But did not John say that “fear hath torment”? Then, how can he be happy who hath fear, and especially he who hath it alway? Did not John also say that “perfect love casteth out fear”? How is it, then, that he is happy in whom love is not made perfect, if so be that the fear which John meant be left in it? Dear friends, the explanation is that the word “fear” is used in different senses, and both Solomon and John are right; neither is there any conflict between their two statements. There is a fear which perfect love casts out because it hath torment. That is the slavish fear which trembles before God as a criminal trembles before the judge,-the fear which mistrusts, suspects, and has no confidence in God,-the fear which, therefore, keeps us away from God, causes us to dread the thought of drawing near to him, and makes us say, like the fool to whom the psalmist refers, “No God.” Many of you know what this kind of fear is, for you once suffered from it; though I trust you are now delivered from it by faith in Christ Jesus, and by the love which the Spirit of God has wrought in your hearts. There is also another sort of fear, which springs out of this slavish fear, and which is to be equally shunned, namely, a fear which leads to the apprehension that something evil is about to happen. There are many persons, who have so little faith in God that they fear that the trials, which will sooner or later overtake them, will also overthrow them. They are afraid of a certain form of suffering that threatens them; they fear that they will not have patience enough to bear up under it, they feel sure that their spirit will sink in their sickness. Above all, they are dreadfully afraid to die. They have not yet believed that God will be with them when they pass through the valley of deathshade; and because they cannot trust him, they are all their lifetime subject to bondage. They cannot say that all things work together for good to them; but they often say, as poor old Jacob mistakenly said, “All these things are against me.” And so they go on, fearing this, and fearing that, and fearing the other, and their life is spent, to a great extent, in sorrow and sighing. May the Lord graciously deliver any of you who are in that condition!

That is a kind of fear from which the true believer is free. He knows that, whatever happens, God will overrule it for the good of his chosen. “He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.” Resignation to the divine will has made him feel that whatever the Lord wills is right; he does not seek to have his own will, but he is glad to make God’s will his will, and so he is perfectly satisfied with all that comes. God save you, my brethren and sisters in Christ, from all fear of a slavish sort! Above all, no Christian ought to have any fear which would bring dishonour upon the truthfulness, the goodness, the immutability, or the power of God. To doubt his promise,-to suppose that he will not make it good,-this is indeed a fear which hath torment. To doubt God’s faithfulness,-to suppose that he can ever forget his children, that his mercy can be withdrawn from them, or that he will be favourable to them no more,-this also is wrong. To doubt the perseverance of the saints, when God’s Word has so plainly declared that he will keep their feet, and will perfect the work which he hath begun in them,-indeed, to doubt anything that has the inspired Scriptures to support it, and to tremble in any way when your trembling arises out of a suspicion that God may change, or cease to be faithful to his promises, and faithful to his Son, all that kind of fearing is to be cast far from us.

But, dear friends, there is another fear that ought to be cultivated,-the reverential fear which the holy angels feel when they worship God, and behold his glory;-that gracious fear which makes them veil their faces with their wings as they adore the Majesty on high. There is also the loving fear which every true, right-hearted child has towards its father,-a fear of grieving so tender a parent,-a proper feeling of dread which makes it watch its every footstep, lest, in the slightest degree, it should deviate from the path of absolute obedience. May God graciously grant to us much of this kind of fear!

Then there is a holy fear of ourselves, which makes us shun the very thought of self-reliance,-which weans us equally from self-righteousness and self-confidence,-and which makes us feel that we shall surely fall unless the Lord shall continually hold us up, and that we shall certainly die unless he shall sustain our spiritual life. This fear of our own selves-the fear of sinning against God-is a fear which we ought always to cherish, and concerning which the text saith, “Happy is the man that feareth alway.”

I have taken this topic for a special reason. You know that we have recently had a great deal of preaching of “Believe! Believe! Believe!” and I have very heartily joined in the evangelistic services which have been held. We have also had a great deal of singing about full assurance, and we have had a little chattering about perfection, or something wonderfully like it, as far as I can make it out; and as I put all these things together, I cannot help being afraid that there will be a great growth of the mushrooms of presumption. With warm days and damp days, and with everything tending to make vegetation luxurious, we may expect to see an abundant crop of poisonous fungi growing up,-noxious agarics, toadstools, and I know not what besides. They will come up in a night, but they may not be destroyed in a night; and they will be a great nuisance, and possibly worse than that. So I want to speak in such a way that we may all be led to do some sincere heart-searching, and to commend to you the cherishing of an anxious fear lest, peradventure, all that glitters should not prove to be gold, and lest much of that which looks like wheat should, at the last, turn out to be tares.

My first observation shall be that there is, after all, very grave cause for fear. Otherwise, Solomon would not have been inspired to write, “Happy is the man that feareth alway.”

There is cause for fear, dear brethren and sisters who love the Lord, because corruption still remaineth in us. In the best man or woman here, there is still the old flesh that lusteth against the spirit, that flesh which is in constant enmity to the spirit, and never will be reconciled to it. If that flesh keeps quiet for a time, it is there all the while, just as a lion is still a lion even when he is lying hidden in his den. He only needs some dark hour to come, and he will rush forth from his den; so is it with the flesh which still lurks within us. When a man imagines that all his corruptions are gone, that is no proof that he is clean rid of them, but only that he does not really know his true condition; for, if God were but to lift the veil that covers his eyes, and to let him see the great deeps of sin that are in his nature, he would soon discover that he has grave cause for fear, and he would be driven to cry out to God, “Oh, keep me, I beseech thee, or else I shall commit spiritual suicide! I must and shall become like the vilest of apostates, unless thy sovereign grace shall hold me on my way.”

