Paul thus describes himself. It was necessary that Paul, as an apostle, should have seen the Lord. He was not converted at the time of Christ’s ascension; yet he was made an apostle, for the Lord Jesus appeared to him in the way, as he was going to Damascus, to persecute the saints of God. When he looked upon himself as thus put in, as it were, at the end of the apostles, he spoke of himself in the most depreciating terms, calling himself “one born out of due time.”

Those who are acquainted with the Greek tongue know what a despicable term Paul here applied to himself,-as though he was scarcely a man at all,-at any rate, as the very last of the family, “born out of due time;” and not only the last, but also the very least, for he says, “I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” Scholars will know why I cannot exactly explain the word which Paul uses, but rather keep to the rendering of our translation, which, although it may not have the force and full meaning of the Greek expression, is perhaps none the less useful for public reading: “One born out of due time.”

Paul thought very humbly of himself; he reckoned himself less than nothing, put himself down at the very lowest estimate, and mentioned that he was brought to Christ, and made an apostle, when the time for such a work was apparently over. Out of date altogether, beyond the period when it might have been thought that another apostle would be called of God, there was he found as “one born out of due time.”

My subject to-night is, first, the singular time of Paul’s spiritual birth. There are many of God’s true children who, like the apostle, were “born out of due time.” When I have expatiated upon that fact, I shall speak of the sure evidences of his spiritual birth, and show you that, although “born out of due time,” he was born, and there were sure evidences of his spiritual birth, which evidences, I trust, may be seen in many of us also.

First, then, let us think of the singular time of Paul’s spiritual birth.

There are still some who, like the apostle, are born to God “out of due time.” They are truly born again, regenerated, converted, at a most unlikely season. There have been multitudes brought to Christ, under earnest sermons, when the appeals of faithful men have thrilled the congregation, and the truth has been effectually carried home to the hearts of many of the hearers. But there have also been times when God’s ministers have waxed faint, when the sermon has appeared to be destitute of all force, when nobody has seemed to have felt the power of the discourse, and, apparently, the truth has fallen quite flat; yet, on many such occasions, there have been some sinners converted to God when we should hardly have thought it to be possible. Mr. Tennant, a famous American minister of Whitefield’s time, one of the most earnest and seraphic men who ever proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ, had a hearer, who remained unmoved under many a score of his most faithful sermons. Others were saved, but not this man; he seemed unmoved and immovable; but it came to pass, on a certain Sabbath, that a very unusual thing happened. Mr. Tennant had prepared his sermon with great care, it was what we are wont to call a laborious discourse, into which he had put all the thought and all the pains possible; but he had not been preaching long before his memory completely failed him, his mind refused to work, and, after floundering about for a while, he was obliged to sit down in great confusion, and say that he could not preach to the people that day. The man I have mentioned, who had never before been impressed under Mr. Tennant’s ministry, was that day called by sovereign grace, as “one born out of due time,” for he was led to set that there was a spiritual and supernatural force which had usually helped the pastor to preach, and that, when this divine influence was withdrawn, he was as weak as other men, and could not speak with power, as he had been accustomed to do. This truth, somehow or other,-for human minds are strangely constituted, and things, which have no effect upon certain people, very greatly affect others who are present at the same time;-this truth, I say, induced the man to think; thinking, he was led to believe in God, and to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of his soul. He was, without doubt, one “born out of due time.”

I would like to break down, as Mr. Tennant did, if some of you would be born to God by that means I would rather be dumb, and win a soul for Jesus, than speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and yet men’s hearts should not be impressed by the truth I proclaimed. How often I have found that, when I have gone home, and sighed, and cried, and groaned over a discourse in which I felt no liberty, but thought it was an utter failure, it has afterwards been proved that, here one, and there another, have come forward blessing and praising God for that very testimony, which seemed to me so faulty and feeble, but which the Spirit of the Lord has savingly impressed upon them. So, still, there are some who, in this way, are “born out of due time,” through the Holy Spirit’s use even of the preacher’s weakness and apparent failure.

Another illustration may be taken from the opposite side of the same truth. Some are converted when they seem themselves to be in a state of mind in which they are the most unlikely to be impressible. I remember being in Dr. John Campbell’s house, one day, when he told me that a minister was preaching at Whitefield’s old Tabernacle in Moorfields, one evening, when there were present, under very strange circumstances, two young men who had fallen into dissipated habits, and who had made an appointment with each other for the commission of some gross sin that very night. Had they committed what they had planned, it may be that they would have plunged themselves into a career of vice from which they might never have been extricated. They were passing by the Moorfields Tabernacle, which some of you remember, and as they wanted to know the time at which they were to meet for this unholy purpose, one of them said to the other, “Go in, and see the time; there is sure to be a clock in there.” But the clock was not fixed as it is here, at the back of the preacher, but the other way; so the young man had to go some little distance further in than he intended, in order to see the clock. If I remember rightly, the preacher that night was Matthew Wilks, and he was just uttering some quaint remark, something that arrested the young man’s attention, and held him fast in the aisle. His companion waited outside for a time, but it was cold, so he thought he had better go in, and look at the clock himself, and fetch his friend out. He went in; the arrows of the Lord pierced the heart of both of them, and the second of those young men was John Williams, the famous missionary, and at last the martyr of Erromanga. Thus, they also were “born out of due time.” You would not have thought it possible that those men should become, as they did, preachers of the gospel, when they were, at that very time, desperately set on the commission of a great sin against God, and their hearts were wholly given up to the pleasures and follies of this world; but so it happened, and our Lord still knows how to stop men as he stopped Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. He is the man who says that he was “born out of due time;” and he is a wonderful instance of this method of divine interposition. He has in his possession the letters from the high priest which will enable him to bind the saints, and carry them off to Jerusalem; he is riding towards Damascus, and is within sight of the city when, in the very midst of his high-handed course of persecution, the Lord Jesus Christ himself intervenes, and smites him down to the ground. Presently, he rises to pray, and, in his three days’ blindness and fasting, to seek the Lord, and then to find him, to the salvation of his soul and the joy of his spirit, and thus to become an apostle of that very Saviour whom, in his ignorance, he had been persecuting. After such a triumph of divine grace, let us never despair of any sinner, however far he may have gone into sin. You know how Paul, writing to Timothy, said of himself, “For this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.” The God who blessed the broken sermon of Mr. Tennant can bless our imperfect work in the pulpit, the Sunday-school, or anywhere else; and the God who saved such men as John Williams and his companion, when they least thought of such a thing happening, can also save some who have strayed in here to-night, little dreaming what designs of love God has toward them in bringing them at this time under the sound of the Word.

I consider, next, that a convert may be described as one “born out of due time” when he is brought to Christ after some great revival or notable religious movement has come to an end. There are some of you who attended the recent special services conducted here by Messrs. Fullerton and Smith. What power there was in those hallowed gatherings! Some of your neighbours wept under conviction of sin; but you did not. Some of them came to Christ, and are now rejoicing in him; but you did not come to him. You were not even impressed during the meetings, though, possibly, you wished to be; or it may be that you began with a desire after better things, but you ended in indifference. And now the special services are all over, and the good men who came amongst us to preach and sing the gospel are gone, and you have been saying to yourselves, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” Ah! but our Lord has a blessed way of picking up the stragglers behind the army. When the main body has marched on, with sound of trumpet, praising God, there are a few left behind; and the Lord Jesus sometimes comes, and picks them up. I do earnestly pray that some of you may be thus picked up by him just now, so that you may be able to say, “We were not born for God when many others were; like Saul of Tarsus, we were ‘born out of due time;’ but, blessed be God, we were born again by the effectual working of his Spirit, we were brought to Christ, to the praise of the glory of his grace, and now we also have become children of God by faith in Jesus Christ.” Pray that it may be so, dear friends. O you Christian people, bow your hearts before God, and ask that it may be so! Perhaps the very fact that those services are over, and that a gracious opportunity has gone, may be impressed upon the minds of some who were present during the meetings, but who were not converted, and they may now seek the Saviour, and find him to their everlasting salvation and happiness.

The Lord can bless strange methods to the awakening of the ungodly. When Puritanism seemed to be trodden under foot, in the reign of James I., and the king issued the Book of Sports, and gave commandment that every clergyman was to read from the pulpit, on Sunday, that it was the royal will and pleasure that the young people should play at football, cricket, and other games and pastimes on the Lord’s-day afternoon, godly ministers, who really loved the Lord, did not know what to do. One of them thought, perhaps, it would be well to do as the king ordered, and to say something beside, so, when the Sunday came for reading the Book of Sports to the people, he said, “I am commanded by the king and the authorities to read to you the following document; but it grieves my heart and conscience to have to read it. I know it is wicked, and wrong, and shameful, and abominable to desecrate the Sabbath as you are invited to do, and I wonder what will become of my country when even from the church itself Sabbath-breaking is recommended.” So the good man spoke, to the relief of his own conscience, and in hope of arousing the consciences of others. It happened that there was in the congregation, that day, a young man who had always been a ringleader in the Sabbath sports; he was no sooner out of church, in the morning, than he was on the village green, fast and furious in all the amusements of the time; but, when he heard that Book of Sports read, he said to himself, “Well, I acted in that way on my own account, and it was wrong enough for me to do so; but now I say, with the minister, ‘What is to become of all the country if everybody is to be as bad as I have been? What will happen to the nation if this kind of thing is to go on?’ ” The thought struck him so forcibly that he became first a serious character, and then a true seeker after God, and afterwards a genuine believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. So it came to pass that, when the devil thought he was going to have everything his own way, that very day, this young man was born to God,-truly, “born out of due time.”

I recollect reading a very striking saying of Mr. Bunyan’s. He said he had good reason to believe that, in the generation after him, there would be many more saints than in the one of which he formed a part, and his belief was based upon the fact that, wherever he went, he found that there were so many great sinners that he hoped they would be converted, and become eminent servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, there was a blessed truth at the back of that hope of his; for, very often, where sin has abounded, grace does much more abound; and when the Word of God seems to grow scarce, and the candle of the gospel burns but dimly, we may pray and expect that even then, some may be “born out of due time” to the praise of the glory of that grace which saves as it wills, and often selects the very chief of sinners to be the subjects of its almighty power.

There have been some dear friends, who may be said to have been “born out of due time,” for they have been converted to God after it seemed impossible that they ever should be. I recollect well reading of one who imbibed sceptical notions, and became exceedingly furious against the preaching of the Word. One day, in Edinburgh, he heard it said that a certain eminent minister of the gospel intended, if he met him, to speak with him about his soul; whereupon the man uttered some very strong expressions, and, amongst other wicked things, he said, “I shall never be converted unless I lose my senses.” All who were acquainted with him, and who knew how desperately he was set against the gospel, thought that his was indeed a hopeless case; but, in the infinite mercy of God, it turned out to be quite the opposite. He began to suffer from great incoherence of thought, his mind gradually wandered, when he was trying to speak, he often spoke utter nonsense. He became unfit for business, and had to be put into the custody of someone who watched him as his keeper. Reason was not actually gone, but it was reeling upon its throne; and while he was in that sad state, the case of Nebuchadnezzar came to his mind, and he wondered whether God had given him up, altogether, on account of what he had said,-that he would never be converted while he was in his senses. He turned his mind, all shipwrecked and battered as it was, towards God; and out of the depths of his half-bewildered spirit, he cried unto the Lord as Nebuchadnezzar did, and his mind returned to him, and he became a humble, gentle, holy believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you not think, dear friends, that he also was “one born out of due time”? The time of salvation seemed utterly past so far as he was concerned. He had made a covenant with death, and a league with hell; he had cast off those ordinary beliefs which many men hold even though they do not obey them; yet, notwithstanding all that, the surprising grace of God dealt with him after its own sovereign manner, and laid him low, that it might bring him up again. I do not pray that such a thing may happen to anybody here; but I do pray that God may bring you to Christ somehow, and anyhow; and if, in order to attain that end, you have to be driven to the very gates of hell,-so long as you do not actually pass through them,-I will rejoice if, afterwards, you are led to flee to Christ for refuge.

Another instance of “one born out of due time” occurs in the case of one converted after the spiritual father is dead. We sometimes see posthumous children, that is, those who are born after the father is deceased; and there is generally much sorrow mingled with the thought of such births, for the poor widow’s heart is doubly troubled by the extra care needed for the little stranger who arrives after the bread-winner of the family is taken away. But if a man is the means of bringing another to Christ after he himself is dead, there need be no sorrow about that matter. There have been many, many instances, in which earnest Christian people have sought the conversion of their relatives or friends; they have prayed for them, and wept over them, and pleaded with them, but all their efforts have been unsuccessful; yet, after their death, the memory of their holy zeal has touched the conscience of the one who would not yield before, and brought him to Christ. I wish, dear friends, that your godly mother, who is in heaven, and who died leaving her son unsaved, might seem to come to you just now. I ask for no apparition, but that she may be consciously present to your mind, and that her dying words may ring in your ear, for perhaps the remembrance of what she said may be blessed to you even now. When I am taken away, I can but wish that any true and faithful word that I have spoken may still continue to speak to you from my grave. When good Mr. Payson died, he begged that his people might come and see him, if they wished, before he was interred; and those who did so read these words on his bosom, “Remember the word which I have spoken unto you being yet present with you.” It was thus his desire, you see, that he should have posthumous spiritual children, that they should be born to God even though they should seem to be “born out of due time.” Ah! you wives, who have been praying for your husbands these many years, never give them up, because they may be brought to Christ when you yourselves will be in heaven. Mothers and fathers, never cease pleading for your children, for they, too, may be brought to Jesus when you are among the angels. Up in one of the northern counties of England, there was a woman, a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, whose prayer went up continually for her husband; but he never entered the house of God, and despised her for doing so. She was accustomed to go to her usual place of worship alone, so far as any human companions were concerned, yet she was not quite alone, for there was a dog that always went with her. This dog curled himself up under the seat, and lay quite still during the service, and then walked home with his mistress. The first Sunday after she was dead, the poor dog went off to the meeting-house as usual, and curled himself up in his old place. He did the same the next Sunday, and the husband, noticing the dog start out so regularly, was struck by its action, and wondered where the dog went now that his mistress was gone; so he thought he would go and see. The dog went before him to his mistress’s old seat, and curled himself up; the man went in after the dog, and sat down in his wife’s place, and God helped the minister, that day, to show him that his good works and self-righteousness, in which he had always trusted, would not be sufficient for his salvation, and he preached to him the full salvation of Christ Jesus, and the man believed and lived. Was not he also “born out of due time,” for his wife’s prayers for him were all over, and she was gone? Yet was he brought to Christ.

The subject is one upon which I might enlarge indefinitely, but I would rather leave you to supply further instances of similar blessing, by urging you to persevere in prayer, you who are seeking the salvation of others.

Some have been “born out of due time” because they have been converted to God in extreme old age. I should like to encourage any very aged person who is here, and still unsaved, and to drive away altogether the notion that it is too late to seek the Lord. It never is too late so long as life lasts, and there is the power to repent of sin and to turn to the Lord.

“While the lamp holds out to burn,

The vilest sinner may return.”

I will not quote cases, but I have a vivid recollection of a good many persons who have been saved at the age of seventy or eighty. We have had persons, past both of those periods, baptized upon profession of their newly-found faith. The world’s proverb says, “It is never too late to mend.” but Christ would tell you, if he were here in bodily presence, that it is never too late for him to mend you, or rather, for him to make you anew, for that is the work he undertakes to do. It is never too late for him to stretch out his pierced hand, and help the man, who is tottering on his staff, to become a babe in Christ. Yet, surely when very old men are born again, they seem to be “born out of due time.”

Many of you have not yet come to old age, yet, if God should save you to-night, you would be as those who are “born out of due time,” because you are on the very brink of the grave. Consumption has laid its cruel hand upon you, and pulled down all your strength. In all probability, you will not be long in this world. You have come out to-night, but you are half-afraid that you have done wrong in coming in the state you are in, with that terrible cough that you have; yet you have not found the Saviour. O my dear young friend, wherever you may be, it is a sad, sad thing to be carrying about with you your death-warrant, as you certainly are doing, and yet to have no warrant to believe that, when you die, it will be well with you! Oh, I pray you, do not let Satan tempt you with the idea that, now, when sickness is upon you, there is no hope for you! Come to Jesus, however consumptive you look. Come to Jesus, young man, with that chest that scarcely allows you to breathe. Come unto him, for he will not cast you away. I remember one, whom I met at Mentone, who had gone there in the hope of lengthening his life; but that was quite out of the question, for he was too far gone when he came. He had two sisters, who were sent for to come to him, for it was certain that he could not live long. He himself was under deep concern of soul, earnestly seeking the Lord, but he could not find him. Day after day, week after week, he had been getting worse and worse, and showing all the signs of his approaching departure; but he could not find peace with God. At last, his sisters came from England. They arrived just in time. They found him very anxious about his soul; that night, they spoke with him of Jesus, and in the morning, early, when they woke, they went to him, and he was sitting up in bed, all pale and ghostlike. He said, “Sisters, Christ has forgiven me;” and he fell back on his pillow, and he was gone home. There was an end of his suffering and weakness here below; but the consolation of that last word to them, and of the joy that beamed from his poor eyes, was enough to make them gladly commit his body to the tomb. “Sisters, Christ has forgiven me.” Ah! he was indeed “born out of due time,”-born between the very jaws of death; but death’s jaws could not close upon him till he had received forgiveness from his Saviour. I beseech any of you, who are in a similar condition to his, do not put off seeking the Lord, but hasten to find him even now.

Once more, there are some who are “born out of due time” because they are born all of a sudden. They suddenly come to Christ; they suddenly find peace; they are suddenly saved. I wish that might happen to some here to-night. There is no need of any set period for this all-important matter; time is no element in the case. God can work conviction and conversion in a single instant. You know that, sometimes, you see a flash of lightning, and then you wait several seconds before you hear the thunder; but when a storm is right overhead, the flash and the clap are simultaneous, and down comes the pouring rain at the same time. And, in like manner, the Lord knows how to send a flash of conviction, and, at the same instant, to make his deep voice of mercy to be heard in the soul, and to send the waterfloods of grace upon the spirit there and then. Why should he not do so to-night for any of you who need these blessings?

Now I will tell you the special reason why I chose this text; that is, because this is the 29th of February, and it is a Sunday. There is a large number of you who never saw a 29th of February on Sunday before, and there is a larger number still who will never see the 29th of February on a Sunday again. I suppose it will be eight-and-twenty years before that will occur again. So, this is a Sunday thrown in, as it were; it is an odd kind of day, an extra day in the calendar. If you ask our friends of the Greek Church, the Russians, they will tell you that there is not such a day at all, for they keep to the old system of reckoning time. This plan of putting in an odd day, every four years, to make our days square with the sun, is a very good and proper one; still, it is a kind of a day thrown in; and it seemed to me that if the Lord would convert some souls on this odd day in this leap year, it would make the 29th of February, that came on a Sunday, to be specially memorable. You will not forget it if it is the day of your conversion; you will say to your children, it may be, eight-and-twenty years hence, if you are alive, “Ah! I recollect when the 29th of February last came on a Sunday, and that was the day when I sought and found the Lord. Mr. Spurgeon said that I was like the apostle Paul, ‘one born out of due time,’ and so I was; yet I was born in due time, I know, according to the covenant of grace.” Oh, that the Lord, of his infinite mercy, having given us this special day, would now give us a special blessing, and bring many to himself this leap year! Oh, that all of you, who are still unsaved, would make a leap right out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son, his Holy Spirit enabling you so to do by a simple act of faith in Jesus Christ! And you Christian people, pray for a special and unusual blessing, a 29th of February blessing. Ask God to give it to us, in his infinite mercy, that many and many a soul may be “born out of due time” this very night.

Who shall it be? And where shall the work of repentance begin? Does not somebody over there say, “Lord, let it be me”? There is said to be a special opportunity of making proposals in leap year; but I can tell you, if you make a proposal to come to Christ, that he has long ago set his heart on you. You would never have thought of proposing to him if he had not first of all ordained to bring you to himself. If you come to him, he will receive you; and, oh! in his great mercy, may the Holy Spirit incline you to come to him this 29th of February that falls upon a Sunday.

Now I have only two or three minutes left for the second part of my subject,-the sure evidences of Paul’s spiritual birth.

Though Paul was, in a spiritual sense, “born out of due time,” he was truly born again; and those persons, who have been converted at singular times, and under strange circumstances, have been really converted. How do we know that Paul was born again, and that he was called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ?

I answer, first, because he had seen the Lord. After mentioning those who saw the risen Christ, he says, “Last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.” The first evidence that he was an apostle was that he had actually beheld the Lord. Now, in a spiritual sense, one of the marks of a true believer is that he has seen the Lord. My dear friend, if you have looked to Christ for forgiveness, even though you have only looked to him to-night, and this is an odd night,-the 29th of February, yet, if you have by faith seen Jesus on the cross, and truly trusted him, you are as much saved as the man is who believed in Christ fifty years ago. Looking to Jesus is the evidence that we are born again; and happy is everyone who can truthfully say, concerning Christ, “He was seen of me also.”

“I saw One hanging on a tree,

In agonies and blood.”

I looked to him; he looked on me; and we were one for ever. I trusted to him, and therefore I am saved. If you can say that from your heart, and the Holy Spirit bears witness that what you say is true, you need not raise any question about your new birth. If thou art trusting in Jesus, it is well with thy soul in time and to eternity.

The next evidence of his spiritual birth, which Paul gave, was that he confessed his sin. Read the verse following our text: “For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” See how he confessed his sin and forsook it. He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.” Are you, dear friend, willing now to confess your sin? Do you turn from it with loathing? Do you desire, henceforth, to be delivered entirely from it? Well, then, your repentance is another sure evidence that you are born again. If you have seen Jesus taking your sin upon himself, and suffering its dread penalty; if you have confessed your sin, and by faith laid it upon him as your Sacrifice and Substitute, you are born again, though you may have been, in a certain sense, “born out of due time.”

Next, we are sure that Paul was really born again because he was thoroughly converted. Never was there a greater change in any man than there was in him; he never went back to his former life, and he had no hankering to return to it. With him, old things had passed away, and all things had become new; he was, indeed, a new creature in Christ Jesus.

I am sure he was converted, also, because he praised the grace of God. Read the 10th verse: “By the grace of God I am what I am.” Even when he truthfully says, “I laboured more abundantly than they all;” he humbly adds, “yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” It is a sure sign of conversion when a man knows that he is saved by grace alone, and does not attribute it to his own merit, or his own work, but praises and adores the sovereign mercy and grace of God. Have you that evidence, dear friend? Then are you born aright, even though. “born out of due time.”

And, lastly, Paul proved that he was a true citizen of the New Jerusalem because he became, of all men, most zealous for Christ, zealous for the gospel, zealous for the winning of souls. He seemed to try to do all he could to undo the mischief he had wrought in the days of his unregeneracy, and to work with both his hands and all his heart to establish and extend the kingdom which once he tried to overthrow. O God, by thy great mercy, cause another Paul to be born in this house of prayer to-night! Thou canst do it; wilt thou not bring to thyself, by the power of the Eternal Spirit, some wild, threatening, blustering, blaspheming hater of Christ, lay him at the dear feet of the Crucified, and cause him to look up and live? Pray for this, dear Christian people. Pray for it to-night, when you reach your homes as well as now; and then we shall have special reason to recollect this 29th of February. Possibly, someone, who will in days to come stand on this very spot preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, will say to you, “Do you remember the 29th of February, 1880? Do you recollect the text, ‘One born out of due time’?” I trust that some of you will be here to hear him say, “I recollect it better than any of you do, for that was the night when I was born to God, glory be to his holy name!” Now pray for it with all your hearts, for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

JOHN 3:1-18

If you were sent for to visit a dying man, and you wished to select a chapter which would set the truth before him very briefly and very clearly, you could not make a better choice than this 3rd chapter of the Gospel according to John. So, as we are all dying men and women, let us read it with that same desire, and may the Holy Spirit apply it to our hearts as we read it!

Verses 1, 2. There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: the same came to Jesus by night,-

That was better than not coming at all. “Better late than never.” Better come to Christ in the dark than not come to him at all.

2. And said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.

This was good reasoning on the part of Nicodemus. If he did not at first go as far as he afterwards did, it argued well for him that he went as far as he could. O thou who art troubled with unbelief, believe as much as thou canst; and then cry, “Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief; and, especially, help me to get rid of it.” Confess to Christ what thou dost believe, and he will add more to thy belief.

3. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

He cannot understand what it is; he cannot know anything about it; he cannot see it.

4, 5. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

If the “water” mentioned here relates to baptism,-which I greatly question,-then, certainly, it shows the way of entrance for a believer, publicly, into the kingdom of God. But if it relates to the purifying power of the Spirit of God,-as I believe it does,-then it teaches us that no man enters into the kingdom of God, and becomes a partaker of its privileges,-which is something more than merely seeing it,-except the Spirit of God shall be to him as water purifying him from sin. This is the reason why a man cannot enter into the spiritual kingdom until he is born again, born from above.

6. That which is born of the flesh is flesh;

And “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.”

6. And that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

And only the new creature, which is thus born, can, by any possibility, understand or enter into the possession of the spiritual things which belong to the kingdom of God.

7, 8. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is mysterious, like the wind, and so is the creature that is “born of the Spirit.” The spiritual man often cannot understand himself,-he is so mysterious a being;-how then shall he be able fully to comprehend how that wondrous new life is created within him? All we know is, that it is a new creation, as much the work of eternal power as our first creation.

9, 10. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?

“These things” that lie at the very root of everything. “Art thou a Rabbi, and dost thou not know this?” Alas, good Master, there are still many Rabbis who do not understand this; many, who have taken the highest degree the University can give them, yet do not know in their own souls what it is to be born again!

11. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.

Spiritual men declare that there are spiritual things. They know them, and have seen them; and they have a right to be believed, for they are not liars. They are honest men, and speak what they do know; yet, often, their witness is not received. They need not be surprised at this, for it was the same with their Master.

12. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?

If these elementary truths about the new birth stagger you, what is the use of my going on to anything higher? You would not understand it, or receive it.

13. And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.

He alone knows the secrets of God who has been with God, who has come from God, and who is still with God.

14-18. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

God give us, even now, deliverance from condemnation through faith in his dear Son, and prevent our being condemned through our unbelief, for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake! Amen.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-416, 222, 511.

THINGS UNKNOWN

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day, March 4th, 1900, delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at new park street chapel, southwark,

On a Lord’s-day Evening, early in the year 1858.

“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”-Jeremiah 33:3.

God’s people will never thrive on anything less substantial than bread from heaven. Israel in Egypt might live on garlic and onions, but Israel in the wilderness must be fed with the manna that came down from heaven, and with the water that gushed out of the rock, when it was smitten by the rod of God. The child of God, while he is yet in his sins, may, like other men, revel in them, and the pleasures and follies of this world may be his delight; but when he is once brought out of Egypt, by the high hand of God’s purpose, and the almighty hand of God’s strength, he will never live on anything less than God’s promise and God’s truth. It is in vain for men to try to remove his doubts and strengthen his self-confidence, it is in vain for men to endeavour to feed him with man-made doctrine or with rationalistic ideas, he must have something that is divine, that has the stamp of revelation upon it; in fact, unless we can come forth every Sabbath with a “Thus saith the Lord,” we are not capable ministers of the New Covenant, and it is not in our power to comfort the Lord’s children.

In this chapter we find the prophet Jeremiah in prison; he was shut up in the court of the prison, and in order to comfort him, the Word of the Lord came to him saying, “Thus saith the Lord.” Something less than that may suffice, in the time of our prosperity, to make our hopes buoyant; for, alas! there is enough of the natural man in the Christian to make him rejoice even in carnal things when he is far from being thoroughly sanctified; but when we are in trouble, when affliction and adversity, sickness and suffering, are trying us, there is no man-made raft upon which our soul can float through floods of tribulation and waves of deep distress, but we must have the divine life-buoy of a “Thus saith the Lord.” That is what the Christian wants in every time and in every place, but this is what he more especially needs when he does business in deep waters, and is sorely exercised by affliction, “Thus saith the Lord.” My text is a “Thus saith the Lord.” “Thus saith the Lord, call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”

Here is, first, a large promise; here is, secondly, an implied imperfection; and here is, thirdly, a particular application of the promise, making up for that imperfection.

Here is, first, A large promise: “Call unto me, and I will answer thee.”

Now, if any friend should write us a letter containing such words as these, “Call unto me, and I will answer you,” we should naturally understand by them, that whatever we might ask of our friend, he would most assuredly give us; and if he were a person in whose ability and kindness we had confidence, we should not be very slow in availing ourselves of his permission to seek his aid. If we were in debt, we should apply to him for financial help, so that we might be able to meet our liabilities; if we were tried by sickness, we should apply to him that he might give us medicines to relieve our pains; if our friends had been ungrateful to us, we should most likely call upon him for sympathy; and if our spirits were distressed from some unknown cause, if we believed him to have immense wisdom, we should ask him for some cordial to raise us from our distress.

But how different is the case when we read these words as coming from the lips of God! Then, my brethren, how strange it is that, instead of making use of them, we just read them as a matter of course, but we seldom think of making use of them. “Yes,” we say, “it is a very comforting doctrine, that God answers prayer; it is truly consolatory to hear our minister inform us that, whatever we ask in prayer, believing, we shall receive.” But there the matter ends; and, except with a few choice spirits, it remains a matter of doctrine, and not a matter of practice to us. “O fools, and slow of heart to believe,” our Master might well say to us; and if he should come into our hearts, he would administer a thousand rebukes to us for our slackness in proving the truth of his promise. For God means what he says; and inasmuch as he has said, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee,” he intends that his words should stand good; and he wishes us to believe them to be true, and therefore to prove our faith by acting upon them. Alas! the truth is too plain to be disputed, that the most of us, while, in a sense, we receive this doctrine because it is in the Bible, do not so receive it as to put it into practice. In introducing, to your notice, the great general truth, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee,” I shall probably have to answer a host of objections and questions.

“Well,” says one person, “would you wish us to believe, sir, that whatever we ask in prayer we shall receive?” I must reply to you with discretion. In the first place, who are you who now ask that question? Are you a child of God, or are you a worldling? Have you been born again, or are you still what you were by nature, without any renewal from the Holy Spirit? For, upon your answer to that question, mine must depend. If you are still without the Spirit of God, and are unrenewed, I would remind you of that passage which says, concerning the wicked, “Even his prayer shall be abomination;” and if your prayer be an abomination, of course you cannot expect God to accept an abomination, and answer it. You must, therefore, know that you yourself are a partaker of the grace of God, or else this promise does not belong to you.

You grant me that, and then you ask me this question, “Sir, I hope I am a child of God; am I, therefore, to understand that, whatever I shall ask for in prayer, I shall receive of God?” To you also I must answer with discretion; lest, in endeavouring to state a truth, I should utter a falsehood. I must first ask you in what state of heart you are as a child of God. Have you been lately communing with Christ? Have you been constant in the study of his Word? What are your wishes? What are your wants? What are your desires? For, upon your answers to these questions, my reply to your enquiry must depend. It may be that you are a Christian; but, nevertheless, though an Israelite, you, like Israel in the wilderness, are asking for meat that you may satisfy your own lust, even as they did; but when they craved for flesh and the Lord sent them quails, while the meat was yet in their mouths, the curse of the Lord came upon them.

We are sure to have our prayers answered, if it is right that they should be answered. Sometimes, even the Lord’s people ask for things which it would not be for God’s glory to give, nor for their profit to receive. If you should tell your child you would give him anything he liked to ask for, you would not for a moment suppose that you included in the promise any absurd request he might make. Suppose he should ask you for a dose of arsenic, suppose he should request you to kill him, would you fulfil your promise? Certainly not. You would say, “My child, I love you too well to listen to the ravings of your madness; I desire your good too much to grant your absurd request, and I cannot hearken to you. God says the same: “ ‘Call upon me, and I will answer you,’ but I will not always answer you as you wish to be answered. If you ask for a thing which is not fit for you to receive, I will give you something better. I will not give you that very thing; I will hear your prayers, but I will not give you exactly what you ask for, but I will grant you something infinitely superior to the thing itself.”

It would be a sad thing if God always heard our prayers, and gave us just what we asked of him. If he always gave us the exact thing we asked for, we should ruin ourselves. You may have heard the story of a woman who had a child who was very ill; and when her pastor called to see her, she asked him to pray for the child’s life, and in the prayer he very properly said, “O Lord, spare this child’s life, if it be thy will.” The mother interrupted him, and said, “No, I cannot have it so; this child must live. I want you to pray to God that the child may live whether God wills it or no.” The minister said, “Woman, you will have cause to tremble on account of this petition. If you ask such a thing as this of God, there will be a curse upon it.” Nevertheless, the prayer was prayed; and, twenty years afterwards, that woman, with an aching heart, saw her son riding in a cart to Tyburn, where he was going to be hanged. Better would it have been for him and also for her that he had perished at the breast, and been carried to an untimely grave, than that he should send her grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. God, therefore, makes this very kind reservation that, if we ask for absurd things, things which would not be for our profit, he will not grant them.

But the question is put to me again, “Sir, if I ask for a thing which is obviously a good thing, which is most assuredly for my profit, may I be certain, after I have asked in prayer for that thing, that I shall have it?” Once more, I must ask another question. Have you yet learned the heavenly art of believing God? Because, you may be a Christian, you may believe in Christ enough for your soul’s salvation; but you may be so small a Christian that you have never yet attained the mountain height of belief in all your Lord has uttered. And, mark you, the promise of an answer to our prayers is only given to our faith. The Lord Jesus Christ put it thus to his disciples: “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” Now, if you go on your knees in prayer, and ask God for anything, and do not believe that he will give it to you, it may come in God’s extraordinary bounty, but it will not come in answer to your prayer. Your prayers shall be answered in proportion to your faith; so, if you believe, and ask for a thing that is for your good and God’s glory, you will have it as surely as the promise is a promise, and God is God. I have talked with many Christians, and some of my aged friends have talked with far more than I have, but both they and myself can bear witness that we have never yet met with any Christian that could charge God with breaking his promise. We have met with many who have been far from having the faith they ought to have, but we have never discovered one so faithless to God as to charge him with not answering the prayer that was stamped with believing. Whenever there is faith, there will be the answer to the prayer of faith; you will never hear a Christian deny that truth.

It was my privilege, some two years ago, when at Bristol, to visit the Orphan House of Mr. Müller, and I never saw a more striking or startling exhibition of the power of faith than I did there. Mr. Müller supports three hundred orphan children on no resources but his own faith and prayer. When he needs anything, he calls them together, offers supplication to God, and asks that necessaries may be supplied; and, although there are three hundred to be fed, to be clothed, and to be housed, and though they have often been brought so low that there has not been a farthing in their coffers, nor a handful of meal in their barrel, when mealtime has come, there has always been abundance of bread in the house in answer to prayer. I shall never forget my interview with that holy man of God. Some gentleman said to me, “I wish you would ask Mr. Müller a question or two, if you see him, as to the foundation of a new Orphan House which he proposes to build to hold seven hundred more children. Now, I feel that three hundred is quite enough for one man to care for; I think it is very absurd for him to have seven hundred more; he will never be able to support a thousand. As to the present Institution, I believe that generous persons hear about it, and send him subscriptions for its maintenance; but as to his supporting seven hundred more orphans, that is impossible.” I replied, “I think there is something in what you say. I will ask him when I see him.” But when I saw him, I could not, and dare not, ask him any such questions; and when I saw what a great work he had done by his faith, and began to remark upon it, he said, “Oh! it is only a little thing that I have done; faith could do far more than that. If it were God’s will that I should feed the universe on prayer and faith, I could do it. If I had more faith, it could be accomplished.” I was just going to say that, possibly, a thousand orphans would be more than he could support, when he said, “When I got three hundred children, I began to pray God to send me money to build an Orphan House to hold seven hundred more; and I have already £17,000 sent in for it, although I have never solicited a contribution from anybody but the Lord. I believe God has made me to be here, to be to the world a proof that he hears and answers prayer.” I thought so, too, when I saw that huge building, and the many dear children rising up to praise their God, and singing so sweetly in honour of the good Shepherd, who had gathered them like lambs to his bosom, and had gently folded them there.

Brethren, we do not speak without solid facts to confirm our assertion, when we affirm that, whatever a saint asks in prayer, if he asks in faith, and it is for his own profit, and for God’s glory, he will be sure to have it. I daresay you have read Huntington’s “Bank of Faith.” He certainly gives us too many of those instances for most people to believe, but I fancy there are plenty of persons alive who have had as many answers to their prayers as ever William Huntington had, and who, if they were to write the minutiæ of their lives, could bear most solemn testimony to the truth that never could they remember God being unfaithful to his promises, or their prayers unanswered. This, however, must always depend upon the person himself, for if we ask waveringly, or without faith, we must not expect to be answered. We must not forget that what God implies, when he does not grant unbelieving requests, is just this, “Inasmuch as you have no faith, I have nothing to give you.” We must do as the people did at Christmas time in the olden days. It used to be the custom for the poor inhabitants in a village to go round with basins to the rich people in the parish, and beg bread and other victuals of them; and the rule was, that every gentleman was to fill the bowl that was brought to his door. Of course, the wisest amongst the poor folk brought a very large bowl for the Christmas gathering, but those who had little faith in the generosity of their wealthy neighbours took a small bowl, and that was filled; but those who took a big bowl had theirs filled too. So, dear friends, you must always try, in your prayers, to bring a big bowl to God. Bring great faith, and rest assured that, according to thy faith, it shall be done unto thee. If thou hast little faith, thou shalt have a little answer; if thou hast tolerable faith, thou shalt have a tolerable answer; and if thou hast a mighty faith, thou shalt have such a mighty answer that thou shalt wonder at it, yet thou shalt feel that it is according to the promise of our text, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee.”

Now we come to the second part of our subject, and we notice an implied imperfection: “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.” It is implied that God’s people do not know everything.

Did you ever meet with a man who knew everything? I have happened to meet with half-a-dozen such. I once met with a minister who knew all things,-according to his own account, I mean, not according to mine. He told me, when I saw him, that, in the parish where he lived, there were not more than a dozen people who knew the Lord Jesus Christ in truth. I was interested in that man, for I knew a little about him, so I said to him, “Well, who are they?” So he began, “Well, there is myself, and my wife, and my two deacons,” and so on. “Oh!” I answered, “the only person I should dispute out of that number would be yourself, because I think you know too much by a great deal; you seem to have climbed up, and to have looked into the secret roll of God’s decrees. No child of God would do that. Children do not look into their father’s secrets; it is only thieves who do that. I should doubt your claim to be a child of God.”

Each of us, at times, meets with an interesting individual who knows far too much, in whose company one always feels uncomfortable. We never introduce any subject, we leave him to do that, because he is the Pope of our circle. He hates Popery, of course; two Popes cannot agree; so, naturally, he has a very strong objection to the Pope of Rome. He himself knows all things. You utter a sentiment; he tells you directly that it is not sound; he knows, of course. You talk about a matter of experience; but he says, “That is not the experience of the living child of God.” He is umpire, of course; he knows all about it; he is the judge who ends all strife; he settles everything. Bring him in, his vote is the casting vote, which it were almost profane to controvert. He is King, Lords, and Commons, all rolled into one; he makes the laws, and he fulfils them. He is, in his own sphere, the Autocrat of all Christians. Now, God’s children belong to a very different order of beings from this very respectable and very venerable individual; they do not know everything, and they do not pretend to be full of all knowledge. One of the best of them, whose name was Paul, said, “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

An old man once met a young one who had been to College about six months; and he said to him, “Do you know much?” “Yes,” the young man answered, “I am getting on very fast.” The old man said, “You will not say that in a year’s time, or else I shall have no hope for you.” In a year’s time, he asked him whether he knew much more than he did six months before. He replied, “Sometimes, I think I know a great deal more, but, at other times, I think I know a great deal less. I have discovered my own ignorance more than ever this last year.” Then the old man said, “By the time you have been in College four years, you will confess yourself to be a very great fool;” and when he met him, during the fourth year, he said, “What do you know now?” The student replied, “I think perhaps I know more than when I entered College; but, in my own opinion, I know much less. When I first came, I thought myself competent to give a decisive opinion upon every subject; now, I am obliged to weigh everything before I am able to state anything positively. My own ignorance has been discovered.”

Now, depend upon it, dear friends, it will be the same with each of you. We may think, when we first join the church, “We know almost everything.” Some people suppose that all the truth is found in the Baptist denomination; others imagine it is all in the Episcopalian, Independent, or Wesleyan denomination, or in whatever sect they belong to; but when we have been members of the Baptist denomination for some considerable time, we discover that there are several faults amongst us; and we think, perhaps, that if we were fashioned according to the Presbyterian model, we might be improved. By-and-by, we find a friend who attends an Episcopal church, where he hears the gospel very plainly preached by a very earnest clergyman, and we say we think there is something good in the Episcopalians; and the longer we live, the more we find that there is something good in all; and that, after all, we do not know so much as we thought we did, and that our church, though it seemed to be the very model of perfection, is found to be full of infirmities, as well as any other church, and it is not exactly the Church after all.

I repeat, then, the assertion that is implied in the text, that we have, all of us, a certain amount of ignorance and imperfection; for if we knew all things, we should have no necessity for this promise, that God would show us great and mighty things, which we do not know. But, as we are still imperfect, and growing in our knowledge, this promise is exceedingly precious to us. I can scarcely think that I have any person here of that particular clique, who fancy they know everything. If I have, I would say a word to him. There is a certain body of excellent men, who call themselves “God’s dear people!” That is just what they are; they are dear to anybody, nobody would think of buying them. If they were to be given away, they would be scarcely worth having. They are God’s dear people. They hear their minister preach a sermon, made up of the extract of gall and bitterness, and that just pleases them. His people rejoice in that kind of talk, and say that he is a faithful minister. If he were to leave off being bitter, he would not be faithful,-faithfulness, according to their meaning, consists in finding fault with all the world besides. They tell you to go to “Little Bethel,” “Rehoboth,” or “Bethesda,” because there is no truth anywhere else. It is only there that the truth is to be had, and all other congregations are schismatics, whom it is their duty to denounce and persecute with the utmost rigour of the gospel, and you are aware that the utmost rigour of the gospel is worse than the utmost rigour of the law. The rigour of the gospel is more intolerable than even the rule of Draco himself; for those persons exclude, denounce, and condemn every man who is not to the very turn of a hair’s breadth in conformity with their views. To every such person we say, “Dear brother, you are very wise! All hail to you! We will put you in the chair as the marvellous Doctor of Divinity. You are the man, wisdom will die with you; and, whilst we humbly bow at your feet, we are obliged to say that you do not know everything yet; there are a few things that need to be revealed even to you; and while we keep ourselves at a respectful distance from anything like your superior knowledge, we are compelled to think that you have not yet attained unto perfection, and we cannot admit that you are the only man in all the world who understands and knows the gospel.” Well, though our brother will not join with us in saying, “We do not know all things,” I think that all who are here present will bow their heads, and each one will say, “Lord, teach me what I do not know; for the little that I know is nothing to be compared with the volumes of thy wisdom which I have not read, and do not yet understand.”

Now we come to the third head of our subject, which is the best of all. We have here the particular application of the promise: “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”

First, we understand this promise to relate to gospel doctrines. I confess that, when I first preached in a country village as its pastor, I read all Dr. Gill’s “Body of Divinity” and Calvin’s “Institutes”; and when I had done that, I thought, “Now I have got hold of the truth, I am certain I have; and I can meet all opponents, and if they are not conformed to the views of that most learned man, Dr. Gill, and that excellent confessor, John Calvin, I will soon cut them up root and branch.” Well, I began to preach what I had learned from these great and good men, and I have never been ashamed of having done so, for, as a successor of Dr. Gill, I am not ashamed to endorse his views even now, and to subscribe to the doctrinal statements that John Calvin uttered. However, I soon began to find out that there was a good deal to be said, after all, concerning some matters that Dr. Gill and John Calvin did not mention, and I found that I was obliged somewhat to stretch my charity, and to take to my heart some brethren who did not quite see all things which those enlightened men saw. And, moreover, I found out that I did not know everything, and that I had a good deal still to learn, and I find the same thing every day. I hope at all times to hold firmly all the truth I have received. I intend to grasp tightly with one hand the truths I have already learned, and to keep the other hand wide open to take in the things I do not yet know.

Perhaps I have some young man here who has a notion that some minister has got all the truth, or that he himself has embraced all the truth. Now, young man, there are a great many things that you do not know; there are some doctrines you do not understand. If you will wait a little while, and study your Bible more, you will go down on your knees, and say, “Lord, I never knew my own ignorance so much as I do now; wilt thou teach me thy truth?” Do we desire to understand the truth of God? Let us not be discouraged. In answer to our prayers, God will show us “great and mighty things” which we do not know now. You are a Christian, yet you do not comprehend the doctrine of election, or the doctrine of effectual calling puzzles you. You are a Churchman, perhaps, yet you do not know anything about these things. You are like a man I met once in a railway carriage. He said he was a High Churchman, and I said I was a High Churchman too. “How can that be?” he enquired, “you are a Dissenter.” “But,” I replied, “I believe many of the doctrines of your Church.” He said, “I think not.” “Well,” I said “I believe in the doctrines of election, predestination, and so on.” “Oh!” he said, “I do not.” “But,” I said, “they are in your Articles.” He said, “I believe the Catechism, but I have not read the Articles.” “Then,” I rejoined, “I am the better Churchman of the two; you are the Dissenter, and I am the High Churchman. You ought to be turned out of the Church if you do not believe the Articles. They ought to take me, and give me a first-rate living, and make me one of their bishops; for I have read the Articles, and studied them.”

A great many people do not know what they believe. No person has a right to say he is a Churchman, till he has read the Prayerbook. You have no right to say you are a Wesleyan till you have read Wesley’s sermons; and you have no right to say you are a Calvinist till you have read what Calvin believed; and you have no right to say you are a Christian till you have read your Bible, for the Bible is the standard of Christian faith and practice; and when you come to read your Bibles, you will find this one thing out, that your own little views were not quite so wide as the Bible, after all; and you will have to say, “Lord, show me great and mighty things, which I know not now.” I am persuaded that neither the Church of England, nor the Wesleyans, nor the Independents, nor the Baptists, have got all the truth. I would not belong to any one of these denominations, for all the land that is beneath the sky, if I had to endorse all that is held by them. I believe that the Church ought to be governed by an Episcopalian Presbyterian Baptist Independency. I believe we are all right in a great many of our doctrines, but that we all have something yet to learn. The doctrine of “man’s responsibility” is not to be denied, nor the doctrine of “God’s sovereignty” to be disputed. I hope that, some day, we shall all bring our views to the test of the Sacred Scriptures. Then shall we have one Church, “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” Then shall we know great and mighty things which we know not now. I would persuade you, my Baptist friends, that your system is not perfect, and you members of the Episcopalian Church, that your polity is not altogether without imperfection; and I would entreat you, my friend, though you are a member of an excellent body of believers, however excellent that church may be, not to think it is infallible. Go down on your knees, and ask God to teach you what you do not know, and to make you better than your creed; or else, in nine cases out of ten, you will not be worth much.

But, next, “great and mighty things, which thou knowest not,” God will show thee in providence. A poor man is in trouble; he has not wherewithal to buy daily bread. Let him call upon God, and ask for it; and though he has never seen the Lord thrust out his hand from heaven, or feed him by the ravens, or quench his thirst with water out of the rock, let him go down on his knees, and he will find that there are more wonders in providence than you and I have seen yet. In answer to prayer, we shall see how God’s providence, though it is far beyond our ideas, is according to our prayers. There are many Christians who have been in great trouble, and have experienced a most marvellous deliverance in providence. If we have great troubles, let us bring them to our great God; let us cry unto him, and in providence we shall see “great and mighty things” which we know not as yet.

In the next place, very briefly passing over these points, “great and mighty things, which thou knowest not,” God will show thee in matters of Christian experience. Let us search God’s Word, and give ourselves to prayer, and then, in matters of experience, we shall see “great and mighty things” which we know not yet. A Christian is immeasurably beyond the worldling, and there is a possibility of a Christian becoming as much beyond himself as he now is beyond a sinner dead in sins. There is no telling how great he may become even on earth. I do not think we can ever on earth become perfect, but we know not how near to perfection we may come. We may not, whilst on earth, dwell in heaven; but who can tell how much of heaven may dwell in us whilst we are here? Did you ever sit down and read the Life of Herbert, or Whitefield, or Haliburton? After we have read such books, we say within ourselves, “What poor worms we are!” We feel like Robert Hall, who, when a certain minister came to see him, said, “I am so glad to see you! Mr. So-and-so has been here; he is so far above me, that I felt myself to be nothing in his presence, but now I begin to feel myself a man again.” Have you never felt, when in the company of some great and mighty man, as if you were nothing at all? When I first read Henry Martyn’s Life, I could not refrain from weeping for some hours afterwards, to think how much below such a life as his I was living. Yet you know not but that you may climb where these men did; the steps of the mountain of piety may be steep to look upon, but they are accessible to the feet of diligence. Go on, and you shall yet stand where Moses stood, and behold Canaan from the top of Nebo. Remember that you are as yet upon the lowlands; be not ashamed to acknowledge that you are desirous to climb upwards. Bend you knees, and God will show you in experience “great and mighty things” that you know not yet.

If any man is content with his own experience, it is entirely through ignorance. I will defy anyone to take Rutherford’s Letters, and sit down, and after he has read them, to help saying, “Rutherford seems to have been like an angel of God; I am only a man, I never can stand where Rutherford stood.” Frequently, when I return home from chapel on the Sabbath evening, I get down George Herbert’s book of songs; and when I see how much he loved the Lord, it seems to me as if he had struck upon his harp the very notes that he had heard in Paradise, and sung them all again. Let us not be discouraged, we may yet become Herberts, and Rutherfords, and Whitefields; nay, there is no reason why we should not become as great as the Old or New Testament saints. There is no reason why we should not be as great as Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; for why should not every child of God, in these days, become as mighty a man of faith as was Abraham of old? Let us plead the promise of the text: “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”

And, to conclude, the same truth holds good with regard to the universal Church of God. I do not know whether you may have noticed that the devil, in his wisdom, has just tried to pervert all our services. My heart has been made glad by the opening of Exeter Hall for the preaching of the gospel! Never did my heart so leap for joy as when I heard that our brethren of the Church of England had begun to preach in Exeter Hall, though I felt sad when those doors were shut against them. Now our joys are blasted, and our happiness is clouded. It appears that, because some have lately endeavoured to turn to good account the earnestness of the people to hear the Word in their own churches and chapels, next Sunday we shall see the lamentable spectacle, in this great metropolis, of a place, not open simply for the preaching of the Word, but actually for a Sabbath Concert.* We shall read of multitudes assembled in a building, the property of one connected with a theatre; we shall hear of the people being gathered together, and there will be a person found who will profess to preach the gospel to them, and the “Messiah” will be performed as the great inducement for attracting them. Perhaps there is no person who feels more sorrow than I do that this fearful cloud has fallen upon us. The devil may one day open the Crystal Palace, the Museum, and every other place on Sunday; but the Lord reigneth; and if this nation shall be given up to Sabbath-breaking, let us not despair. God sits as the ruler in heaven; and, as surely as he is God, he will get the victory. The devil will outwit himself, as he has always done; Satan will fall into his own pit. I hope, however, that the Christians of Great Britain will be very earnest in calling upon God. Pray continually to the Most High, that he will prosper the preaching of the gospel to the multitude; but that he will never allow our entering into unconsecrated places to be twisted and turned to unhallowed uses, and that God will bring forth greater good out of the great evil, and so glorify himself, and thus show us great and mighty things that we know not.

I can only now beseech the Lord to pour his blessing upon each of you. May you be earnest in prayer, and constant in supplication; and if you have never known Christ yet, may he soon be made known to you by the Holy Spirit, and may your prayers be lifted up to heaven that he may show you his salvation, which is one of the “great and mighty things” which you know not now!