Job’s misery was extreme, and it seemed as if he could never forget it. He never did forget the fact of it, but he did forget the pain of it. That he had been utterly miserable, would always remain recorded upon the tablets of his memory; but the wretchedness itself would not remain. It would be so entirely removed that it should be as a thing that has been altogether forgotten. Nothing better can happen to our misery than that it should be forgotten in the sense referred to in our text; for then, evidently, it will be clean gone from us. It will be as it is when even the scent of the liquor has gone out of the cask, when even the flavour of the bitter drug lingers no longer in the medicine glass, but has altogether disappeared. So is it with the sorrow that has so effectually gone out of the mind that it is just as though it had never been there.

If anyone here is in misery of any kind,-whether it be misery of physical pain, or misery of want, or misery of soul on account of sin, or the loss of the light of God’s countenance,-I can only pray for you, dear friend, that you may speedily forget your misery, and only remember it as waters that pass away. The thing goes to be done; it is quite possible, and you may expect it. If you look carefully at the connection of our text, and give earnest attention to the matter, I do not doubt that you will experience this blessed forgetfulness. When we are in pain of body, and depression of spirit, we imagine that we never shall forget such misery as we are enduring. The sharp ploughshare has gone down so deeply that we think it has made a mark in the soul that can never be erased. We seem to lie all broken in pieces, with our thoughts like a case of knives cutting into our spirit; and we say to ourselves, “We never shall forget this terrible experience.” And yet, by-and-by, God turns towards us the palm of his hand, and we see that it is full of mercy, we are restored to health, or uplifted from depression of spirit, and we wonder that we ever made so much of our former suffering or depression. We remember it no more, except as a thing that has passed and gone, to be recollected with gratitude that we have been delivered from it, but not to be remembered so as to leave any scar upon our spirit, or to cause us any painful reflection whatsoever. “Thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away.”

I am not going to limit the application of the text to Job and his friends, for it has also a message for many of us at the present time; and I shall take it, first, with reference to the common troubles of life which affect believing men and women.

These troubles of life happen to us all more or less. They come to one in one shape, and perhaps he thinks that he is the only man who has any real misery; yet they also come to others, though possibly in another form. There is certainly a cross for every shoulder to bear; Simon must not bear the cross alone, and all the rest go free. There is no road to heaven without its stones, or without its Hill Difficulty; and I think that there are few pilgrims from the City of Destruction who get to the Celestial City without passing through the Valley of Death-shade, and having to fight with giants and even with Apollyon himself. Cowper truly wrote,-

“The path of sorrow, and that path alone,

Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.”

There is much joy in true religion. Wisdom’s “ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.” But, still, notwithstanding the joy, and in addition to it, there is sorrow; there is misery lurking close by the believer’s pathway, and it is ever ready to pounce upon him somewhere between here and heaven. The Lord of the pilgrims was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;” and his disciples must expect to fare even as their Master fared while here below; it is enough for the servant if he be as his Lord.

You, dear friends, who are just now enduring misery, should seek to be comforted under it. Perhaps you will ask me, “Where can we get any comfort?” Well, if you cannot draw any from your present experience, seek to gather some from the past. You have been miserable before, but you have been delivered and helped. There has come to you a most substantial benefit from everything which you have been called to endure. You must be conscious that, when you think of your troubles, you can say, with Hezekiah, “O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit: so wilt thou recover me, and make me to live.” Or you can say, with the psalmist, “Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word.” I believe that, very often, God sends his very choicest love-tokens to us in black-edged envelopes; and many a time has it happened that the great rumbling waggons of tribulation have been those which have brought the heaviest weight of treasure to the doors of the saints. Do we ever learn much without the rod? I fear we do not; most of us are quickest learners, I think, when we smart most. Well, then, if affliction has been profitable in the past, let us rest assured that it will be so in the future.

Let us gather consolation also from the future. If, as the apostle truly says, “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous,” recollect how he goes on to say, “Nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” I have been trying to ring the changes on those two words, during the last few weeks, while I have been laid aside by illness: “nevertheless afterward”-“nevertheless afterward”-“nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” The apostle James tells us that “the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.” He does not complain because his corn is buried under the clods, and covered with the snow; but he lives upon hope, and rejoices in the future harvest, pleading the promise, “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.” In your own case, dear friend, if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, what will happen in the future? For it is with that I would comfort you at this time. Why, this is what will happen: “Thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away.” How will that be?

Well, first, by the lapse of time. Time is a wonderful healer. Hearts, that seem as if they must break when first the trial comes, at last grow quite used to it. Look through the veil of a few minutes, gaze through the longer vista of a few years, and that which seemed dark as tempest wears quite another aspect. Oh, if you, whose hearts seem now almost ready to burst, could but project yourselves only six months ahead, if you could leap forward a year, and then look back, probably even in that time you would almost have forgotten your misery.

Ay, but there is something better than the lapse of years, and that is when, during a considerable time, you are left without trial. That is a sharp pain you are now enduring; but what if you should have years of health afterwards? Then you will forget your misery. That is a sad loss which you have been called to suffer, it seems to you to be a crushing disaster, but what if it should be succeeded by years of prosperity? Remember how Job forgot his misery when, in a short time, he had double as much of all that he possessed as he had before. He had back twice the amount of all his former wealth, he had again a smiling family around him, so he might well forget his misery. Year after year, and, perhaps, even to his death,-it was so as far as we know,-Job was again a man who had a hedge made round about him and all that he had, and in the happiness of his later life he might well forget his former misery. Well, now, it is very likely to be so with you after you get through this present struggle; therefore, keep your heart up, believe in God, have confidence in him, and all shall be well. There is wonderfully smooth sailing on ahead for some of you when you are once over this little stretch of broken water. If you can safely pass over this stony portion of the road, it will be good travelling for you all the way to heaven. Recollect that the horses’ heads are towards home, you are journeying to your Father’s house, so be of good courage, for you shall forget your misery, and only remember it as waters that pass away.

And besides the lapse of time, and an interval of rest and calm, it may be-it probably is the fact with God’s people-that he has in store for you some great mercies. When the Lord turns your captivity, you will be like them that dream; and you know what happens to men who dream. They wake up; their dream is all gone, they have completely forgotten it. So will it be with your sorrow. Through God’s goodness, you will seem suddenly to wake up out of a dreary dream, and then you will begin to laugh, and soon your mouth will be filled with laughter. You will almost despise your former depression of spirit; and when you see the abundant mercy of God toward you, all your misery shall seem like a dream that has gone, a vision of the night-unsubstantial, unreal,-that has melted into nothingness. Some of you have no idea what is reserved for you; you would not be weeping, but laughing, if you did know what God has in store for you,-I mean, even here below. It is good for us not to be able to read the roll closed by the hand of God; but we may be sure that there are such blessed things in it concerning our future that each believer may well say, “I will not be bowed down by the trials of the present, but my spirit shall rejoice in God, who doeth for me what eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, and what my heart hath never conceived.”

Be of good courage, brother, sister, in these dark, dull times, for, mayhap, this text is God’s message to thy soul, “Thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away.” It has been so with many, many, many believers in the past. What do you think of Joseph sold for a slave, Joseph falsely accused, Joseph shut up in prison? But when Joseph found out that all that trial was the way to make him ruler over all the land of Egypt, and that he might be the means of saving other nations from famine, and blessing his father’s house, I do not wonder that he called his elder son “Manasseh.” What does that name mean? “Forgetfulness”-“for God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house.” Why, sitting on the throne there, feeding the nation, and blessing his father and his brethren, he must have thought that the being cast into the pit, and being sold to the Ishmaelites, and being put into prison, was not worth recollecting, except for gratitude to God that it ever happened as a means to the grand end of helping him up into that position of usefulness. And Joseph is not the only one who has had such an experience as that. Read the Scriptures through, and you will find that those whom God has called and anointed to eminent service have been put, like the blades of Damascus, into the fire, and drawn through the fire again and again, that in the day of battle they might strike on the northern iron and steel, and yet not turn their edge. These servants of the Lord have been prepared for an immortal destiny by desperate griefs; and-

“The deeper their sorrows, the louder they’ll sing.”

As a woman remembereth no more her travail, for joy that a man is born into the world, so has it happened to the believer in the time of his sorrow; he has forgotten it, cast it all away, because of the greater joy which God has brought out of it. Jabez is the child of sorrow, but he is therefore more honourable than his brethren. The more stormy the sea, the sweeter the haven. The rougher the road on earth, the better the rest above. So, poor tried child of God, believe that this text is intended to be a divine message of comfort to thy heart, “Thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away.”

Thus much on the first head.

I should be greatly rejoiced if, in the second place, I might speak a cheering word to poor souls under distress on account of sin. I mean you who long to be saved, yet cannot understand how it is to come to pass, or who, understanding the plan of salvation, are somehow unable to appropriate it to yourselves. You feel as if you have your eyes bandaged, and your feet fast fixed in the stocks, so that you cannot go to Christ, and cannot even look to Christ, and therefore your souls are full of sorrow. I want you, dear friends, specially to notice what Zophar recommends to a man who has sin upon him. Read the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th verses of this chapter: “If thou prepare thine heart, and stretch out thine hands toward him; if iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away, and let not wickedness dwell in thy tabernacles. For then shalt thou lift up thy face without spot; yea, thou shalt be stedfast, and shalt not fear: because thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away.” I recommend these words to you also; only I have something even better to recommend to you. Does any man here say, “I cannot get peace with God; I am full of misery on account of sin”? I know all about you, friend; I have gone that road, long ago. I have been splashed up to my very eyes in the mire of the Slough of Despond; and I sometimes get a little of its mud in my eyes even now.

Well, now, I exhort you, first of all, to look to Christ, and lean on Christ. Trust in his atoning sacrifice, for there alone can a troubled soul find rest. If you say that, somehow, you cannot get peace, then I shall have to ask you to see whether, perhaps, sin may not be lying at the door. To use Zophar’s expression, have you prepared your heart? Have you gone to Christ with your whole heart and soul? Have you sought him with all your might? I hope you realize that repentance and faith are very bad things to play with, for such play will damn a man’s soul. These are things to be earnestly used in a most solemn undertaking. “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence” in this matter. We can neither repent nor believe with half our heart; it is our whole soul that is required if salvation is to be ours. Now, hast thou sought the Lord with all thy heart? If thou hast, thou wilt surely find him. I am certain that thou wilt; and then, afterwards, “thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away.” There was never a man yet who, with all his heart, did seek the Lord Jesus Christ, but sooner or later found him; and if you have been long in seeking, I lay it to the fact that you have not sought with a prepared heart, a thoroughly earnest heart, or else you would have found him.

But, perhaps, taking Zophar’s next expression, you have not stretched out your hands toward the Lord, giving yourself up to him like a man who holds up his hands to show that he surrenders. You must come and say, “My opposition is all over; I have no quarrel now with God; I yield unconditionally to him.” The word may refer to one who stretches out his hands to grasp whatever may come from God within his reach. He stretches out his empty hands, asking to have them filled; stretches out his entreating hands, pleading that God will bless him. Well now, if you have done that, you shall get a blessing.

Further, you may and you shall forget your misery, provided you fulfil one more condition mentioned by Zophar, and that is, that you are not harbouring any sin: “If iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away, and let not wickedness dwell in thy tabernacles.” There is an old-fashioned grace that I am never ashamed to preach, though some, who call themselves evangelists, have folded it up, and put it away in the back cupboard; they never mention this oldfashioned grace, which is called repentance. Now, I learn from the Scriptures that repentance is just as necessary to salvation as faith is; and the faith that has not repentance going with it will have to be repented of one of these days. A dry-eyed faith is a faith that will save no man. Peter’s message was, “Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out;” and our Lord’s own declaration was, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” He began his public ministry by crying, “Repent ye, and believe the gospel,” which means just this, that if any man is living in sin, it is no use his praying, or pretending to believe, until he gives up that sin. If there is any passion that you are indulging, any lust that is your master,-if you are carrying on a wicked business,-if you are living in wilful transgression of God’s law, Christ can save you from your sins, but even Christ cannot save you in your sins. If you will have your sin, you must be lost, so stands God’s decree. Christ must, by his grace, separate you from your sin, or else you will be separated from him for ever. I want this to be a very heart-searching word; and therefore I say to any miserable man or miserable woman here,-You shall forget your misery if you give up your sin, and trust in the sin-atoning Saviour. Come, friend, you shall not say that I am flattering you, for I tell you plainly that you must fly for your life from the dearest sin that now lays hold upon you.

“Oh!” you say, “but how am I to do it?” Christ will help you. Trust him to help you. But if you say, “I will trust him to save me,” and yet continue to live in sin, he will not save you. That is not the salvation that we preach; we proclaim salvation from sin, for that is the salvation which Jesus came to bring to us. You must, as Zophar said to Job, put your iniquity far away, and you must not let wickedness dwell in your tabernacles; that is to say, in your tents, in your houses. I know some men, who will never get peace of conscience, and rest of heart, while they let their wives live as they do live, and while they allow their children to live as they do live. Some of you will not find mercy for yourselves while you neglect your children’s highest welfare as you do. I know some men,-I hope they are good men, but certainly they are not good fathers. They are so peaceful, and gentle, that they never like to utter a word of reproof; their boys and girls may go where they like,-I might almost say that they may go to the devil if they like,-yet their father has not a word to say to them; do you call that proper conduct for a professedly Christian man? There are some parents, who allow their children to do such things that God is grieved with them for their children’s sakes; and they will never get peace of mind till they set their house in order. What! is God coming to live where there is no family prayer, where there is no care for his name or his day, where there is no rebuke of open sin? It has filled me with unspeakable sorrow when I have heard of Christian parents whose boys swear, and whose girls are allowed to go where, if they are not ruined, body and soul, it is little short of a miracle. Oh, do see that you let not wickedness dwell in your tabernacles, you who are the people of God, and you who wish to be his, if you would have Zophar’s words to Job fulfilled in your experience, “Then shalt thou lift up thy face without spot; yea, thou shalt be stedfast, and shalt not fear: because thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away.”

Now let me tell you how sweetly God can make a sinner forget his misery.

The moment a sinner believes in Jesus Christ with true heart and repentant spirit, God makes him forget his misery, first, by giving him a full pardon. All his sin is forgiven, and therefore he feels ready to dance for joy, and he soon forgets his misery. By faith, he gets a sight of the great pardoning Lord, and of his atoning blood. He sees the Son of God suffering and dying for him on the tree, and he is overjoyed at the revelation of such a wondrous redemption. He claps his hands, and he forgets his misery.

Next, he rejoices in all the blessings that God gives with his grace. He reads that those whom Christ has pardoned “are justified from all things,” from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses. He learns that they are clothed with the robe of Christ’s perfect righteousness, and he forgets his own nakedness while he rejoices that he is so wondrously clothed. He feeds on the bread of heaven, and forgets his former hunger. He drinks of the water of life, and forgets his previous pangs of thirst. He enjoys the liberty of the sons of God, and he forgets the chains he used to wear as Satan’s slave. He has peace with God, and he forgets the trouble that was such a burden on his heart. He is so full of joy that there is no room for sorrow; and if, perchance, the tear of repentance still lingers in his eye, it is not sullen but sweet sorrow, and the tear glistens in the sunlight of God’s countenance like the diamond, or like some choice pearl that slumbers in its shell. Oh, beloved, if you will but come to Christ, and leave your sin, whatever your misery is, you shall forget it; or, if you do recollect it at all, it shall only be to remember it as the snow that has melted and vanished, or as the rain that has soaked into the earth, “as waters that pass away.”

Now, dear friends, all that I have been saying to the sinner is quite as applicable to every backsliding child of God. It may be that some of you who are here are Christians;-that is, you have trusted in Christ to save you;-but you have got into a very sad state of heart. You have not half the spiritual life that you once had, and therefore you do not glorify God as you once did. It is most grievous to think how many professing Christians live at a poor dying rate; they seem to be just alive, or hardly that. Well, dear brother or sister, if you have become miserable, I am rather glad that you have. That is part of the way towards a better state of things. When a man cannot be happy in a backsliding state, he will soon seek to get out of it. The smart is a part of the cure. Solomon says, “The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil;” and the chastisement which follows sin is often for the healing of the sinner.

I will bring my discourse to a close with this last reflection. This text will come true to the sickening, declining, soon-departing believer.

Ah! dear friend, when first you found out that the complaint from which you are suffering really was consumption, what a chill seemed to come over everything! When the physician said to you, very tenderly but very faithfully, “I fear I cannot do much for you. I can perhaps give you a little relief, but I dare not deceive you, for you have an incurable disease;”-then, although you are a child of God, you endured a great deal of misery, and spent many long, sleepless nights looking forward to you scarcely knew what. Are you still in that state, my dear sister? As you get worse and worse, do your spirits continue to sink? My dear brother, as you gradually fade away, does the light seem to fade, too? Well, then, listen. If thou hast believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and if thou art resting alone upon him, recollect that, in a very short time, “thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away.” In a very, very, very short time, your suffering and sadness will all be over. I suppose the expression, “waters that pass away,” signifies those rivers which are common in the East, and which we meet with so abundantly in the South of France. They are rivers with very broad channels, but I have often looked in vain for a single drop of water in them. “Then,” perhaps you ask, “what is the use of such rivers?” Well, at certain times, the mountain torrents come rushing down, bearing great rocks, and stones, and trees before them, and then, after they have surged along the river-bed for several days, they altogether disappear in the sea. Such will all the sorrows of life and the sorrows even of death soon be to you, dear friend, and to me also. They will all have passed away, and all will be over with us here. The passage to the grave may be sharp, but it must be short.

“The road may be rough, but it cannot be long,

So I’ll smooth it with hope, and cheer it with song.”

And then, you know, dear friends, those waters that have passed away will never come back again. Water that is spilt upon the ground can never be gathered up again, and it is one of the charms of the heavenly world that our sorrows will never reach us there. No more poverty, no more cold, no more heat, no more sin, no more depression of spirits, no more pain, no more forsaking of friends, no more sorrow of any kind, for “the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” That is a very beautiful expression: “Sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” Here, they keep clinging to us, one on one arm, and the other on the other arm. Sorrow and sighing will come with us wherever we go; and we sometimes say to them, “Now, you might go somewhere else, for we do not want you;” yet they still hold fast to us; but when we get up to the golden gate, no sooner shall the light eternal flash on our eyes than we shall look in vain for our old companions, for they will be gone. “Sorrow and sighing shall flee away;” and lest there should be any trace of their mournful companionship left, we are expressly told that “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

Thank God, we shall recollect our sorrows in heaven only to praise God for the grace that sustained us under them; but we shall not remember them as a person does who has cut his finger, and who still bears the scar in his flesh. We shall not recollect them as one does who has been wounded, and who carries the bullet somewhere about him. In heaven, you shall not have a trace of earth’s sorrow; you shall not have, in your glorified body, or in your perfectly sanctified soul and spirit, any trace of any spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing that shall show that you ever had a pang on earth, or even that you ever committed a sin. Some diseases, you know, leave marks on our hands or faces, so that we say to our friends, “Do you see that lump? It was a time of terrible pain that brought that up, and I fear it will not go away.” Ah! but, in heaven, there will be no trace of anything like pain or sorrow of any sort. All sorrow and suffering shall be gone, and we shall forget our misery, or only remember it as waters that have passed away, never to come back again.

This is the sum and substance of all that I have been trying to say to you: “Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.” Christian men do not live on the comforts of this world; their inheritance is on the other side of Jordan. If you are like Esau, and can be content with red pottage, well, you may have it; but you will lose the birthright if you do not prize it. But if you are God’s true Jacob, you will gladly give up the pottage to get the promise of the future inheritance. Oh, what a blessed thing is the faith that enables the soul to postpone the present in order to obtain that blessed future! For what is the present, after all, but a fleeting show, an empty dream? But the future is eternal and incorruptible, reserved in heaven at the right hand of God, where there are pleasures for evermore.

Now that, by God’s mercy, I find myself again in your midst after a season of sore suffering, I desire to forget my miseries,-and some of them have been very sharp ones. I am so glad to be here again, to see you all, and I pray that it may be a long time before I am deprived of the great privilege of speaking to you in the name of the Lord. I bless God to-night, and praise his name in the great congregation; and I ask for every brother and sister that, when your time of misery comes, you may be brought through it all, and come out of the big end of the horn, rejoicing in the cornucopia of God’s bounty and blessedness, and praising his name, as I do at this time with all my heart. Oh, may every one of you find this text to be true to you, “Thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away”!

The blessing of the Lord be with you all for evermore! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

JOB 11

The words we are about to read were spoken by one of Job’s three friends,-or what if I call them his three tormentors? These men did not speak wisely, and their argument was not altogether sound; but, for all that, in the instance before us, Zophar the Naamathite spoke that which was truthful. Although he made a great mistake in turning it against Job, yet what he said was in the main correct, and we may learn from it as we read it. Remember, dear friends, that whenever you read the words of these three men, you must take them with a good many grains of salt. They are not to be accepted as if they were God’s Word, because they are not. Those three men were mistaken in many points, yet very much of what they said was weighty and valuable, and is still worthy of our careful consideration.

Verses 1-3. Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said, Should not the multitude of words be answered? and should a man full of talk be justified? Should thy lies make men hold their peace? and when thou mockest, shall no man make thee ashamed?

This was a very bitter and cruel speech, and Zophar was not using the language of friendship, or even of common courtesy. First, he charged Job with being a great talker, “a man full of talk.” No doubt Job did speak well and eloquently; but to retort upon him that he was a man abundant in words, was a very cruel thing, especially when he was in such a condition of distress and suffering. Yet, dear friends, it is an evil thing to be men of tongue, and not of hand; it is a dreadful thing to be men-or, for the matter of that, women either-who are “full of talk,” and therefore have no room for anything else. There are some people who seem to think that, simply by their volubility, they can carry all before them! In such a case, we may say with Zophar, “Should not the multitude of words be answered? and should a man full of talk be justified?”

But he went beyond these questions, and charged Job with downright lying because he had pleaded his own innocence: “Should thy lies make men hold their peace?” Zophar also insinuated that Job fumed and frothed, as it were, and spoke folly, which he certainly did not do, for he spoke in solemn, sober earnest if ever a man did.

4. For thou hast said, My doctrine is pure, and I am clean in thine eyes.

Job did not say that; at least, he did not say it in so many words. He did endeavour to prove his own innocence of the false charges that were brought against him; but he never said that he was clean in God’s eyes.

5, 6. But oh that God would speak, and open his lips against thee; and that he would shew thee the secrets of wisdom, that they are double to that which is!

Oh, that God would enable you, dear friends, to see your sin, and make you perceive that there is a double meaning in his law,-a deep, underlying, spiritual meaning, as well as that which is apparent on the surface, so that a man may be guilty of transgression even when he thinks it is not so! Oh, that God would unveil the secrets of his wisdom so as to make you see that he is wiser than all his works, that his hidden wisdom is double that which you have been able to perceive in nature, or in providence, and infinitely greater than he has ever made to appear before men’s eyes.

6. Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth.

That was a hard thing for Zophar to say to Job; but, still, it was true, and it is true in the case of all of us: “He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.”

Even when a man sits down among the ashes, robbed of all his property, and bereaved of all his children, and when he has to scrape himself with a potsherd because of his many sore boils, even then it may be truly said to him, “God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth.”

7. Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?

What wonderful questions these are! How they ought to convict those who glibly talk of God as if they could measure him with a foot rule, and understood exactly what he ought to do and ought to be. We are constantly meeting with statements that such-and-such a thing, which is revealed in Scripture, cannot be true, because it is inconsistent with the modern idea of the benevolence of God. Our only answer to the caviller is, “Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?”

8, 9. It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.

God is incomprehensible by any finite mind; and he is omnipotent, too.

10. If he cut off, and shut up, or gather together, then who can hinder him?

If he sees fit to destroy men, or for a while to make them prisoners; or if he pleases to gather them together, and multiply them like the hosts of heaven, who can hinder him?

11. For he knoweth vain men he seeth wickedness also; will he not then consider it?

Wickedness hidden under the veil of night, God sees as clearly as in the blaze of noon. Wickedness which never comes out of the heart, but tarries there, and does not lead into overt action, God sees it: “Will he not then consider it?” Of course he will.

12. For vain man-

That is just what man is by nature; the best of men are vanity-emptiness: “For vain man”-

12. Would be wise,-

He pretends to wisdom; he wishes to be thought wise; he likes to wear a wise man’s title: “Vain man would be wise,”-

12. Though man be born like a wild ass’s colt.

As untamed, as ignorant, as wilful as a wild ass’s colt, are we by nature.

Zophar seems to think that he has sufficiently rebuked Job for pretending to be wise, and for complaining that God was dealing unjustly with him; so now he begins to admonish him to repent:-

13-18. If thou prepare thine heart, and stretch out thine hands toward him; if iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away, and let not wickedness dwell in thy tabernacles. For then shalt thou lift up thy face without spot; yea, thou shalt be stedfast, and shalt not fear: because thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away: and thine age shall be clearer than the noonday; thou shalt shine forth, thou shalt be as the morning. And thou shalt be secure, because there is hope; yea, thou shalt dig about thee, and thou shalt take thy rest in safety.

It is a great mercy when God enables men to pursue their daily callings, and to take their nightly rest in safety; and it is a still greater mercy when they feel secure, whether they live or die, because they have a good hope concerning the hereafter. It is an unspeakable blessing when sin is washed away, and a man can lift up his face to God without spot, and walk in the light of Jehovah’s countenance all the day long.

19, 20. Also thou shalt lie down, and none shall make thee afraid; yea, many shall make suit unto thee. But the eyes of the wicked shall fail,-

Carefully notice this very solemn prophecy,-the eyes that have looked upon sin with pleasure,-the eyes that have flashed with lascivious desire,-the eyes that have dared to look towards God with defiance or derision,-“the eyes of the wicked shall fail,”-

20. And they shall not escape,-

To what place could they escape from God, when he is everywhere? During the days when the Roman empire extended all over the world, people said that the whole earth was one great prison for Cæsar’s enemies; and the universe itself is a vast prison for those who are condemned of God. Where shall they go to avoid arrest? Whither shall they fly to get beyond God’s reach? They cannot escape anywhere. There is neither hole nor corner, even in the bowels of the mountains, or in the flinty hearts of the rocks, where a sinner can hide himself from the hand of God: “They shall not escape,”-

20. And their hope-

The last thing that ever dies, “their hope”-

20. Shall be as the giving up of the ghost.

Like death itself, their hope shall be. Then, if “their hope shall be as the giving up of the ghost,” what hope is there for them? Let us not have our portion with them, else we shall be as hopeless as they are.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-30, 595, 683; and from “Flowers and Fruits”-14.

SPIRITUAL RELIGION

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day, June 3rd, 1900, delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at new park street chapel, southwark,

On a Thursday Evening, early in the year 1858.

“It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.”-John 6:63.

To a casual reader, it looks as if the meaning of this passage lay upon the very surface; but he who has studied the chapter carefully has discovered that it is a sentence replete with many difficulties as to the exact interpretation of it. I shall not, however, waste your time by entering into any critical discussion of it; but shall only try to give you simply what I believe to be the mind of the Spirit, as uttered by the lips of Jesus in this passage; and after I have done that, I shall then revert to what I shall call the meaning which any person would give to it who is not a diligent and careful student of Scripture. That meaning being true, although not the special truth taught in this passage, I shall briefly enlarge upon it.

“It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.” I suppose there is not a man in the world who could form any intelligent idea of what a spirit is. It is very easy for persons to define a spirit by saying what it is not; but I query whether there is, or ever could be, any man who could form any idea of what it is. We sometimes talk about seeing a spirit; ignorant persons in ages gone by, and some living now in benighted villages, talk about seeing spirits by night. They must know that such talk is a contradiction. Matter can be seen; but a spirit, if it clothed itself in any light substance, could not even then be seen; it would only be the substance that would be visible. The spirit itself is a thing which can neither be tasted, handled, seen, nor discerned in any way whatever by our senses; for if it could be thus perceived, there would then be proof positive that it was not a spirit at all, but that it belonged to the material realm. We divide all things into matter and spirit; and whatsoever can be recognized by the senses, in any way, is matter, depend on it. Spirit is itself a thing too subtile to be either seen or in any other way perceived by the senses, so I repeat what I said just now, that I suppose there is no man living, and that there never will be any man in this mortal state, who will be able accurately to define a spirit so as to say what it is, though he may be able to say what it is not.

Now, there is a region where there are spirits dwelling without any bodies being connected with them. It is certain that, in the world to come, in that state which now intervenes between the death of the saints and the day of the resurrection, they are dwelling before the throne of God in a disembodied state,-pure spirits, without any corporeal form whatever. It is quite certain that the saints before the throne have no semblance of bodily shape whatever. They are pure spirits, beings whose substance we cannot imagine; purely immaterial, as they are also immaculate. But, on earth, you can find no such thing as a pure spirit. We are all spirits in bodies; and, somehow, from the fact that, wherever we find souls and spirits, they are always found in bodies, we are very apt to confound bodies and spirits together. But let us always understand that bodies and spirits are distinct things; and though it hath pleased God, in this world, never to make a spirit without making a house for it to dwell in, called the body, yet the body is not the spirit. “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.”

You will easily perceive the truth of this passage if you will recollect that, in man’s body, no one can tell where the life is situated. In vain the surgeon lays the body on the table, and dissects it; he will find life neither in the brain nor in the heart; he may cut the body in pieces as he pleases, but he will not find anything that he can lay hold upon tangibly and really, and say, “That is life.” He can see all the effects and evidences of life, he can watch the various parts of the body moving, he can behold all the appearances of life which are caused by a supernatural something; but life he cannot see. That is altogether beyond his ken; and after all his searching, he must lay down his scalpel, and say at once, “There now, the task is all over; there is a spirit that quickeneth this body, but in my search after life this flesh profiteth me nothing. I might as well search for a soul within a stone, or within one of the pillars that support this house, as search for a soul within mere flesh and blood if I look for something which I can see, which I can lay hold of, or which, by either taste, sight, smelling, or any other sense, I can distinguish and can designate as being a spirit.”

So, brethren, this illustration just brings me to the truth that is taught in our text. We are here assembled, at this moment, spirits, souls. Here we are also, bodies; but these bodies are not ourselves; they are the houses in which we live. I question whether there is any man who can define what he is himself; the most that any man can say is, “I am; I know I have an existence; but what kind of thing my spirit is, I do not know, I cannot tell; I have no knowledge of what it is. I feel it; I know it moves my body; I feel its outward manifestations; I am certain of my existence; but what I am, I know not; God alone can say.” “I AM THAT I AM,” is comprehensible only to God himself; but man is a being incomprehensible to himself; and though the Lord may allow him to say, “By the grace of God I am what I am,” he cannot tell what he really is, he cannot fully comprehend his own existence.

Understand, then, that, as in our being there is a mystery in our flesh, so religion, the true religion of the blessed God, in order to be made like unto us, and to be a something suitable to us, must be a religion of spirit; but, because we also have a body, it must have a body in which to clothe itself. I want, if I can, to make this plain to you; and if you do not understand it now, I hope you will before I have done. We are spirits in bodies. Well, then, in order to meet our cases, the great work of God in us must be a spiritual thing; but in order that I may be able to talk about it to you, and that you may be able to hear it with your ears, that spiritual thing must be encased in a body; or else, if it were a purely spiritual thing, I could not explain it to you, any more than I could explain to you about a spirit, if there were no body in which a spirit could be found, and no body in which I could be able to live to talk about it. I want to show you this truth very clearly, because there are some persons who are so busy about that which concerns merely the body of religion that they altogether forget that religion has also a spirit. I believe that what our Lord Jesus meant in this passage was, “The mere embodiment of religion profiteth nothing; it is the spirit that quickeneth.” Just as, to use my figure over again, in order to perform an act, the mere flesh and blood and arms and legs profit nothing, it is the spirit that quickens all the bones, and makes the nerves act as they ought to do, and the sinews work as they should, so religion has its outward form, it has its ceremonies, it has its external and visible developments,-its body,-but the mere outward body of religion is of no use whatever, except the inward and invisible spirit quickeneth it.

To begin, then, I will first show you this truth as our Saviour, I think, meant it when he first of all stated it.

There were some people, in our Saviour’s day, who admired Christ merely as a man, and they thought there was some marvellous efficacy in his flesh and blood. To them he said, using almost the very words of our text, “Even my flesh will profit you nothing; it is the spirit that quickens.” I must state this truth very cautiously, yet very plainly. When our Saviour was upon this earth, there were some, I repeat, who admired his person. You remember how our Saviour rebuked the woman who said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which gave thee suck.” He would not have people simply admire his flesh, and think so much of his mere humanity, so he said to her, “Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the Word of God, and keep it.”

There were some other people, who wanted to take the Lord Jesus, and make him a king; but, in effect, he said to them, “My flesh, even if you exalt it to a throne, will profit you nothing. I did not come here that you might bow down and venerate my mere flesh, that you might think the mere admiration of my mortal frame is vital religion. It is the spirit, the gospel that I came to preach, that will benefit you. It is not these outward appearances; it is my thoughts, and words, and acts, which are to bless you.” Hear what the Saviour says in the next sentence, “It is not your admiration of my flesh that is of any use to you, for my flesh profits nothing; it is the spirit that quickens; and if you want to know what is the spirit of my incarnation, I tell you that the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. It is not your venerating my flesh and blood, it is your reception of my doctrines that will be the heart and soul of the religion that I desire you to possess.”

Our Saviour was, however, led to make these remarks from the fact that the ignorant Jews, when he talked about eating his flesh, and drinking his blood, really thought that he meant that they were to turn cannibals, and eat him up. You may well smile at so ridiculous an idea; yet you know that the idea is still prevalent in the Church of Rome. The Romish priest solemnly assures us that the people who eat the bread and drink the wine, or the stuff he calls bread and wine, do actually act the part of cannibals, and eat the body of Christ, and drink his blood. You say to him, “You mean, my dear sir, that they do it in a figure, spiritually.” “No,” he says, “I do not; I mean to say that, after I have pronounced certain words over that bread, it becomes Christ’s flesh; and after I have said a certain prayer over that wine, it becomes his actual blood.” “Well,” we reply to him, “it is very singular, and you certainly cannot expect us to believe you, whilst God allows our heads to be occupied by brains; but even if we do believe you, my dear sir, we refer you to this passage, which says, ‘It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.’ You tell the people that they do actually and really receive the body and blood of Christ. Suppose they do, it is no earthly use to them; and even if they could carnally bite the flesh with their teeth, and drink the blood down their throats, it would be of no more use to them than the eating of the flesh and blood of any other man. It could be of no service whatever to them, for Christ himself denounces the error of transubstantiation, and declares that even his flesh profiteth nothing. It is only the spirit, the spiritual receiving of that flesh and blood, that can be of any avail whatsoever.”

While I am referring to this point, allow me just to say a few more words upon it, for Popery prevails in this day, and the doctrine that the bread and wine are turned into the body and blood of Christ is the bulwark of Popery. Dr. Carson, of Coleraine, son of Dr. Carson, the eminent Baptist, has settled off Dr. Cahill in a remarkable way. He has challenged Dr. Cahill to prove that he can turn the bread and wine used in the sacrament into Christ’s body and blood. He offers to give Dr. Cahill a hundred pounds if he will let him make a wafer for him, and if Dr. Cahill will then put it on his own tongue, and swallow it in Mr. Carson’s own presence, “if the Doctor is not dead in an hour,” says Dr. Carson, “I’ll give him a hundred pounds.” “No,” says someone, “that is not fair.” “Oh! but if he can turn it into the body and blood of Christ, it cannot hurt him, whatever it may contain.” “But would you make it of poison, then?” “Yes, the deadliest I could find.” “Would you give him poison?” “I should not give it to him; he would swallow it himself; he would do it of his own voluntary choice.” Of course, Dr. Cahill will not submit to that test; he knows that he cannot turn the wafer and the wine into the body and blood of Christ; if he could, Dr. Carson says it would not hurt him, for the body and blood of Christ would poison no one.

But some wise Romanist says, “That is not a fair test; Dr. Cahill does not pretend to turn poison into the body and blood of Christ; it is only pure bread and wine that can thus be manipulated.” “Very well,” says Dr. Carson, “I’ll try him another way. I will let him choose a youth from seven or eight Catholic boys; he shall take a quart of wine, and turn this wine in his own peculiar way into the blood of Christ. The boy shall drink the quart of wine, and if he is not drunk in six hours, I will pay the hundred pounds.” “Now,” says Dr. Carson, “if that liquid is really the blood of Christ, it will not make him drunk; he might drink a hogshead of it, and it would not make him intoxicated.” But Dr. Cahill dare not come to such a trial as that; for it would very soon be found that the so-called “consecrated” wine would make the boy intoxicated as quickly as any other wine would; therefore, it could not have been turned, even by the great Doctor himself, into the blood of Christ.

The fact is, the lie is so palpable, the delusion is so absurd, that any child, of a reasonable age, would as soon think of believing the cock and bull story which we used to read in our childish days, about what the bull said, and what the cock said, to be actual truth, as to imagine it to be a literal fact that any priest, or any man in the world, could ever turn bread and wine into flesh and blood. But even if they could, hear again the words of our text: “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.” So, then, after all, the Roman Catholic sacrament, if it be actually a cannibal’s feast upon the body and blood of Christ, is of no earthly use; but that divinely-appointed ordinance wherein we do spiritually receive the flesh and blood of Jesus, and in a spiritual way hold communion with him, is that alone which quickeneth.

This brings me to the truth that I want you, dear friends, specially to understand. As Christ Jesus in his flesh was the embodiment of his own doctrine, and yet not his flesh, but the spirit of his doctrine quickeneth souls, so the outward forms and ceremonies, which Christ has made to be the body to contain the spirit of his truth, are of no earthly use at all unless the Spirit of God be in them.

Take, for instance, the ordinance of believers’ baptism; there are the pool and the water; that pool and that water are, so to speak, the flesh and blood of dedication; the right observance of that holy ordinance signifies that we do solemnly devote ourselves to the Lord Jesus. Suppose, however, our hearts are in a wrong condition, or that we are not converted persons;-suppose there is no influence of the Spirit resting upon us during the act of baptism, then the act of baptism is like the flesh apart from the spirit, it is a dead thing, it profiteth nothing, because it is without the soul. We come, the next Sabbath, to the Lord’s table: there is the bread broken by God’s servant, there is the wine reverently handed round by the deacons of the church, and it is sipped by the communicants; but, mark you, however devoutly the whole service is performed, except the Spirit of the living God breathes through the divine ordinance, “the flesh”-that is, the mere embodiment of communion,-will profit you nothing. You might sit at a thousand communion tables, and you might be baptized in a myriad pools; but all this would not avail one jot or tittle for your salvation, unless you had the Spirit of God to quicken you.

Nay, to go further, it is not these two outward ordinances only that need the Spirit in them; it is so in everything else. You have sometimes read, dear friends, of some eminent Christians who grew to have much fellowship with Christ by prayer. Perhaps you imbibed the idea that, if you were to go home, and spend as many hours in your closet as they did, you would get as much profit by it; and not thinking about the Holy Spirit, you simply devote yourself to private prayer as you might to any manual exercise, with a hope of profiting by the exercise alone. I tell you, you might be on your knees till your knees were worn bare, and you might be in your closet till the steam of your devotion ran down the walls; but unless the Spirit of the Lord was in that closet with you, the mere fleshly exercise of praying would no more avail and profit you than if you had been chanting songs to the moon, or standing in the street to sell your goods.

Another hears that a certain person has been very much blessed by reading a text of Scripture. “Oh!” says he, “has that text been blessed to such an one? Then, I’ll go, and read the same passage, too.” You think that, if you do the same as he does, you will be equally blessed; and you are marvellously surprised that, when you read the passage, it does you no good. It made his spirit leap for joy, it filled his soul with the wine of the kingdom; but to you it is like a dry well, or an empty bottle. Why is this? The mere letter, in which the promise is revealed, profiteth you nothing; it is the spirit of the promise, it is the life of the Holy Spirit running through the veins of the promise, that alone can profit you. You hear that another man meditates on God’s law day and night, and becomes like a tree planted by the rivers of water. You say, “I will take care that, every morning, I will read a chapter out of the Scriptures; and that, every night, I will read two chapters.” There are certain people who think that, if they read a good passage out of the Bible, they have done a great deal. In that kind of spirit, they might just as well read a portion out of Hudibras; for they just read it straight through, without thinking of understanding it.

Many of our ministers think that, in the public service, they must read a certain quantity of the Scriptures; and they take, perhaps, three long chapters out of Ezekiel, and not a soul in the congregation knows the meaning of what they are reading. If they were to read a Dutch sermon in an English chapel, it would do the hearers just about as much good, for no one understands what they read. Instead of reading, as Ezra did, and expounding the meaning to the people, they must go on over hedge and ditch,-one continual steeple-chase! Instead of stopping to crack the shells, and give the kernels of truth to the people, they read right on, without attempting to give any explanation of the passage. To such persons, we would simply say, “Your Bible-reading is but the flesh, it is of no use to you, ‘it is the spirit that quickeneth;’ the mere flesh, the outward fashion and form of Bible-reading will not profit anybody. One sentence of the Bible prayed over, and bedewed with the Spirit, and made alive, though it be only a short sentence of six words, will profit you more than a hundred chapters without the Spirit, because they are ‘flesh’-dead; but the one verse with the Spirit is the thing that quickeneth.”

I do not know whether I have as yet brought out the full meaning of the text; but I want to let everyone understand that it is not the mere outward embodiment of our religion that saves the soul, and that profits us; it is the inner spirit of the thing that does us good. Mark, I would not find fault with any of these forms, any more than I would find fault with our bodies, because they are not spirits; our bodies are good things for our spirits to live in; and the forms of religion are good things for the spirit of religion to live in; but the form without the spirit, though it be the most decorous, and apparently the most devout that can be presented to God, can be of no use for our soul’s eternal profit and ultimate salvation. “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.”

Now, my dear friend, Mr. So-and-so, if you will just take out your pencil, and cast up your accounts for all the years of your life, the sum of them all will come to very little, if what I say be true. “I think,” you say, “I am a tolerably good sort of man; I have a few faults, but just look at what I have done. I have been to chapel twice every Sunday almost since I was a boy,-I don’t know that I missed once, except when I was ill; that has been very good of me, and no mistake. I always read the Bible every morning; I always have family prayer; that is very good of me; another item to be reckoned to my account. I say my prayers when I go to bed at night, and when I get up in the morning; I very frequently go to prayer-meetings; I don’t think anyone can reasonably find fault with me; really, I think I do everything to make me a truly religious man.” Ah! and did you put at the end of it, “Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, unjust, extortioners,” and so on, or even like that poor fellow, a Sabbath-breaker, whom you saw going the opposite way as you were coming to your usual place of worship? It is a pity you didn’t finish it up in that fashion; but if you did not in words, you finished it up so in your heart. But I pray God to show you that all these beautiful things of yours are good for nothing. There are your chapel-goings,-all flesh; there are your Bible-readings,-all flesh; there are your family prayers,-all flesh; there are your good works and excellences,-all flesh. You have never received the Spirit of the living God; you dare not say that you have. Well, then, all these things will profit you nothing whatsoever.

“It is the spirit that quickeneth,” you know, my dear sir,-and let me speak very pointedly,-you know that you never enter into the spirit of the things of which you have been speaking. Though you go to your church or chapel regularly, yet you know that you might very often just as well be at home; for when the worshippers sing, you do not sing with all your heart; and when the minister preaches, it is seldom there is much that touches you, unless it is what you call “a good intellectual discourse,” which happens to please you, and you believe it, just because it meets your views. You know that, into the inward soul, and marrow, and bowels of devotion, you have never yet learned to penetrate. Your devotion is like a certain ox, which was slain as a sacrifice in the time of siege in Rome, and was said to portend evil because, when the augur slew it, he declared that he could not find a heart anywhere. He looked through all the entrails, but no heart could he discover; and hence, the Romans declared that their city must be destroyed. It was an omen of ill fortune, they said, when the sacrifice had no heart in it. It is just the same with you. You have done all these things, and there has been as much reality in what you have done as there was devotion in the poor Kalmuck’s windmill, when he tied the prayer to it, and put it up in the garden, and every time it blew round, he counted that was just one more prayer. There was as much heart in your prayer as there was in his windmill; that is to say, none at all. Go on no longer with this useless round of performances, I implore you. I would not have you give up the performances; but seek the spirit that can make them true and acceptable in God’s sight. Stop awhile, and ask God to give you that inward spirit that quickeneth, for that is what is needed: “the flesh profiteth nothing.”

But I must speak also to you who are the children of God, and I must ask you,-How often do you forget this all-important truth? I know it is not likely that I would leave my chamber any morning, without prayer; but, oh, brethren, I have often left it without having the spirit of prayer! I should not like to pass a day without reading the Scriptures, but I am afraid it is very often the mere “flesh” of formal reading, and not the spirit breathing in the Word. And how often is our conscience satisfied with the mere form without the spirit! Now, if we were what we ought to be, we should never be content with the form, unless we could also see the spirit in it.

Mother, would you be content to have at home a child who was dead? Suppose someone should say to you, “Why, this child is just as good a child as ever it was! Look at it! It has not lost a leg, or an arm, or any part of its body!” “Ah, but,” you would say, “it is dead.” “Oh!” says one, “there is no great difference; it looks as beautiful now as ever it did.” “Ah!” says the poor mother, “but there is a vast deal of difference between what it was when it was alive, and what it is now it is dead.” Just transfer that idea to your poor dead prayers, and your poor dead Bible-readings, and your poor dead sacraments, and your poor dead goings to chapel, and all that! Ah! how many of our sacrifices are just poor dead things, when we bring them to the Lord! They have died in the night, and then we come and offer them before God! How frequently do we satisfy our conscience with having “the flesh”-the embodiment of the sacrifice, and yet, all the while, we forget the spirit! But let us remember that God only looks for the life. He does not trouble about the body; and we ought, in all we do for him, to take care, first of all, that the spirit is there, and then we may rest quite sure that the flesh and blood of the devotion will take care of themselves.

This, I believe, is the true meaning of the passage. But the common rendering of it, if anyone reads it without noticing the context, would be, “Why, that means, ‘It is the Spirit that quickeneth;’ that is to say, ‘It is the Holy Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.’ ”

Our friend will excuse me when I say that it cannot mean that; you notice that the “s” in the word “spirit” in the text has not a capital letter. If it meant the Holy Spirit, it would be so marked, to separate it from the spirit to which I have just referred,-the inward spirit, the life of a thing. This word “spirit” here does not mean the Holy Spirit; still, almost every ordinary reader would make that mistake, and say, “It is the Holy Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.” Well, it is a mistake that will not do him any hurt, because, if it does not say so here, it does say so somewhere else; and if it is not true in this one particular text, it is true all over the Bible, and it is true in a Christian’s experience, so that a man may make a great many worse mistakes than that. Well, then, let us for once make that mistake, and then let us get the truth out of it: “It is the Holy Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.”

“Can aught beneath a power divine

The stubborn will subdue?

’Tis thine, Eternal Spirit, thine

To form the heart anew.

’Tis thine the passions to recall,

And upwards bid them rise;

And make the scales of error fall

From reason’s darken’d eyes.

To chase the shades of death away,

And bid the sinner live;

A beam of heaven, a vital ray,

’Tis thine alone to give.”

How often have I thought, when I have been preaching, “There is a young woman in the gallery, and down there in the area is a young man; how interested they look during the sermon!” I have met with them, I have admired their characters; they have had an amiable carriage and deportment; there has been much in them that everybody would tell others to imitate and emulate. I have said, “Ah! I shall soon have them added to the church; there is so much that is good about them, it will be such an easy transition for them, they are so moral and so excellent, it will be very easy for them surely to take a step into the kingdom of heaven.” I don’t say that I have said so much as that in words to my heart; but that has been about what I have thought. Well, there has been a very different sort of fellow, a queer-looking object certainly, who came running into the chapel, one Thursday evening, towards the end of the service; not even washed, nor in any way prepared for divine worship; he only just came to hear something that would make him laugh, as he thought. I did not expect to have him converted; but the next time I sat to see enquirers, in he came,-cleaned and brushed up,-but I recognized him, for all that, and I said to him, “Didn’t you come into the chapel, one Thursday night, after you had been hammering and tinkering away somewhere? I thought you looked a strange customer, certainly.” “Yes,” said he, “and the Lord met with me that night.”

Now, I sat many and many a time to see enquirers, but I did not see the young man or the young woman come. Why was this? The Lord meant to teach his servant that “the flesh profiteth nothing.” That man seemed to me far from God, and that young man and that young woman seemed very near. But the Lord said to me, “I will just let you learn that all their morality and all their goodness did not put them near the kingdom of heaven, or help towards their salvation. I could save one as well as the other; and if I chose to show my sovereignty, I might even let publicans and harlots enter the kingdom of heaven before those who, becoming proud of their morality, would not stoop before me.” Have you not, sometimes, met with a person of such a peculiar character that you have said, “Is it not a pity someone cannot talk with that man?” I often have notes of this sort. A father writes to me, “I wish you could get hold of my son; he is a very interesting young man; if you were to put the truth before him to suit his turn of mind, he would be sure to lay hold of it, for if you knew how he was mentally constituted, you would say at once there was a peculiar adaptation in his mind for the reception of the gospel.” Well, I have been told that a dozen times; but I never found it true even once. “The flesh profiteth nothing.” No peculiar adaptation of mind is any more susceptible of gospel influences than another. Dead sinners are all dead, and all dead alike. Some may be black, and some may be white; some may be well washed and dressed, and some may have all the mire and filth of sensuality about them; but they are all dead alike; and when converting grace comes to deal with them, it finds as much for its exercise in the one case as in the other; it finds as much to help it in the one heart as in the other,-that is to say, it finds nothing to help it at all. It brings all that is helpful within itself; it kindles its own fire with its own torch, it blows the fire with its own breath, and asks for nothing in the sinner, be he who he may.

Then, again, we have sometimes said, “If such-and-such a man were converted, dear me, what a shining Christian he would make! He is a man of brilliant talents, of great intellectual power, and of extensive fortune. Oh, if he were but converted, what a jubilee it would be to the Church of God! How much he would do for Christ!” Well, do you know, I have always found out that these fine people, who, when they were converted, were to be something extraordinary, if they have been converted, and we have got them, have not turned out to be quite so great after all! I knew a minister once, who, with great joy and gladness, baptized a man. It was on a New-year’s day, and I remember with what self-congratulation he said, “The Lord has sent me one of the best New-year’s gifts I ever had;” and he looked upon that man, and said, “Ah! this is a brother; he is a great gain to the church; he is a man of such active spirit, of such an excellent turn of mind, and he is everything that could be desired.” Well, I have just happened to live long enough to see that man rend the church in sunder, and drive the minister out of his pulpit, and he is alive still, a thorn in the side of that church, and a huge prickly bramble that they would be glad enough to eradicate, but they have scarcely power enough to do that. No; the Lord will show us that “the flesh profiteth nothing.” “You may have him,” says the Lord, “if he is such a fine fellow; take him, you will find he will not be much good to you, after all. I will let you know that ‘the flesh profiteth nothing:’ ‘it is the spirit’ alone ‘that quickeneth.’ ”

On the other hand, we have seen some come whose “flesh” could not help them. They were the poor, the mean, the illiterate, the despised; and we have seen the grace of God blaze up in their hearts to an intense degree of fervour, and we have seen them stand confident and strong, notwithstanding the nothingness of the flesh; and then we have said, “Verily, O God, it is marvellous how, when the flesh is weak, thy grace is strong;” and we have heard an answer from “the excellent glory,” which said, “Ah! the flesh profiteth nothing: it is the spirit that quickeneth.”

Now, I do not believe that there is any form of our flesh, nor any act of our flesh, nor anything that our flesh can do, or attempt to do, or think of, or suggest, that can in any way assist in the great spiritual work of our salvation. It is the Spirit alone that quickeneth; and you will find, till you die, that “the flesh profiteth nothing,” and profiteth no one, except the devil, and it often profits him; but in God’s ways, and in God’s holy gospel, you will always find the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. You will have to feel this truth, that the flesh at its best estate profiteth nothing. “It is the spirit that quickeneth.”

Now, my brother, or my sister, in conclusion, I will ask thee this question,-Hast thou received the influences of the Holy Spirit? and have those influences led thee to worship God, who is a Spirit, “in spirit and in truth”? For, if not, though some may put thee in the cradle of ceremonies, and rock thee to sleep, I will not be one of them. Although men may tell thee thou art right enough because thou art outwardly so religious, because thou art no Sabbath-breaker, no swearer, no drunkard, I warn thee that, unless thou art born again from above, thou canst not see the kingdom of God; and when drunkards, and harlots, and all manner of ungodly persons, shall be driven from the presence of God, you also shall share their fate, for you are dead in trespasses and sins, even as they are. If you would ever enter heaven, you must be quickened by the Holy Spirit. No more shall I say, but earnestly entreat the Spirit of the blessed God to impress upon your hearts this solemn thought, and lead you to renounce the works of the flesh, and put your trust in him “who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.” May the Lord’s mercy rest upon you all, for Jesus’ sake! Amen.