There is also cause for fear, my brethren, if you look around at the world in which we live. This vile world has not changed its character; it is no more a friend to grace than it was in the days of the early Christians. It was a difficult thing to be a Christian in the days of Diocletian and the other persecuting Roman emperors, but I sometimes think that it is an even more difficult thing to be a Christian now. To be a soldier under Hannibal, and to fight bravely when crossing the Alps, must have been a difficult task, but it was far more trying for the soldiers when they reached sunny Italy, and their holiday amusements destroyed the discipline of the army. The Christian camp, at the present time, seems to be pitched in a sunny plain, where all the surrounding influences tend to relax the sinews of the warriors, and to take away from them their strength. It is hard to keep to the narrow way when the broad road runs so near to it that sometimes they seem to be one. The time was when the broad road was so distinct from the narrow one that we could easily discern who was travelling to heaven, and who was going to hell; but, now, the devil has engineered the broad road so very close up to the side of the narrow way that there are many people who manage to walk on both of them; they never seem so pleased as when they can first take a little turn on the narrow road, and then, afterwards, take another turn on the broad one. Let us never imitate Mr. Facing-both-ways; but let us walk only in the narrow way, that leadeth unto life, whatever it may cost us to do so. You must be in a very singular position if you never have any temptations; indeed, I should not be surprised to learn, if you live where you have no temptations, that you are undergoing a worse trial than temptation itself would be. In such a place as that, you are very likely to get stagnant. The very pleasantness of the situation may put you off your guard, and you will not live so near to God as you would have done if your surroundings had seemed to be more opposed to your growth in grace. There is cause for fear, then, when all around us there is an enemy behind every bush, a temptation lurking in every joy, and a devil hiding himself under every table,-when, as old Francis Quarles used to say,-

“The close pursuer’s busy hands do plant

Snares in thy substance; snares attend thy want;

Snares in thy credit; snares in thy disgrace;

Snares in thy high estate; snares in thy base;

Snares tuck thy bed; and snares surround thy board;

Snares watch thy thoughts; and snares attach thy word;

Snares in thy quiet; snares in thy commotion;

Snares in thy diet; snares in thy devotion;

Snares lurk in thy resolves, snares in thy doubt;

Snares lie within thy heart, and snares without;

Snares are above thy head, and snares beneath;

Snares in thy sickness, snares are in thy death.”

Besides that, dear friends,-in addition to having a store of dry tinder within our heart, and showers of sparks falling near us,-besides having a great heap of gunpowder within our nature, and being constantly exposed to the fires that burn all around us, we must remember that there is such a thing as self-deception in the world. This is a great and a common danger. Do you not yourselves know some who have been self-deceived? I have had a wide experience in watching over the souls of others, and many persons have come under my notice, who have thought themselves Christians, and I have often wondered how they could think so. I have seen that in their lives which has led me to feel sure-as sure as one man can feel concerning another-that the grace of God could not be in them; yet they have not had any doubt or suspicion concerning their Christianity. Now, brethren and sisters, do not you know some people like that? Well, then, is it not possible that the judgment which you have formed concerning them is the very same that others have formed concerning you? And perhaps that judgment is true. There have been great preachers, who have been very eloquent men, and God has even condescended to use them in his service; yet, afterwards, it has been discovered that they were living in gross sin all the while that they were preaching holiness to others. If that has been the case with only one preacher, might it not also be the case with me? Have you never heard of church-members, who have come regularly to the communion table, and been very prominent in the work of the church, and apparently leading the way in all good things; yet, after all, they were rotten at the core? They had made a mistake altogether-unless they had wilfully deceived others instead of themselves,-in professing to be Christ’s people at all. Well, then, if some have acted like that, may not you do the same? I do not wish to say anything unpleasant, merely for the sake of making you feel uncomfortable; but I want you to remember that my text says, “Happy is the man that feareth alway.” Sometimes, to examine the foundation on which we are building for eternity, to look into the profession which we have made, to see whether it will stand the wear and tear of daily life, and to judge whether it will be likely to endure the test of our dying day, and the still sterner test of the day of judgment,-is a wise occupation for every one of us. The man who dares not have his ship examined is the man who knows that some of the timbers are rotten; and if you do not like being examined, you are the very man who ought to put yourself through that process without a moment’s delay, obeying the injunctions of the apostle, “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?”

There is also great cause for fear, because some Christians have been “saved; yet so as by fire.” Oh, with what difficulty have some of God’s ships entered the eternal harbour! They have lost their masts, the deck has been swept clear of everything, they have been well-nigh abandoned as derelict; and if it had not been that the eternal grace of God had ensured the safety of the vessels, they must have drifted away to destruction, and gone to the bottom of the sea. And what tugging there has been to get some souls into heaven! Do you not know some of that sort? I saw one, not long ago. I had highly esteemed him at one time; but, from what I learned afterwards, I saw how little cause there was in him for my esteem. He had professed to be a child of God, but he was weeping and wailing, and asking whether there was any hope for him. As a contrast to such a sad case, I may say that I have stood by the bedsides of many others, and have learned from them lessons that I can never forget; for they have told me something of the joys of heaven by the very glances of their eyes, and the wondrous words which have fallen from their lips, often more full of poetry than poetry itself. They have seemed to be inspired, and to be favoured with visions of the hereafter as they have looked through the veil which had become so thin to them. But I have also seen some, such as the one I mentioned just now, who have not lived near to God, who have neglected prayer, who have done but little service for Christ; and when they have come to die, they have been “saved; yet so as by fire.” They have had to come, in their last moments, without any comfort of hope, without any joy in the Lord, and cry, “What must we do to be saved?”-just as though they had never known the way of salvation, although they have been professors for years. Instead of having an abundant entrance into heaven, they have just been saved, and no more. Now, you and I do not want to have such an experience as that; and, therefore, let us always fear lest we should get into such a state of heart that this should be our case. Let us fear lest we lose communion with God, let us fear lest we misuse any grace which the Holy Spirit has given to us, let us fear lest we become fruitless and unprofitable, let us fear lest we lose the light of Jehovah’s countenance; if we do so fear, we shall understand what Solomon meant when he wrote, “Blessed is the man that feareth alway.”

Now, secondly, I want to prove to you that the man who does so fear is a happy man. I will show you that by a few contrasts.

The word “happy” in our text may not exactly mean that the man enjoys happiness just now, but that he is really happy, he has the root of true happiness in him, and he will have the fruit in due time. Now, here are two men. One of them says, “I am a child of God; I have had a very deep experience; I know all the doctrines of grace, blessed be God; and I feel that I am thoroughly confirmed in Christian habits. I may be tempted to sin, but I shall be able to resist the temptation.” Take a good look at that man, so that you will know him when you see him again. With a formal prayer, he leaves his bedroom in the morning, and he goes forth to his business, perfectly satisfied with himself whatever may happen. Here is another man. He says, “I believe I am a child of God, for I have trusted in Jesus Christ as my Saviour, and I know that I am safe in his hands; but I dare not trust myself. I feel that, unless he shall uphold me all through this day, I may, by my words, or my actions, bring dishonour upon his holy name; and I tremble lest I should do so.” See him kneeling down there by his bedside, and hear how earnestly he pleads with, God. His prayer is something like this, “O Lord, I am as helpless as a little child; hold thou me up, or I shall surely fall! I am like a lamb going out among wolves; O Lord, preserve me!” Now, which of these two do you regard as the really happy man? The happiness of the two men may, to a superficial observer, appear to be about equal, but which happiness would you prefer to have? I say,-and I think most of you will agree with me,-God save me from the so-called happiness which is careless and prayerless, and give me that holy fear which drives me often to my knees, and makes me cry to God to keep me.

Well, now, night has come on, and the two men have reached their homes. Neither of them has fallen into any gross sin during the day; they have both been preserved from that evil. One of them retires to his bed after a few sentences of formal prayer, with no life or earnestness in it, and no expression of his gratitude to God, and he soon falls asleep in perfect contentment with himself. The other man looks carefully over all that has happened during the day, for he is afraid lest he may have sinned against God even unconsciously, and he takes notice of things which the other man does not think anything of, and he says, “Lord, I fear that I erred there, and that I failed there; forgive thy child, and help me to do better in the future.” Then he says, “I thank thee, O Lord, that thou hast kept me, by thy grace, from being surprised by sudden temptation, and thou hast enabled me to honour thy name, at least in some degree! I give all the glory for this to thee; and now, my Lord,-

“ ‘sprinkled afresh with pardoning blood,

I lay me down to rest,

As in the embraces of my God,

Or on my Saviour’s breast.’ ”

Now, which is the happy man of these two? I know which I should like to be,-the man who is so fearful and so full of trembling that he wonders that he has not fallen, and who is sometimes almost afraid that he has; and who, therefore, walks humbly before his God. Is he not infinitely to be preferred to the other man who thinks it is a matter of course that he shall always stand, and who has no qualms of conscience about what he calls little faults? You may rest assured that the seeds of untold misery are already sown in that other man’s heart.

Think of these two men under another aspect. Imagine that they are sailors out at sea. One of them is well aware that a certain course is very dangerous. Some captains have been able to take it, and have made “a short cut” by doing so, and he decides that he will take that course. He can see that his vessel is bound to go near some very ugly-looking rocks, and among a number of sharp ledges where many others have been wrecked; but he is a bold, dare-devil sort of fellow, he believes that all will be right, and he has no fear. But here is the other captain, and he says, “My motto is, to keep as far away from danger as I possibly can. I know that, in fair weather, that passage may be safe; but, then, I cannot reckon on fair weather. I may be caught in a fog, and not know where I am; or a terrible storm may come on, and drive me where I do not wish to go. I shall, therefore, take the longer course, which is also the safer course.” Now, in which of these two vessels would you like to sail, and which of the two captains do you esteem to be the happy man? Of course, you say the second one. We admire courage, but we do not admire foolhardiness; and the Christian man, who seeks to steer clear of temptation, who endeavours to be precise and exact in his mode of living, so as not to go near to sin, but to avoid it, and keep away from it, must be judged to be, in the best sense of the word, a happier man than the one who courts temptation, and heedlessly rushes into a position of peril.

Look at the difference between what these two men regard as happiness. The one who was not afraid said, “Why should I fear? Am I not getting to be an old-established Christian now? Have I not resisted temptation for such a long while that I need not fear it now? I feel that I may do what young people must not do; it would be dangerous for them, but it will never hurt me.” So he talked, but look at him now. He has become so fond of the drunkard’s cup that he was seen reeling through the streets, or else he has been so enchanted by the lusts of the flesh that he has committed himself fatally. Or it may be that he was strongly tempted to make money very quickly, and quick money-making and honesty never go together, except by a very extraordinary concatenation of circumstances; and this man thought it would end all right, and that he should make a great haul, so he asked the devil to help him throw the net in just that once, and now he has got into the clutches of the law, and his name-the name of a man who once made a profession of religion,-is bracketed with that of other rogues and vagabonds! But now look at the timid man,-the man who said, “I know that I shall never be intoxicated if I never take anything that is intoxicating; I know that I shall not be a thief if I never take anybody’s money but my own; I know that, if I never indulge even in indelicate expressions, if I never think of or look at anything that is impure, I shall not be likely to go in that evil way which I utterly abhor;”-that is the man who is both safe and happy, “the man that feareth alway.” Some people call him a milksop, and say that he has not spirit enough to do as others do; but just look at him. He can go in and out of the house of God as an honourable Christian man, while the other one, of whom I have told you, is a moral wreck, and his name is a by-word and a reproach. I can bear my testimony that I have seen high professors so act as to become a stench in our nostrils; and, on the other hand, I have seen poor, timid girls, who were half afraid they were hypocrites, and poor trembling men, who used to come to me for comfort and counsel, lest they should be deceiving themselves. I have seen many of the latter class enter the port of glory like ships in full sail coming into the harbour, while those other vessels, with their painted hulls, that seemed to tempt a shot from the enemy, have gone to the bottom, and they have been lost to us, and lost to themselves.

Now I will suppose that both these men, whom I have been describing, have fallen into a certain sin; see what a difference there is between them now. The man who has not any fear says, “Well, yes, there is no doubt that I did wrong; but, then,”-and he begins telling all about the circumstances under which he says that he was “overtaken.” He tries to make out that he was an innocent victim who was deceived by somebody else. Now listen to “the man that feareth alway.” “Ah!” says he, “I have sinned;” and he hangs his head in shame; and then adds, “I have no excuse to make; and you cannot say anything to me that will be half so heavy and so hard as what I say to myself. God will forgive me, I have no doubt, for I have truly repented; but I can never forgive myself.” The first man has a dry eye, and a proud, defiant spirit; and it is very likely that, having committed that one great sin, he will go on, and commit another, and yet another, and get harder and harder in his heart continually, yet all the while talk about being one of God’s elect, who will be saved at last. Well now, that man is not a happy man. I pray that none of us may ever experience the wretchedness of having a seared conscience, and get into a state of indifference in which we can trifle with sin, and yet pretend to be the servants of God. But, oh, if we do fall into sin, may the Lord make us very tender about it! Let this be our prayer,-

“Quick as the apple of an eye,

O Lord, my conscience make!

Awake my soul, when sin is nigh,

And keep it still awake.”

Dear brothers and sisters, may you, by God’s grace, be preserved from sin; but if sin should come upon you unawares, may your bones be broken by it, and may you feel that your very heart is wounded because you have wounded your God! To repent of sin, is one of the hall-marks of a Christian; but to have a hardened, untrembling heart, is one of the sure marks of the reprobate who are far off from God.

I might thus continue to show you, by a hundred contrasts, that the man who feareth alway is the really happy man. Suppose that we are fishing, and that we have cast our line into the water. There is one fish that is altogether afraid of our bait, and of all our arrangements, and he swims as far as ever he can up or down the stream away from us. But here are some fish that are quite charmed with our worm. They say that they do not mean to swallow the hook, but we do not believe them. They say that they mean to get the worm off without letting the hook catch hold of them. They have very clever ways of sucking worms off hooks, and they are going to show what they can do; and soon they are caught. But happy is the fish that fears the bait as well as the hook, and so keeps right away from both of them. When some of us were boys, we used to set traps for the sparrows and other birds in winter time, and we would watch to see them go in to eat our crumbs inside the trap. Sometimes, there would come a bird that had seen our arrangement before, and had been almost caught in it, and knew all about it. Well, as soon as ever he looked at it, he made up his mind that he would give our trap a very wide berth, so he flew away as far as he could. But there were some other birds that would come, and look at the trap, and even perch on it, and presently some of them would get into it. Of course, they did not mean to be caught; they thought they knew the way to go just far enough into the trap to get those grains of wheat, and then to fly out; but once in, they could not fly out. And sinners are just as foolish as those sparrows. Of course, they do not mean to be caught; they will fly out of the trap all right when they have eaten the wheat! Yes, but I say, happy is the bird that feareth always, and that keeps far off the trap; and unhappy is the bird that thinks it can go just so far into the trap, but fully intends to go no further. Oh, how many young men and young women have been ruined because they have gone just so far into sin, meaning to stop there! But they could not stop there; they began to slide, and the ice carried them along where they never meant to go. The only safe plan is to keep off the ice altogether. If you do not take the first wrong step, dear friend, you will not take the second; and if divine grace makes you fear and tremble before you begin to go down the hill, you are not likely to be found amongst those who have fallen to the bottom. Happy is the man, in this sense, that feareth alway.

But I must pass on to notice, in the third place, that the man, who has this fear in his heart, will do well to have it there continually: “Happy is the man that feareth alway.”

Have this fear concerning your holy things. For instance, when you come up to God’s house to worship, be afraid, as you are coming along, lest you should be only a lip-server, and so get no blessing. If you are afraid of that happening, it will not happen. And when you are sitting in your pew, say to yourself, “Now, it is possible for me to become a mere formalist in worship, and I may be listening to the Word of God with my ears, yet not receiving it into my heart. I am sorely afraid lest it should be so.” Brethren and sisters, it will not be so if you are afraid that it will be. And when the service is over, say to yourself, “I am afraid that I did not worship God in spirit and in truth, as I should have done; I fear that I did not praise him, or pray to him, with my whole heart, as I ought to have done. O Lord, pardon the iniquity of my holy things!” I do not think any man ever preaches as he ought to preach if he is satisfied with his own efforts. I sometimes feel thankful to God for the feeling of dissatisfaction that possesses me every time I preach. I often feel, as I am going home, that I should like to go back again, and try to do it so much better;-I do not mean better in an oratorical way, but pressing the truth home to men’s hearts more earnestly and more simply. I think that, in this sense, it is right that we should fear always. Ah, my dear young brother in the College, you are afraid that you will become cold-hearted, but you never will as long as you cherish such a fear as that. If you are afraid that you will, by-and-by, preach in a perfunctory, official manner, you will not fall into that bad habit if you live in dread of doing so. If you are afraid that you will not set a good example to your people, I believe that you will set them a good example. But if you ever feel, “Oh, I can preach, and practise, too; I am all right;” it may happen that God will rebuke your pride, and let you see, and perhaps let your enemies see, what a poor fool you are, after all. Blessed is the man who, in his holy things, feareth alway,-the man who is afraid, when he is on his knees alone, lest he should not pray aright,-the man who is afraid lest, either in public or in private, he should act the hypocrite before his God.

And happy is the man who has this holy fear in his own house,-the man who says, “I am afraid lest I should not act as a Christian father ought to act towards his children, or as a Christian husband should act towards his wife.” Other members of the household may say, “I fear lest I should not be such a wife, or such a child, or such a servant, or such a master as I ought to be.” These are the people who usually are what they should be,-those who are afraid that they are not. Those who are the most anxious lest they should fail are generally those who do not fail.

And I would like you also to be anxious in your business, for fear lest you should in any way take advantage of anybody,-lest, in the measure, or in the weight, or in the price, or in the invoice, there should be any mistake which would unjustly benefit you. The man who is afraid of anything like that will be an honest tradesman, you may rest assured of that. As for the servant or the workman who is afraid that he will not give a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage, and the employer who is afraid that he will not give his servant or workman as much as he ought to give him,-I can only say that I wish we had many more of that sort of men than we already have, though I know a good many of that sort. If we are afraid of wronging one another, and not loving our neighbour as ourselves, that is a healthy kind of fear; and the more we have of it, the more happy shall we be.

And if, perchance, there should not seem to be, in yourself, any special cause for this fear just now,-though “let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,”-then begin to be afraid for the church of which you are a member. This is a fear which is always resting heavily upon me,-the fear lest we should lose our earnestness in prayer,-lest we should not care as much as we ought for the souls of men,-lest the members of our church should grow worldly,-lest we should become cold and indifferent towards our dear Lord and Master. Never lose this wholesome kind of fear concerning this church, and your fellow-members, or concerning any other church with which you are connected.

Then, have a solemn fear about your own children; lest, possibly, you should not have trained them up as you should have done, or should not have prayed for them as you ought to have done, or lest your own example should not have been such as they could safely follow. Be afraid for your children, as Job was for his. When they met together to feast, he “offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” The man who is thus afraid that things may be wrong is the man who is most likely to keep everything right. Many a man, who becomes a bankrupt, is so largely because he does not examine his books. He says that he does not like looking into his books; they are very unpleasant literature to him; and he never sees to the details of his affairs himself. He leaves this to John, and that to Thomas, and the other to one clerk, and something else to another; and then, one day, he wakes up to find that everything has gone to smash. Do not let it be so in your household, or in your temporal affairs, or in your spiritual concerns; but look into everything yourself, and watch everything carefully; for, in this way, by fearing alway, you will be both safe and happy in the hands of God.

Now, lastly, there are some who have indeed very grave cause to fear.

There are some of my hearers, at this service,-I am glad that they are here,-who, I am afraid, have cause to fear in a far deeper sense than that in which I have used my text. Some of you are not saved; you know you are not. You have never had your sins forgiven, you have never sought and found mercy through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God’s only-begotten Son. And some of you are very ill; you were only just able to get here to-night. What! so ill as that, yet with no Saviour to help you? Sick, well-nigh unto death, yet without a Saviour? Likely to die soon, for you are consumptive; yet you have no Saviour? Let me appeal to you, my dear friend, is this wise? Can you afford to run such a terrible risk? Why, the healthy may die at any moment; but as for you, death is already at your door; so, surely, you cannot afford to trifle with eternal things. And some of you are getting old; yet you are not saved. Sixty years of age, and not saved? Seventy, eighty, and not saved? What are you at? A man told me, the other day, that he would not come to hear me again, for, said he, “The last time I came, you called me an old fool.” Why was that? I asked. “Why,” he replied, “you said that an old sinner was an old fool.” So I said to him, “Are you an old sinner, then? Because, if you are, you are an old fool;” and he could not deny it, for we are all fools till we are saved by Jesus Christ. A man must be a fool to run the risk of losing his immortal soul. I have heard that a man once went up to the top of the spire of Salisbury cathedral, and stood on his head there. What do you think he was? “A fool,” you say. Yes, so he was; yet he only risked his neck; but you are risking your soul’s eternal welfare, risking the loss of heaven, and running a terrible risk of going to hell for ever. O friend, is this wise? You know it is not, and that I am only speaking the truth when I tell you that you are a fool, and one of the worst of fools.

O sirs, if you are not believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are standing over the mouth of hell, upon a single plank, and that plank is rotten. You are hanging over the jaws of perdition by a single hair, and that hair is snapping. I looked down my well, this afternoon, as a man was going down it to do some necessary work, and I said to him, “Oh, do be careful! Pray be very careful!” I felt such dread upon me lest, possibly, the man should fall while he was going down that great depth, into which I looked till it made me giddy; and I cannot bear to think of some of you, who are in far greater danger, for you are hanging over the mouth of hell, with only a rotten rope to hold to. Some of you may be in hell within a week; I cannot guarantee that any one of you will live ten minutes longer. All the physicians in the world would not be able to guarantee to any one individual that he should live even for five minutes. You are always liable to death, and in danger of the wrath to come. Therefore, escape for your lives, I entreat you; and, meanwhile, I would put you in fear about this matter, that, through this fear, you may be driven to the only place of safety, even to Jesus Christ, who was lifted up upon the cross, and now is exalted on high a Prince and a Saviour. There is life in him; there is life for you at this moment if you will only trust in him. There is pardon for you now, if you will only believe in him.

FORGIVENESS

A Sermon

Published on Thursday, January 25th, 1906, delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Lord’s-day Evening, June 21st, 1863.

“But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.”-Psalm 130:4.

How significant is that word “but” in our text! It is as if you heard justice clamouring, “Let the sinner die,” and the fiends in hell howling, “Cast him down, into the fires,” and conscience shrieking, “Let him perish,” and nature itself groaning beneath his weight, the earth weary with carrying him, the sun tired with shining upon the traitor, the very air sick with finding breath for one who only spends it in disobedience to God. The man is about to be destroyed, to be swallowed up quick, when suddenly there comes this thrice-blessed “but”, which stops the reckless course of ruin, puts its strong hand, bearing a golden shield, between the sinner and destruction, and pronounces these words, “But there is forgiveness with God, that he may be feared.”

Suppose the question had been left open,-forgiveness or no forgiveness? We know that we have offended God; but suppose it had been left a moot point for us to find out, if possible, whether there was any forgiveness, where could we find it? We might turn to the works of God in nature, and say, “well, he is good, who loads the trees with fruit, and bids the fields yield so plenteous a harvest;” but when we remember how his lightnings sometimes strike the oak, and how his hurricanes swallow up whole navies in the deep, we shall be ready to say that he is terrible as well as tender; and we might be puzzled to know whether he would or would not forgive sin, more especially as we see all creatures die, and no exception made to that rule. If we knew that death was a punishment for sin, we should be led to fear that there was no forgiveness to be had from the hand of God; but when we turn to this open page, which God has so graciously written for our instruction, we are left in doubt no longer, for here we have it positively declared, “There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.” Exclusively in the Bible is this revelation made; but the words of my text are not exclusive. This passage is but one among a thousand echoes from the throne of God which proclaim his willingness to save sinners.

In attempting to bring this great doctrine of the possibility of pardon before the mind of the sinner to-night, I shall handle it in two or three ways. First, I shall try to prove it is so, that he may be sure of the fact; I shall then try to attract him to accept this doctrine by dwelling upon the pardon itself, hoping that the Spirit of God may work with my words; and ere I have done, I shall notice what will be the sure result of this pardon; whenever a man has been forgiven through the mercy of God, he is then enabled to fear the Lord, and to worship him in an acceptable manner.

By way of assurance, O man! there is forgiveness for thy sins, whatever they may have been. However sinful thy life may have been up until now, there is forgiveness with God even for thee. God’s bare Word ought to be enough for thee; but since the Spirit of God and thy conscience have shown thee something of thy sins, and since thou wilt be desponding and full of doubts, it will be well for me to give thee something more than the bare Word of God to make thee confident there is forgiveness with him.

Follow me, I pray thee, back to the garden where thy parents and mine first sinned. It was the greatest sin that was ever committed, with the exception of the murder of our Lord and Saviour,-the sin when Adam knowingly and wittingly rebelled against the one gentle command which his Master had given him as a test of his obedience. That was the mother-sin from which all other sins have sprung, the well from which the great river of iniquity, which drowned the world, first streamed. What said the Lord when this sin was committed? Did he lift his angry hand, and smite the guilty pair at once? Did he visit our first parents with a curse that withered them, and sent them down to their eternal portion in the pit? He cursed, but it was the ground; he spoke in angry terms, but the serpent felt the weight thereof. As for man, though God pronounced a sentence upon him that we call a curse, but which has been transformed into a blessing, yet he gave that matchless promise which is the mother of all promises, “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.” In that one single promise that God himself would provide a Deliverer by whom the tempter should be destroyed, and all his craft should be foiled, I see written as clearly as with a sunbeam that God meant to have mercy upon man. He would not talk about the seed of the woman bruising the serpent’s head if he had not intended something comforting for you and for me. The fact, I say, that though he did drive our first parents out of Eden, he did not drive them down to hell,-that though he did banish them from Paradise, he did not immediately consign them to the flames of his wrath,-that he did there and then give them a bright promise, which for many a hundred years was the only one that cheered the thick darkness of the Fall,-that fact alone should make you hope that there is forgiveness with God.

But what, I pray you, mean those many altars with lambs and bullocks smoking upon them, altars whose unhewn stones are dyed crimson with gore? Above all, what means that priestly map, wearing that bejewelled breastplate, who comes forward, in obedience to God, and offers every morning and evening a lamb? Or what meaneth it that, once in the year, he produces a scapegoat, which carries the sins of the people into the wilderness? What mean those rivers of blood and those mounds of ashes from the altar, if God does not forgive sin? There can, be no meaning whatever in all the long and gorgeous pageant of the Jewish religion unless it taught to every onlooker this great and solemn lesson, that though God is just, and blood must be shed, yet God is gracious, and accepts a substitute that the sinner may go free. By all those smoking altars, and the blood of rams, and lambs, and goats, and bullocks, believe, O sinner, that God has found a ransom and a sacrifice, and that he, therefore, can and will pardon sin!

If thou seest these things dimly here, thou wilt see them more clearly in another fact. Dost thou not know, O man, that God has commanded thee to repent? The times of former ignorance God winked at; but, now, he commandeth all men everywhere to repent. What for? Surely he would not command us to repent, and then” intend to punish us afterwards. It could not be possible that God would woo sinners to return to him, and yet not intend to forgive them. I cannot believe a theory so monstrous as that God would send his ministers, and send his own Book, and earnestly and affectionately invite sinners to turn from their evil ways, and repent them of their sins, and yet intend, even if they did repent, to punish them on account of their iniquity. It cannot be.

Dost thou not know, too, that God has commanded thee to pray for forgiveness? What is the meaning of that prayer, “Forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us”? Would Christ put these words into thy mouth if there were no pardon? Would he teach thee to ask for forgiveness if forgiveness were an impossibility? Doth God mock men? Doth he teach beggars to beg when he intends to refuse? Does he bring you down upon your knees that he may see you mourn, and laugh at your despair? Does he intend to see you rolling in the dust, girt with sackcloth and ashes, that he may afterwards put his iron heel upon your neck, and crush you to the lowest hell? It is not possible. The God, who commands you to repent, is just and merciful to forgive you your sins; and he who hath bidden you seek his face has not said unto the seed of Jacob, “Seek ye me in vain.”

Moreover, sinner,-and here we come to something clearer still,-dost thou not know that Jesus died? Hast thou not heard the wondrous story, how the Son of God came down from heaven, and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh? Dost thou not know that, after thirty years of holy life, wherein he rendered perfect obedience to the divine law, and made it honourable, he took upon himself the guilt, the crimes, the iniquities of a multitude that no man can number, for he bore the sins of many, and now he maketh intercession for the transgressors? See there, if thou canst dare to look amidst those moonlit olives, where upon the ground, there kneels a man, nay more, there kneels incarnate Deity;-what means it that his head, his hair, his garments are saturated with blood? How comes it that, on yonder ground, I see great clots of gore;-whence come they? Come they from his forehead? But what could have forced them from him? What means yonder sight? I watch that man dragged away, and charged most infamously with crimes he never knew, tied to a pillar, and there lashed with a Roman scourge, until the white bones stand out like islands of ivory amidst a sea of coral, and his whole back has become a stream of blood,-what means it all? And yonder sight, where he is stretched upon the transverse wood, where the nails have broached his hands and feet, and where his life goes oozing from him in anguish and agony extreme! What means that shriek of “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” He is a just man; does God punish the just? He is God’s dear Son, and has done no ill; does God hate him, and punish him for nought? Doth he pour wrath upon him without a cause? Thou knowest how it was. The sin of man was imputed to Christ; the iniquity of his people was laid upon him. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” And here is the riddle unriddled; he dies that we may live.

“He bore that we might never bear,

His Father’s righteous ire.”

Then, there must be forgiveness. I cannot see a bleeding Saviour without understanding that there must be pardon. Gethsemane, Gabbatha, Golgotha, three sacred words, three irresistible arguments by which it is proved beyond controversy that there is forgiveness even for the chief of sinners.

But if this content thee not, O troubled sinner, here is another fact for thee to reflect upon,-what multitudes have already been pardoned! Darest thou look up yonder beyond the skies? Hast thou strength enough of eyesight to see that multitude clothed in white, who, to-day, are standing before the throne of God? If there were no forgiveness, not one of them had been there. Were their robes always white? Hark at their answer:-“We have washed our robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, therefore are we before the throne of God.” Forgiveness brought them there, Not one redeemed soul would ever have seen the everlasting glory unless it had been for the pardoning mercy of God.

“Round the altar priests confess,

If their robes are white as snow,

’Twas the Saviour’s righteousness,

And his blood that made them so.

Who were these? on earth they dwelt;

Sinners once of Adam’s race;

Guilt, and fear, and suffering felt;

But were saved by sovereign grace.”

Here are scores and hundreds of us who bear witness that God has pardoned us. Whatever I may doubt, I dare not doubt my pardon in Christ Jesus. There are moments when one has to look well to one’s evidences, and come to Jesus Christ again; but this one thing I know, that Christ says, “he that believeth on me is not condemned;” and I do believe on him; if I have an existence, I know that I am trusting the Lord Jesus Christ; and if so, then I am pardoned. And oh, how sweet it is to know this! What peace it gives! I can look forward to living or to dying with equal delight now that I can say, “My sin is forgiven.” You can say, as I often do, in those sweet words of Kent,-

“Now freed from sin, I walk at large,

My Saviour’s blood my full discharge;

At his dear feet my soul I lay,

A sinner saved, and homage pay.”

Do you know what it is to be forgiven, young man? If you do not, you have not tasted the sweetest thing out of heaven. Oh, it is such joy! Angels hardly have ever tasted a joy that exceeds the bliss of having sins put away. It yields a calm so deep, so profound, that it can only be called “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.”

I have thus tried to bring forward the great truth that there is forgiveness with God; and let me say, before I leave this point, that you will please to remember that we have-warrant in God’s Word, for saying that there is forgiveness for you. However great your sins may have been,-with, but one exception; there is the sin against the Holy Ghost, which, if you have any tenderness left in your conscience, you have not committed;-but, apart from that, “all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men,” I wish I could go round these galleries, and to these pews, and find out where the aching hearts were Perhaps I should find one who said, “O sir, I never attended a place of worship for twenty or thirty years; can I be pardoned?” I would say, “Yes, there is forgiveness for thee.” Another might say, “Why, I cursed God to his face; I have dared him to damn my soul; can I be forgiven?” I will answer, in the words of the text, “There is forgiveness.” And I might meet another who would say, “But I used to persecute my wife; I have ill-treated my children because they would serve God. Can I, a hardened wretch such as I am,-can I be pardoned?” “There is forgiveness.” And I might meet another who would say, “Years ago, I was a high professor, but I became entangled in the world, and I have gone back. Am I not cast out?” I would say, “There is forgiveness.” But there would be another who would say, “I cannot tell you what my crime is, unless you would stoop down, and let me whisper in your ear;” and when I heard the awful words, which I must not tell again, I would still say, before you all, “There is forgiveness.” And though it were murder or adultery, whatever it might have been, and however frequently it might have been committed, though the woman were a harlot, and the man a practised thief, yet still we have the same gospel for every creature, “There is forgiveness.” And though you are eighty or ninety years of age, “there is forgiveness;” though you have sinned against light and knowledge, against mercy, against God and Christ his dear Son, yet still “there is forgiveness.” You have come to the brink of the precipice;-O God, I see it! you are just going over,-one foot already rests upon nothing, and you totter to your fall. O man, let me catch thee in my arms, and tell thee that “there is forgiveness” yet! One more step, and you may be where there is no forgiveness, but where the black and terrible pall of despair shall hang over your soul for ever, and it shall be said of you, “There are no acts of pardon passed in that cold grave to which he has gone; he is lost! lost! lost for ever!”

And now, secondly, I shall recommend this gracious forgiveness to your notice.

I commend it for its nature. It is a perfect pardon,-every sin is blotted out at once,-not a few sins, but every sin; though they be innumerable, they are all gone, they are all gone at once. And it is eternal pardon; they are all gone for ever; once forgiven, they will never be laid to your charge again; they are like the Egyptians in the Red Sea, the depths have covered them, there is not one of them left,-the pardon is complete in every respect. I heard one man say of his fellow, the other day, when the two had disagreed, and I had tried to make it right, “Yes, I forgive him, but-” That is not how God puts it. He has no “buts in his forgiveness. You sometimes say, “Yes, I forgive him, but I will never trust him again.” Not so the Lord; you make a clean breast in confession, and he will give you a clean breast by absolution. He will put all the sins you have committed so wholly away that they shall not be remembered against you any more for ever. And this pardon is instantaneous. You know that it takes but a moment to receipt a bill when the debt is paid; and Jesus Christ has paid the debt of every believer, and all that is to be done is for God to give you the receipt, to write in your heart the word “justified”, and this he does in a moment. When I think of the nature of this pardon, putting away all sin in a moment, and all the consequences of sin, I feel as if I would that we had a choir of angels here, that they might sing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”

Consider too, dear friends, not only the pardon itself, but the person to whom it is sent. Remember that it is sent to you not to the fallen angels; they were greater than you; but, when they fell, they fell without a hope of being restored to the favour of god. It is not sent to the damned in hell. Oh, what would they not give for it? How would they stretch forward,-how would they catch every word! Though they have been there but one moment, they know more of God’s wrath than you and I do; and oh, how they would prize the presentation of eternal life in Christ Jesus! It is not send to them; but it is sent to you. You know what you have been; you know something about The hardness of your heart, and the sinfulness of your past life; yet God sends this message to you, “There is forgiveness.”

And I want you to remember who it is that sends the forgiveness. It is the god whom you have offended, that very God whom you may have cursed, whose Sabbath you have broken, whose Book you have despised, at whose ministers you have laughed, and whose servants you have persecuted; yet he says, even he, “There is forgiveness.” And lest you should doubt it, he takes a solemn oath before you all; and God never swears without there is need for it, and thus he swears, “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” What more can we ask than this? Admire and be attracted by the pardon when you think of who it is that sends it.

Consider, too, how it comes to you, and by what channel. It comes through the wounds of your best friend, through the sufferings of him who gave his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. “He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and, we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.” O sinner! wilt thou not be only too glad to lay hold of that which comes to thee through so divine a channel which is marked with the heart’s blood of One who is the Friend of sinners even unto death?

And, then, I pray you to remember that, if you do not receive this forgiveness which is preached unto you, there is no other way under heaven by which you can be saved. Enter by this door, or stand shivering without for ever; bow the knee, and kiss the Son, or else he will break you in pieces with his rod, as men break potters’ vessels. “Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” But if ye reject this pardon of God, ye write your own death-warrants, and prepare the noose that is to be your souls’ destruction.

I would to God that I had such powers of persuasion that I might induce you to lay hold of this precious pardon that God presents to you. I know that my pleadings are useless unless the Spirit of God shall be pleading too; but many, many times in this house, while I have been talking about the full, rich grace of God, some poor soul has felt that there was a message from God to it; and I trust, I hope it may be so to-night. Remember that, in the message of mercy, I am authorized to leave out none; I am told to preach it to every creature under heaven, and I do. There are no terms but just these,-that you will take what God freely gives you. Just as, when men enlist for soldiers, the soldier does not give the sergeant anything, he takes the shilling. And the way in which your souls are saved is by taking what Christ “freely offers to you, freely presents to you, the finished righteousness which he wrought out in his life and death. You are to take, not to give. If there be terms, they are very simple; they are put so as to suit the dead in trespasses and sins. Christ comes to you just where you are. You have no power, no spiritual life, no goodness, no tenderness of heart; but Jesus, like the good Samaritan, comes just where you are, and he cries in your ear, “Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” He bids me say to thee, though thine hand be withered, “Stretch out thine hand;” power shall go with the command, and thou shalt be made whole.

I remember the time when, if anyone had tried to preach to me full and free forgiveness, to be had for nothing, and to be had on the spot, I do believe I should have leaped almost out of my body to have heard it. I have heard, sometimes, of Methodists and Welshmen standing up to dance, and I do not wonder at it, if they really do but get the full sense of this, that the big, black, foul villain of a sinner, the moment he trusts Jesus Christ, is forgiven, is a child of God, and is accepted. Why, it sounds too good to be true; and it could not be true if it came only from me, for I am but a man, and can only think and act as a man; but because it comes from the true God, and it is just like him, because it accords with his attributes of lovingkindness and truth, therefore we know it is true. “I am God, and not man,” says he, and he gives that as a reason for his mercy. Why, if his love were not as much superior to ours as the heavens are above the earth, there never would be mercy presented in any shape, much less in a shape like this. There is nothing asked of you, only that you will just be nothing, and let Christ be everything, and take from Christ’s hand that which he freely presents to you,-pardon through his precious blood.

Now, dear friends, I cannot put this truth more plainly than I have done, but I have the last part of the text just to comment a little upon: “There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.”

You see, the only men that ever do fear God are those that are forgiven. Other men may pretend to do it, but they fail to do it. Why, I believe that the religion of nine out of ten professing Christians is just this, “I go to church, or I go to chapel, regularly, and I think then I have done very well.” That is what the most think, and the outside world believes that religion is this, “If a man is honest, and sober, and walks righteously, and so on, he goes to heaven.” But how startling must the sermon of this morning* have been to some of these stuck-up Pharisees, when we told them it was not the righteous who would go there, but the sinner; and that the apostle John did not say, “If any man has done good works, he has an Advocate;” but, “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.” As Martin Luther gloried to put it, “Jesus Christ never died for our good works, they were not worth his dying for; but he gave himself for our sins, according to the Scriptures.” What did our Saviour himself say? “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

The Lord never does have any who really and acceptably fear him but those who once were sinners, and who are led as sinners to accept his pardon; and these are the people that do fear him. Do you want to find a warm hearted woman who really loves Jesus Christ, and who would break the alabaster box for his sake? You will find her in one who may be called “a woman who was a sinner.” Do you want to find a man who would preach Christ’s Word with the tears running down his cheeks? You must go and find him among those who once were foul, of whom the apostle said, “Such were some of you, but ye are washed.” When the Lord wanted a man to write the next best book in the world to the Bible,-“The pilgrim’s progress,”-he did not go to Lambeth Palace for him, and he did not go to any of the fine streets of this city to pick up some moral person. There was a swearing tinker playing at “cat” on Sunday on Elstow-green, and the Lord said, “That is the man.” He laid hold of him, washed his heart, made him a new man in Christ Jesus; and John Bunyan, the master-dreamer, has given us that remarkable book. And when the Lord wanted a man who would stir up London from end to end by preaching in St. Mary Woolnoth, where should he find him? Why, among the ragamuffins who were conducting the slave trade on the coast of Africa, among the sweepings and dregs of the universe. Almighty grace picked up John Newton, changed his heart, and made him one of the mightiest of teachers.

And when the Lord will bring out any that shall really fear him, and do anything great for his sake, it will be either from among those that have been outwardly great sinners, or else those who have been made in their conscience to feel the greatness of their guilt, and thus have been fitted to deal with others. Oh, how many times I have blessed, God for the five years of despair That I had to endure! No poor soul was ever more racked than I was, nor more hunted of the devil. For five years I was a victim to that black thought that God would never forgive me, and I bless his name for it. I never could have preached to the chief of sinners if it had not been for that experience. If I had come fresh from my mother’s apron-strings, without any deep sense of sin, and had found Christ as many and many a young man does, readily and at once, I should never have liked to go down, and run my hands in the mire to get at the foul and the vile. But, now, I look back upon those times of anguish,-why, there were days when I thought I was worse than the devils in hell; there were days when, if anybody had asked me my character, though no one ever knew anything amiss of it, still I would have said, and felt it too, that there did not breathe God’s air a greater miscreant that more deserved to be in hell than I did. I wrote bitter things against myself, and if any had said, “Why, your life is moral,” I should have said, “Yes, but my heart is a reeking dunghill, full of everything that is foul,” and I felt it too, for though my lips never cursed God, yet my heart did, with blasphemy so foul that I shudder when I think of it. When I was given up a prey to the devil, and it seemed as if there was a pandemonium within my heart, then indeed I knew what it was to be sore broken in the place of darkness, and to be like a ship driven out to sea with the mast gone over the side, and every timber strained, and the hold filling with water, and nothing but Omnipotence keeping it from going down into the lowest depths. Ah! then I knew that I wanted a great Christ for great sinners, and I dare not preach a little Christ now, and I dare not preach him to little sinners either. Oh, how great your sin has been, my hearers; but Jesus Christ is greater still! Ye have gone deeply into sin, but the arm of mercy can reach you. Ye have wandered far, but the eye of love can see you; and the voice of love calls to you now, “Come, come, come and welcome, come and welcome.” Come just as you are, and you will not be cast away, but be accepted in the Beloved. “There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared,” and none fear, and love, and bless, and praise God so much as those who know that there is forgiveness with him.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon.

PSALM 145.

When you get to the 145th Psalm, you enter the Beulah Land of the Psalms. Henceforth, the time of the singing of birds is come; and you go from one Hallelujah to another. In the Hebrew, this is one of the alphabetical Psalms; but one letter (nun) is omitted, perhaps, as Dr. