thy light is come.” A man cannot shine if he has not any light; but as soon as ever he has the light, what is he to do? Why, shine, of course; he must not put away his light as in a dark lantern, but the moment he receives it, he is bound to show it.

First, my dear friend, since your light has come, shine by holy cheerfulness. I am very sorry whenever I meet with Christians who have no joy. I am most of all vexed with myself whenever my own joy burns dimly, for we who have the light of the glory of God ought to have shining faces. We have been forgiven; we are God’s children; we are on the way to heaven; then, surely, if anybody’s mouth ought to be full of laughter, and if any tongue should be tuned to sweetest music, it should certainly be ours. There are none who have such a right to lead perfectly happy lives as Christians. I know that there are some who I cannot doubt are good people, but who are a very surly sort of folk. Dear hearts, they will be all right when they get to heaven; but I should not like to meet a heaven full of them if they are in heaven as they are here. There are some persons who never can be content. Providence never pleases them; the weather is always wrong; their dinners are always ill cooked; nothing goes right, nothing has gone right with them for years, and they are very snappish and snarling. This style of living will not do, my brother. “Arise, shine.” I would like to lay those words on your breakfast plate to morrow morning. Before you go out to business, just put this passage between two pieces of bread and butter, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come.” It may be that you will wake up in the morning rather gloomy, and you will say to yourself, “I have to go out and battle with the world again.” Take this text, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come;” and say to yourself, “I must shine. Come, come, come, come, come; I must not let myself get down in the dumps, I must not begin the day mourning; God has given me light, so I must and I will shine to his praise and glory.” May God help you to do it, for that is one way in which we can adorn the gospel of Jesus Christ our Saviour, by the cheerfulness of our deportment.

The next way of shining is by a gracious godliness. True Christians ought to shine by their lives. The stars do not say anything, but they keep on shining. Did you look up to the sky, the other night, and see Jupiter hard by the moon, and Saturn apparently just a little way off? There has been a wonderful beauty about various planets during the past month; perhaps never was the sky more interesting than it has been of late, but never a word was said among the shining bodies in the heavens. I kept company with the pole star, I think for twelve long hours; as I came travelling home from the South of France, I kept on seeing him out of the carriage window. He never said a word to me all the time; but one thing he did do, he continued shining; and I also gazed at all the stars of Ursa Major, as I remained wakeful the whole night long, but not a syllable did they say to me. They do not need to speak, for they shine. In like manner, you Christian people who cannot talk,-the women especially,-I mean that you cannot preach, you are not allowed to preach,-I want you to shine. Some people seem to think that there is no shining without talking, whereas the very best shining is that of Christian women, who, if they have little to say, have a great deal to do. They make the house so bright with heavenly grace, and decorate it so sweetly with the flowers of their cheerful piety, that those round about them are won to Christ by them. Therefore, shine, dear brothers and sisters, by your gracious godliness, for so you will bring glory to God.

Then, thirdly, shine by zealous earnestness. We do not often meet with people who are too much in earnest. I can only thank God that I hear, in certain places, an outcry against fanaticism. We have been such a long time without it, so we may be almost glad to have a little of it, especially as the so-called fanaticism is probably only zeal thoroughly aroused. If there are some people who seem to be wildly enthusiastic, let us imitate them. We have had so much slumbering, so much coldness, so much death, that we can put up with a little extravagance and excess. Still it would be better if, judiciously, one went steaming straight ahead in the service of God with a resolution never to be beaten, never to cease every earnest endeavour to make known the gospel of Christ, and to reflect the light which has shone upon us from above. Oh, for a zealous earnestness! May God pour it out upon this church yet more abundantly! May you go into your Master’s service with all your might and main, and may the Spirit of God, as a spirit of burning, rest upon every one of you far more abundantly than in the past!

This would lead, dear friends, to your shining by a secret bravery. There are some dear people whom I must encourage to be a little more bold. We have some friends, here and there, to whom I could hint, only very gently, that they are quite forward enough; but there are many good people who always keep in the background. They might do so much for Christ if only they had a little courage. Do, dear friends, break through the ice this year. If you have felt that you ought to do something for your Lord, and yet have never begun to do it, begin at once. Do you ask, “What is the best way to try to serve Christ?” Well, I think the best way is to do it. “But how should I begin?” Well, I would begin by beginning. “When shall I begin?” Begin now; this very hour. “But in what way?” In the first way that comes to hand. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,” for our text says, “Arise, shine.” If you have the light, emit it, distribute it, scatter it somehow or other. Have pluck; that is a plain English word, but I do not know how to put my meaning better. Have pluck enough to come out, and be a Christian; do not for ever be like a rat behind the wainscot, but come out, and own yourself on Jesus Christ’s side, and publish the everlasting gospel wherever you have the opportunity.

So runs the text, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come.”

Now, in closing, I want to rally you to this shining by one or two arguments.

And, first, by the world’s great need. Read the second verse of this chapter: “Behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.” Oh, the darkness and the death-shade over the people still! Over this London of ours there hangs a pall of deadly nightshade, a darkness that may be felt. Then, little glowworm, even you must not hide your light! Sparks, tiny sparklets, you that have but one little flash, you must not conceal it, for the night is dark, and the darkness deepens! The devil, drunkenness, and lechery, Jesuitism in all its forms, false doctrine, infidel teaching, scepticism in a thousand shapes, all these make night hideous, and further deepen the dense shades of darkness. You who have the light, do show it. If it is not the light, say so, and abjure it; but if it be the light, in the name of the eternal God, good man, I pray thee, let thy light be seen! Arise, shine; for darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the people.

Shine, next, because of the great results that will surely come of it. If all Christians were once to shine, and that means if you were to shine, and your next neighbour, and I and my next neighbour, and all of us were to shine, then it would come to pass that Gentiles would speed to the light, and kings to the brightness of the rising. Then, from all lands, and from the sea, would converts come, till nations should crowd to Christ, like flocks of doves flying to their dovecotes, and the Church of God would be multiplied beyond all count. We often keep from work for Christ because we despair of its success; we neglect effort because we are afraid that effort will be useless. Doubt no longer; he that bids you sow intends to give a harvest; and he will bless your sowing if you will but sow in faith. We may well be encouraged to do so when we think such thoughts as these, “Shine, for thy light shall be seen; shine, for thy light shall be useful to save life, like a lighthouse on the rock; useful to direct others home, like the cottager’s candle in the window, to guide her husband to his resting-place.” Shine, then, because of the good that will come of it to the world.

Shine, next, because of the great blessing that it will bring to the Church; for, if all Christians shall rally to serve God as they should, then shall the Church have the days of her great glory: “The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the pine tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary; and I will make the place of my feet glorious. The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee, The city of the Lord, The Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations.” A shining church will be a happy church; if we do not shine, we shall be miserable. But if we will shine for Christ, we shall see great prosperity for the Church of the living God.

And, best of all, we must do this because of the argument used in the 21st verse. I will not speak upon it, I shall leave it with you: “that I may be glorified.” It is God your Father who says that, it is Christ who has bought you with his blood who says it, it is the Holy Ghost who is your indwelling Comforter who says it. There is no argument that eloquence could state, or that reason could suggest, that can have such force with a loyal heart as this,-“that I might be glorified.” Do you not pray, “Father, glorify thy Son”? Now, in the power of the Holy Spirit, prove the sincerity of your prayer by giving out whatever light God has given to you; and, since your light has come, arise and shine, as you have ability, from this very hour. The Lord grant it, dear brothers and sisters, to me and to you, for his name’s sake! Amen.

Expositions by C. H. Spurgeon

PSALM 103; ISAIAH 59:16-21; and 60:1-16

What more appropriate passage than the 103rd Psalm can we read, on this first Sabbath night of another year, to express the gratitude of our thankful hearts. I will only interject a sentence here and there; but let me beg all to try to worship God in the spirit while we once more read together the familiar words of this much-loved Psalm.

Psalm 103 Verse 1. Bless the Lord, O my soul:

O my soul, be not thoughtless and wandering, but give this holy hour to the sacred employment of praising and blessing thy God!

1. And all that is within me, bless his holy name.

Let every string of my heart be now touched by the fingers of the Holy Spirit, let every faculty of my being wake up to praise the Lord: “and all that is within me, bless his holy name.”

2. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:

They are very memorable; they deserve to be “engraved as in eternal brass.” To be forgetful of them, will be a base form of ingratitude. Come, my memory, wake up: “Forget not all his benefits.”

Here are a few of the choicest of the gems in this cabinet; the jewels are too many for me to exhibit them all.

3. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities;

The Lord has done it, and continues to do it: “who forgiveth”-not some of thine iniquities, but all of them, so that you can sing, “The depths have covered them: there is not one of them left.” Why, there is enough to sing of in that alone; we need never leave off praising God for that one mercy of sin forgiven; it is the first of God’s favours, and prepares us to enjoy the rest.

3. Who healeth all thy diseases;

Many times has my heart had to sing about the gift from my God of this precious pearl: “who healeth all thy diseases;” and some of you have also had occasion, in your restored health, to praise the Lord for this privilege. But, oh, to think that, every day, he is healing us of the great disease of sin,-our very afflictions being, often, but the lancet and the knife with which he is removing from us the foul taint of evil! “Who healeth all thy diseases.”

4. Who redeemeth thy life from destruction;

Thou hast a life that can never die, for he has redeemed it; then, bless thy Lord for redemption. If thou dost not sing for this cause, the very stones in the street will cry out against thee.

4. Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies;

What a crown! What gems bestud it! No gold or silver can ever equal this: “lovingkindness and tender mercies.” Every child of God is a crowned king; shall we not for this also sing aloud, “Bless the Lord, O my soul”?

5. Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

If you enjoy sweet inward contentment and satisfaction with your God, you must praise him, “who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” With renewed strength, can you, will you, be silent? I am sure you cannot; but you must use all the strength that God has given back to you to his praise and glory.

6. The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed.

Blessed be his name for this! He is the supreme Governor of the world, and he will rectify all its wrongs in his own time and way. There is a great power that makes for righteousness, and that power is on the throne. “The Lord reigneth.”

7-9. He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever.

Let your heart keep praising the Lord as we read every one of these sentences, for there is a theme for everlasting music in each line of this Psalm. “He will not always chide.” Hallelujah! “Neither will he keep his anger for ever.” And again we say, “Hallelujah!”

10. He hath not dealt with us after our sins;

Blessed be his holy name!

10. Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

For ever adored be his longsuffering and his tender mercy.

11. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.

Therefore praise him.

“Loud as his thunders shout his praise,

And sound it lofty as his throne.”

If he be such a God as this, you can never overdo his praises, it is impossible to exaggerate in your exaltation of him.

12. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.

They are gone; they are removed to an infinite distance; they will never come back. It is not possible that they should ever again be laid to our charge.

13. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.

Do not stop the music of thanksgiving; let your hearts, if not your voices, keep on saying, “Bless the Lord! Bless the Lord!” Oh, what pity you and I have needed! What tenderness and compassion! And-

“Such pity as a father hath

Unto his children dear,”-

such pity has God had upon us.

14-16. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.

As a congregation, we have had most grievous proof of this truth during the last two or three months. It has seemed to me as if everybody was dying; our ranks have been thinned wondrously;-

“And we are to the margin come,

And we expect to die.”

17-19. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children; to such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them. The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all.

Do not believe the people who attribute sickness and death to the devil, and so try to make it appear that God has left his throne. He reigneth still; he reigneth ever, “King of kings, and Lord of lords, Hallelujah!” “Bless the Lord, O my soul!” “The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all.”

20-22. Bless the Lord, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word. Bless ye the Lord, all ye hit hosts; ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure. Bless the Lord, all his works in all places of his dominion: bless the Lord, O my soul.

For well thou mayest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee! Lead thou the song, and may the whole world join thee in joyful adoration of the Triune Jehovah, Father, Son, and Spirit!

Now we will read the passage that specially relates to the message I have to deliver to you presently in my Master’s name. Turn to Isaiah 59, verse 16:-

Isaiah 59 Verse 16. And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him.

Man’s extremity was Christ’s opportunity. There was no one left to save poor fallen manhood, no one who could lift a hand or a finger for our rescue; therefore, Jesus came, and fought, and bled, and died, and conquered on our behalf.

17-19. For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head; and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloke. According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries, recompence to his enemies; to the islands he will repay recompence. So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun.

Christ came once, and he is to come a second time, because he will be again needed here; and when he returns, he will ease himself of his adversaries, and speedily win the victory for truth and righteousness. Then shall the whole earth know what Christ can do.

19-21. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him. And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord. As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord; my spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever.

The Church of God shall have the Spirit of truth and the Word of truth ever abiding in her midst. God will not break his covenant by withdrawing his Spirit from his Church. The Redeemer has come, and his work of redemption is accomplished. The Spirit also has come, but his work is not as yet done; it is being performed from day to day, and the Spirit will never be withdrawn while any part of his ministry remains unfulfilled.

The consequence of all this is the glory of the true Church of the living God. There are better days coming for the cause of Christ and of truth. Listen, and be encouraged, all ye that are heavy of heart!

Chapter 60 Verses 1-3. Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.

The Church of God is one, whether it be among Jews or Gentiles. That poor Church seemed left and forsaken; dark days came, and it looked as if the Church must even cease to exist, but it did not. Now, God has brought in many sinners of the Gentiles, and he will bring them in much more numerously in the future times of refreshing. They shall come in armies, in hosts, in nations, and the Church of God shall be exceedingly glorious.

4, 5. Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side. Then thou shalt see, and flow together, and thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged; because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee.

All the strength of the land and of the sea,-the armies and the navies shall come and prostrate themselves before the Church of God. The supreme power on earth shall yet be the Christ in the midst of his Church.

6. The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come:-

The Easterns shall bow before the King; they that of old had some light shall come to the yet greater light. In those holy lands, which afterwards became so unholy, there shall yet be a return to the truth, and all the false prophets shall be expelled. Where Mohammed’s crescent has cursed the nations, there shall shine again the Sun of righteousness, with healing in his wings.

6, 7. They shall bring gold and incense; and they shall shew forth the praises of the Lord. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee: they shall come up with acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory.

Wandering tribes of wild Arabs shall come and bow before Christ, and lay their wealth at his feet.

8. Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows?

The growing Church sees a greater multitude coming to her than even the populous East could muster; whence come they? Listen, brethren, and look around, and see for yourselves.

9. Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the Lord thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee.

In ships from these remote islands, and from countries that were dimly spoken of, in the East, as “lands of Tarshish,” far away, great multitudes were to come to Christ. Are they not coming to-day from this Ultima Thule, this distant land beyond the pillars of Hercules, are they not coming to Christ “as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows”?

10-16. And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee: for in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour have I had mercy on thee. Therefore thy gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted. The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the pine tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary; and I will make the place of my feet glorious. The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee, The city of the Lord, The Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations. Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breast of kings: and thou shalt know that I the Lord am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob.

In God’s good time, all this shall come to pass.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-103 (Version III.), 889, 957.

“STRAIGHTWAY”

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day, April 16th, 1899,

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Lord’s-day Evening, January 15th, 1882.

“They straightway left their nets, and followed him.”-Matthew 4:20.

“They straightway left their nets.” Immediately, without hesitation, without question, at once, on the spot, there and then, instantaneously,-at the Master’s call, they “left their nets, and followed him.” It was one mark of our Saviour’s authority and power that, when he commanded, men obeyed. Your memories will help you to recall many instances in which persons, and even inanimate things, instantly obeyed when Christ gave them the word of command. Satan and legions of demons, diseases of every kind, and even winds and waves-those things which usually seem to be lawless and wild-always gave heed to the law which issued from his lips. When he spake, it was done, for his word was with power.

This is a mark of the effectual calling by divine grace; whenever it comes, men are led “straightway” to obey it. I may call you as long as I please, yet you will not come to Christ for all my calling; but if Christ shall call you by his Spirit, you will come; ay, and come “straightway.” When the command of Christ is applied to the soul with divine energy, there is an immediate yielding of the heart to him, and his law is obeyed in the life. Judge yourselves therefore, dear friends, whether the Word of God has come with power to you, or not; for if it has not come with almighty power, but you merely hear it as I speak it, you will say to me, as Felix said to Paul, “Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.” But if the truth proclaimed shall be accompanied with the energy of the Holy Spirit, then, as soon as ever the Lord says, “Seek ye my face,” your heart will respond to him, “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.” Pray to the Lord, you who have heard and answered the call of his Spirit, that the same call may be given to others, and be effectually applied to them, to the praise of the glory of God’s grace.

I am going to use, in two ways, one word in my text: “straightway.” First, I suggest that this word “straightway” should be a motto for all Christians. All disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ should take that word as their guiding star. Secondly, let all seekers take it as their motto, too: “straightway.” If you would find Christ, seek him at once,-“straightway.”

First, then, let this word “straightway” be the motto of every disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.

When I preached, many years ago, in the cathedral at Geneva, after the service was ended, the brethren presented me with a large bronze medal commemorative of John Calvin, on which is this passage, “He endured, as seeing him who is invisible;” which was a most suitable motto-text for him. Upon the covers of his works are these words, which are also truly descriptive of the man, “Prompte et sincere in opere Domini,”-“Prompt and sincere in the work of the Lord.” I was pleased with both those mottoes; and my prayer then was, and still is, that they may both be mine as well as Calvin’s. I pray that I may endure, as seeing him who is invisible, and that I may also live to earn that other commendation, “prompt and sincere in the work of the Lord.” Sincere, I trust we all are, who love the Saviour; but we are not all as prompt as we are sincere. You know, in business, people like a man of prompt payments, upon whom they can always depend. We also like persons to be prompt in carrying out their promises; but, oh! to be prompt in the work of the Lord, so as, not only to do the right thing, but to do it at the right time; and that right time almost always is the time suggested by my text, “straightway.” “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,” and do it at once. Leave it not to lie by among the lumber of good intentions; but if thou art prompted to do it, set to work and do it off-hand.

“Straightway,” then, is to be the motto of the Christian, first, in obeying Christ’s-laws. The moment, my dear friend, that you find yourself in the kingdom of heaven by faith in Christ, endeavour to be a loyal, law-keeping subject. Mary said to the servants at the marriage feast of Cana, concerning her Son, “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it;” and I say the same. “Whatsoever he saith unto you,”-he whom you have now taken to be your Lord and King,-do not merely talk about it, or think of it, but do it, and do it at once. “I counsel thee,” said Solomon, “to keep the King’s commandment.” Take Solomon’s advice, and let me add as a rider to it, “Keep the King’s commandments straightway.” As soon as ever a man becomes a believer in Christ, the next step for him to take is to be baptized. The two things are constantly joined together in the New Testament. Our Lord said, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” When the eunuch came to a certain water, he asked Philip, “What doth hinder me to be baptized?” Philip answered, “If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest.” I add to that, “If thou believest with all thine heart, thou not only mayest, but thou art bound to do it according to the law of the kingdom of Christ.” Do you tell me that you cannot see it to be your duty? I would advise you candidly to search the Scriptures, and find out the teaching and practice of our Lord and his apostles concerning believers’ baptism. If, after that, you still say the same, I must leave you to your Master; I am not your judge.

I hope there will be no question with any of you who love the Lord about the next point. It is the duty of every believer in Christ to come to his table. He said, “This do in remembrance of me.” He bids us gather in his name, and commemorate his death in the breaking of bread and the pouring out of wine; so how can you say that you are his obedient disciple if you have lived hitherto in total negligence of that great commemorative ordinance? “Straightway,” friend,-“straightway” obey both the ordinances of the kingdom, and delay no longer.

“Straightway,” also, unite yourself with the people of God. Christ’s servants-Christ’s blood-bought ones-are called “sheep.” Sheep are gregarious creatures; they always go in flocks. Join yourself to your brethren somewhere. If they are evil spoken of, go and be evil spoken of with them; do not attempt to fare better than the rest of your Master’s servants, but take up Christ’s cross and follow him. Give yourselves first to Christ, and afterwards to us, or to some other Christian church, according to the will of God; and do this “straightway.” And whatever else appears to be the law of the house,-and the law of Christ’s house is very plainly written in the Gospels and the Epistles,-obey the law of the house, and obey it “straightway.”

Next, dear friends, make this word “straightway” your motto in entrance upon Christian service. Do you ask, “When should a believer begin to work for Christ?” I answer, “Straightway.” There are no labourers for the Master who are so useful as those who begin to be useful while they are young. Sometimes, God converts men in middle life, or even in old age, and uses them in his service; but, still, I venture to assert that church history will show that the most useful servants of Christ were those who were caught early, and who from their youth up bore testimony to the gospel of Christ. At any rate, as soon as ever you are converted, I pray you to begin to do something for Jesus so as to get your hand in for future labour. In the case of some old people, who have been professors of religion for years, but who have done next to nothing for Christ, I find it very difficult ever to stir them up at all. When I do get a saddle on them, they are very restive creatures, like a horse that has never been broken in; but if I break them in while they are colts, they get used to their work, it becomes a delight to them, and they would not be happy unless they had something to do for the Lord Jesus. If Christ has redeemed you, beloved, and you know it, get to his service “straightway.” Let there be no delay whatever, but at once commence to labour for your Lord.

I remember having a considerable share of sneers, and rebukes not a few, from some who thought themselves very wise men, because I began preaching at the age of sixteen. I was recommended to tarry at Jericho till my beard had grown, and a great many other pieces of advice were given to me; but I confess that I have never regretted that I was a “boy-preacher” of the Word; and if I could have my time over again, I would like to do just the same as I did then. O you young men who are just converted, try to serve God at once; for, if you idle away your years until the boy has ripened into a full-grown man, and his beard adorns his chin, I question whether he will not be “a lazy-beard” all the rest of his life. No, no; get to work at once,-“straightway.” Find out your niche, and stand in it. Ask the Master to allot you your portion of the great harvest field, and go to work in it with all your might, and keep on at it, God helping you, till your dying day. “Straightway,” then, is to be your motto concerning the service of the Master.

And while I give this motto for the commencement of our whole lifework, I beg to propose it to all Christian friends as a suitable motto for each work as it arises. If there is anything good to be done, when shall I do it? “Straightway.” There is no time like the present for the fulfilment of a good design. How many excellent projects have been postponed for a time, and therefore never carried out for the benefit of men! Now, dear friends, especially you who have your children around you, if you ask me, “When shall I commence to train them for God?” I answer, “Straightway.” “But they are so young.” Well, never mind how young they are, you will find bad tempers and many other evils springing up from the hearts of even the smallest children; and the time to repress them is as soon as ever they appear. You will find that Satan will take the earliest hour that he can find for doing his deadly work. He is always up in the morning early; and he will try, if he can, to sow the tares in that little plot of ground. Take you as early an hour as Satan takes, and ask God, by his grace, that you may teach your child the things of eternal life “straightway.” I would say to you, dear mother, if you have never talked with your daughter about her soul, do it this very night. “But,” you reply, “when I get home, she will be in bed.” If so, then wake her up, but do talk and pray with her to-night; and then let her fall asleep again; begin at once this holy service if you have neglected it until now. And you, dear father, if you have never yet spoken to your children personally about the Saviour, you cannot tell the power you might have over them if you would do so. I shall never forget when my father spoke to me, as a boy, about my soul, and asked me to pray. I remember with what shamefacedness I declined the attempt; and how wounded I felt, in my heart, to think that I was not able to pray. I had my groanings and cryings unto God in secret, but they were deepened and intensified by the question that he had put to me. O dear parents, do begin at once, that they may become God’s children while yet they are your children! A little boy once said, “Father, please take me to chapel with you to-night.” “My dear,” the father replied, “you are too young; I will take you when you grow older.” “Father,” answered the child, “if I don’t go now, very likely when I get older, I shall not want to go at all.” And, alas! that is often the case. Take them, therefore, while they are yet little, where they may get a benefit to their souls, and “bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

Then, with regard to any individuals with whom you may meet, take care to speak to them about the Saviour. If you ask me when you shall speak to them, I answer, “Straightway,”-to-morrow morning, across the counter, or in the workshop, or whenever there is a quiet minute or two that you can use. Perhaps the friend, to whom you think of speaking, may be dead if you delay until the end of the week; so go to him “straightway,” There is a minister now preaching the gospel, and God is greatly blessing him, who says he owes his earnestness to a remark I made in a certain College that I visited. I was asked, as we say, “on the spur of the moment,” to speak a word to the students, and I said, “Well, brethren, I have nothing to say to you except this,-whenever you see the devil, have a shot at him.” The young man told me that he recollected that sentence, and it had often been of service to him. So I say it again to every Christian here,-Whenever you see the devil, have a shot at him. If you see sin, rebuke it. If you see doubt, try to remove it. If you see darkness, bring the light to bear upon it, and do it “straightway,” for opportunities are flying, and will soon be gone unless we seize them as they come near us. There is a lamentable story told of a man in a boat being carried down over a waterfall and drowned; and, an hour after, one who had been standing with others on the shore said, “I could have saved him if I had thought of it before.” They asked him, “How would you have done it?” And he laid before them a perfectly feasible common-sense plan that might have been easily carried out, and, I should think, he went home very miserable, for all the spectators of the disaster seemed to say, “Why did you not think of it before? You are wise too late.” So, when certain men have died, I think some of you must have known what it was to say, “Oh, I wish I had spoken to him! That gospel, which saved me, might have been a blessing to him; and now he is gone, and I have thought of the remedy too late!” Do not let it be possible to have such regrets; but, whenever you find an opportunity of speaking about salvation to others, do it “straightway.”

And, once again, let this word “straightway” be your motto with regard to your own soul. Whenever you find your spiritual life declining, your faith growing weak, and your love getting cold, go back to Jesus, and ask for quickening, and do it “straightway.” Always nip these things in the bud. Most diseases must have the remedies applied at once if they are to be cured. If they are allowed to remain for a time unchecked, they gather strength, to the great injury of the patient. The moment you feel that you have not the power in prayer that you once had, go “straightway” to Jesus. The instant you realize that you have not the love for souls that you once had, hie away to Jesus, and tell him all about your sad condition. Oh, if we always took heed to our backsliding as soon as it began, how much of sorrow and how much of sin might be spared! So, dear friends, if I am describing your case, I implore you to renew your communion with your Lord, get back to Christ, ask for pardon at his hands, and do all this “straightway.”

Dear Christian men and women, that is the motto-word for you,-“straightway.” Let it flame like a lightning flash through the place. Whatever ought to be done, let it be done at once, without even a second thought. O beloved, will you still delay in such a matter of urgency as this? Then let me further plead with you for a minute or two before I turn to the other part of my subject. Imagine the day of battle, and a colonel issuing the order to his regiment to march into the midst of the fray. Do the men hesitate? Do they stand still? Then, there is mutiny in the ranks. “Forward!” he shouts; but the troops stop where they are. They are disloyal; how can the battle be won by men who act like that? But see how the faithful soldiers in the army behave. The command is given, “Charge!” It matters not how many are their foes, away they go like a whirlwind; who can hinder them? Let it be so with you, dear friends. Good soldiers of Jesus Christ must not hesitate, but must obey the Captain of their salvation “straightway.” Have you a vivid imagination? Can you, in your mind’s eye, picture an angel up yonder before the burning throne of God? The voice of Jehovah has said to him, “Descend to earth.” Can you imagine Gabriel staying there, with his finger on his lip, deliberating whether he shall fly or not? Do you not often ask that you may do God’s will on earth as angels do it in heaven? Then, how can you hesitate, even for an instant, to do what you are clearly commanded by Christ to do? Let me ask you another question,-Did Christ delay his great mission of mercy? Nay; for it was with him as good Dr. Watts sings,-

“Plunged in a gulf of dark despair

We wretched sinners lay,

Without one cheerful beam of hope,

Or spark of glimmering day.

“With pitying eyes, the Prince of Grace

Beheld our helpless grief;

He saw, and (oh amazing love!)

He ran to our relief.

“Down from the shining seats above

With joyful haste he fled,

Enter’d the grave in mortal flesh,

And dwelt among the dead.”

There was no hesitating in Christ; then, shall there be any in you who are called by his name? Further, did God lose any time before he saved you when you cried unto him? Does he delay to bless you now? If there be a seeming delay, it is infinite wisdom that makes you wait, only that the blessing may be all the more valued by you when it comes; but he is always ready to bless you, he stands prepared to give you all that you need. I charge you, therefore, by all these reasons, take this word “straightway” as your motto. You are yourself a dying man; and if you do not accomplish your life-work “straightway,” when can you perform it? Others are dying all around you; if you are not made a blessing to them “straightway,” when may you hope to do them good? If anything be right, let it be done at once; there cannot be a good reason for any delay. Why should you ask for second thoughts about a plain duty? In such a case, first thoughts are best; and those first thoughts should be followed by immediate and energetic action. “Straightway!” Write it on your banners; let it wave in the breeze; for victory will be given to the Church of Christ when she advances to the fight with all her hosts “straightway.”

Now I ask the prayers of all believers while, during the rest of my discourse, I try to speak to those who are “out of the way.” In this large congregation, there must be many who are not saved. It is idle to suppose that we are all of us the children of God and the servants of Christ, for we are not. There are some here who are not saved; but among them there are, I hope, some who wish to be saved. Well, if you really desire to be Christians, if the Holy Spirit has made you start seeking the Saviour, I ask you to put this word into your bosom, and bear it home with you, “straightway,” for it is a most suitable motto for all seekers.

Are you seeking the Lord? Then, I pray you, hear the gospel “straightway.” The gospel is not preached everywhere. Some go to certain places of worship because the music is admirable, others because the preacher is clever, some because it is considered “respectable” to go to such a place. I charge you, if you have not found Christ, care for nothing but finding him; and where will you find him except where he is fully and faithfully preached? If he is the head and front of the minister’s discourses, then go you there;-not where they preach the modern gospel, which would not save a mouse;-but where Christ on the cross is lifted high as the one hope for the salvation of sinners. Go there, go at once, and make a habit of going where Christ crucified is constantly proclaimed. Remember how the Lord gave the invitation to the heavenly feast even by the mouth of the prophet Isaiah: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.”

But when you are hearing the gospel, be not content with merely hearing, but repent “straightway.” You cannot have Christ and keep your sins; therefore, give up all evil at once. May God’s blessed Spirit now separate you from your sins! Have you been inclined to drunkenness? Turn the intoxicating cup bottom upwards once for all, and have done with it. What has been your particular besetting sin? Though it were dear as your right eye, pluck it out; though it were precious as your right arm, cut it off, and cast it from you; and do it “straightway.” “Oh!” you say, “I will see about it to-morrow.” Then, I know that God’s Spirit is not effectually calling you, or you would be ready at once to turn from every false way to him, and then the time of your deliverance would have come. Therefore, I repeat,-Repent “straightway.”

But then you must also pray “straightway.” Plead with the Lord just where you are now in your seat; or, if you desire quiet and retirement, pray as soon as ever you reach your house,-yea, pray in the street, on the road home. Lift up your heart to God, and cry, “God be merciful to me a sinner;” but do it at once, or, as the text says, “straightway.”

Above all, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ “straightway.” That word “straightway” is implied in every gospel exhortation. We are not sent to preach to our hearers, “ ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ’ to-morrow.” No minister of Christ is authorized to say, “Put off faith in Christ for a week.” No; but our message is, “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” Believe in Jesus, and believe in him now; and if the Spirit of God is really working in your spirit, you will be moved to believe now. If it be only my talk, and my persuasion, you will still say, “To morrow.” But if it be God’s Word, it will go with power to your heart, and you will say, “Now, Lord, even now, bring my soul out of prison, that I may trust thy Son, and praise thy holy name.” For a man to delay, who has nothing to depend upon but the breath in his nostrils, is the height of folly. For a man to delay, who stands on the brink of the grave, when that grave will conduct him to hell, is terrible indeed.

Delay is dangerous, but I confess that I do not understand men and their criminal carelessness. I daresay you read in the papers, a short time ago, about the destruction of the Swiss village of Elm. What an extraordinary affair it was, that the people should have had it reported to them, for months, that the forest which overhung the village was often seen to tremble when the rocks were blasted at the quarry, and they knew that, sooner or later, the mountain above them would inevitably come down and crush them! Yet they went to church on the Sunday morning, and were gathered together as comfortably and quietly as if nothing alarming could ever happen to them. Many of you, no doubt, remember the story, and therefore I need not tell you how, on a sudden, the great forest above the village seemed to come down upon them; and when stalwart men from the upper end of the village hurried to help their fellow-countrymen, they had scarcely arrived before the mountain itself descended in one tremendous mass, and buried the whole village in a moment. The people knew that such a calamity as that would certainly happen; they had been warned of it again and again, yet they persisted in living there. I do not know how men could get so accustomed to impending danger as they did, and I must blame the foolhardiness of those who wilfully ran such a risk of destruction; but it is nothing compared with the madness of men and women who see the great mountain of divine wrath trembling, and about to fall upon them, to crush them to all eternity, and yet they go on with their games, and occupy themselves with their sports, just as if there were no God to judge them, no heaven to be sought, no hell to be shunned. They sin as if iniquity were mere child’s play, and there were no punishment for it in the world to come. Delay is dangerous at all times; but I feel moved to say that it is specially dangerous for some of you just now; for, as the Lord liveth, unless you find salvation within another week, you will be in the world where it shall be impossible for you either to seek or to find it. If not saved soon, you will be lost for ever. Delay is dangerous; therefore, escape for your lives; and escape at once.

Besides, delay will be a great loss to you. If I were unsaved at this moment, and in my right senses, I should wish to be saved here and now. I do not know what has been done with the two men who have been lying in prison for the last two years under what is believed to be a false accusation. We heard that the Home Secretary had fetched them up from Chatham to Pentonville or Millbank, and that they were brought up in their own clothes, with a view to setting them free to-morrow; but I warrant you, if I had been in their position, and had been asked, “Would you prefer to be set at liberty on Saturday, or to wait till Monday?” I would have said, “Oh, set me free at once, straightway!” Any delay would be to my loss. Who wants to stop in prison on a Sunday when he can walk at large? Who wishes to be there five minutes longer than he is compelled to be? And, in like manner, who would be unconverted five minutes longer than he needs to be? It is a loss to a man to be unsaved; even if he is ultimately saved, all the time that went before his conversion is just so long spent in prison; it is dead time, lost time. Therefore, let there be no delay in trusting Christ, for all delay is a loss.

And, besides, delay makes it more difficult to get into the way of life. A person, on a certain line of railway, wants to go North, but he gets into the wrong train, and therefore travels South. After he has gone a little way, he puts his head out, and says, “This is not the station that I ought to pass;” and, as the porters cry out a name altogether different from what he expected to hear, he exclaims, “Why, I am in the wrong train!” What does he do then? Go on, and say, “Well, I will get out by-and-by”? Not he; if he is a man of business, and wants to keep an appointment, he jumps out at the first station after he discovers his mistake, and he says, “Tell me, please, when there is a train back. I have evidently come South instead of going North, and I want to return as quickly as possible.” My dear friends, some of you are travelling on the wrong line, and you have come to a station to-night; it is not a station where you ought to be. Do not, I entreat you, go on to another in the same direction; but I pray God, by his grace, that you may get out of the train in which you have been travelling on the down line, and say, “Which is the train for heaven? I must get into it somewhere;-first class, second class, third class, or in the goods waggon;-I do not care where I go so long as I do but get in, for I have made a mistake hitherto, and I would not continue to make it, for the longer I remain as I am, the more difficult will it be for me to get right.”

Do you not also know, dear friends, that every moment in which a man delays he is committing more sin? When I am not doing that which is right, I sin by omission. When a man neglects a duty for a week, how many times does he sin? “Once,” you answer. Ah, no! It is his duty to do it now; but he has not done it, so that is sin. It will be equally his duty in five minutes’ time, and every moment he puts it off, he keeps on committing sin upon sin the longer he delays. Have you never heard the legend of one who had often delayed his repentance till he was taken into a wood, where he saw an old man chopping sticks for his fire; he cut away till he had enough to make a great faggot, and then he tied the faggot up, and stooped to put it on his shoulders, but it was too heavy for him to lift. The old man sighed, and took his axe, and cut down some more branches, and added them to his bundle; but when he tried to take it up, of course it was still heavier than before. So the foolish old man, with many a sigh, went on cutting more wood, and put that on the heap, and then tried to lift it, but of course it was heavier still; and the longer he delayed, the heavier the burden became. That is just your case, dear friends, if you are delaying to repent.

“Longer wisdom you despise,

Harder is she to be won.”

There is all the more sin to be repented of, there is the more hardness of heart to be overcome, so you are adding to the difficulty every moment that you delay. “Grandfather,” said a little child, “the preacher talked about loving Jesus; do you love him?” “No, child,” said the old man; “I have never thought of these things; but I hope that you will while your heart is tender.” “But, grandfather, you will die soon; won’t you love Jesus?” “No, child,” replied the old man, “my heart is too hard now; it is no use for me to think about it.” Many a man has said that; it is a great mistake, for the Lord can soften the hardest heart, and bring the oldest man or woman to himself. Still, there is great force in the grandfather’s words, and it is a blessed thing when we begin to serve the Lord betimes, for there is a hardening process, that goes on every hour of delay, which I pray God, of his infinite mercy, to prevent by bringing every one of you to Jesus Christ “straightway.”

Shall I tell you one thing more before I finish? It is this; whenever a man will not have Christ “straightway,” whenever he will not give up his sin “straightway,” whenever he will not believe in Jesus “straightway,” that is a roundabout method of saying “No” to Christ. The father in the parable said to the son, “Go, work to-day in my vineyard,” and he replied, “I go, sir.” That is to say, “I am going, sir; I mean to go. Give me just a little time to think it over; it is all right, sir; I will go.” But how does the parable put it? “He said, I go, sir; and went not.” It was an indirect way of saying that, after all, he did not mean to go. Alas! that is what I fear some of you will do to-night. You will say, “Yes; what the preacher says is quite correct. We should seek Christ, and plead for mercy; and we will do so-by-and-by,-soon,-not immediately. Of course, we cannot be in a hurry about these things; but we will attend to them some day.” I tell you, sirs, plainly, that you will not; you are the sort of people who will not come to Christ. You have not the moral courage to say “No,” but you mean “No” all the while, and if you said “No,” I should have more hope of you, for the rest of the parable runs thus:-“He said to the other son, Go, work to-day in my vineyard; and he said, I will not.” That was pretty plain: “but afterwards he repented, and went.” Now, I would rather have you say, “I will not,” and then afterwards go home and repent, and come to Christ, than I would have you beat about the bush, and say, “Oh, yes, yes, yes!” thinking that you are complimenting Christ with your lying,-I dare not use a milder term. That “yes, yes, yes,” means that you will not. Have you never noticed, when you have been collecting subscriptions, if you go to a person who does not say “No,” straight out, but says, “Well, let me look at your list;-yes what is the object of it?” that he usually adds, “I have many calls; I will think of it”? I have known such people “think of it” a very long while, but nothing ever came of all their thinking. You smile at what people do with regard to a subscription list,-and it is, in some respects, a thing to smile over; but beware lest you do the same with your soul. Do not, I pray you, act like that towards the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not merely think about it, but do it. Go straight away to him, and think of it afterwards; and you will then have to think, with joy and delight, that the best day’s work his grace ever enabled you to do was this getting away to Christ, and casting yourself on him.

God bless you, dear friends! May we all meet in heaven, through Jesus Christ our Lord! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

MATTHEW 25:1-13

Verses 1, 2. Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.

What a division this makes in the visible Church of God! Let us hope that we are not to gather from this that as many as half the professors of Christianity at any time are like these foolish virgins; yet our Lord would not have mentioned so high a proportion if there were not a very large admixture of foolish with the wise: “Five of them were wise, and five were foolish.”

3. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them:

They thought that, if they had the external, it would be quite enough. The secret store of oil, they judged to be unnecessary, because it would be unseen. They would employ one hand in carrying the lamp, but to occupy the other hand by holding the oil-flask seemed to them to be doing too much,-giving themselves up too thoroughly to the work; so they “took their lamps, and took no oil with them.” They might just as well have had no lamps at all.

4. But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.

Oil in their lamps, and oil with their lamps. Lamps are of no use without oil; yet the oil needs the lamp, or else it cannot be rightly used. The light of profession cannot be truly sustained without the oil of grace. Grace, wherever it exists, ought to show itself, as the oil is made to burn by means of the lamp; but it is no use to attempt to make a show unless there is that secret store somewhere by which the external part of religion may be maintained.

5. While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.

Both the wise and the foolish fell into a state which seemed alike in them both. In the case of good men, Christ’s delaying his coming often causes disappointment, weariness, and then lethargy, and even the true Church falls into a deep slumber. In the foolish, the mere professors, this condition goes much further. There being in them no true life, the very name to live becomes abandoned, and before long, they give up even the profession of religion when there is no secret oil of grace to sustain it.

6. And at midnight-

When things had come to the worst,-“at midnight”-the coldest and darkest hour, when everybody was asleep.

6. There was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.

That was a cry which startled everybody; none of the virgins could sleep when once it was announced that the bridegroom was coming. I wish, dear friends, that we thought more of the great truth of the Second Advent. The oftener it is preached, in due proportion with other truths, the better. We need still to hear that midnight cry, “Go ye out to meet him.”

7. Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.

They could not sleep any longer; they were fairly startled and aroused.

8. And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil;-

Ah, me! now they began to value what they had aforetime despised. They were foolish enough to think that oil was unnecessary; but now they saw that it was the one essential thing, so they cried to the wise virgins, “Give us of your oil.” And hear the dreadful reason:-

8. For our lamps are gone out.

I do not know any more terrible words than those, “Our lamps are gone out.” It is worse to have a lamp that has gone out than never to have had a lamp at all. “ ‘Our lamps are gone out.’ We once rejoiced in them. We promised ourselves a bright future. We said, ‘All is well for the marriage supper.’ But ‘our lamps are gone out,’ and we have no oil with which to replenish them.” O sirs, may none of us ever have to lift up that mournful cry! On a dying bed, in the extremity of pain, in the depth of human weakness, it is an awful thing to find one’s profession burning low, one’s hope of heaven going out, like the snuff of a candle.

9. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.

It is no easy matter to go and rouse up the seller of oil when the midnight hour has struck. O you who are putting off repentance to a dying bed, you are foolish virgins indeed! Your folly has reached the utmost height. You will have more than enough to do, when you lie there with the death-sweat cold upon your brow, without then having to seek the grace which you are neglecting to obtain to-day, but which you will value then.

10. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came;-

While they were going.

10, 11. And they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.

Too late, so that they could not enter.

12. But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.

“I never knew you,” says Christ in another place; and this knowledge of his is always bound up with affection. He loves no heart that he knows not in this sense. Those whom he knows, he loves. Will he ever say to me or to you, dear friend, “I know you not”? God grant that he never may have cause to do so!

13. Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-416, 520, 492.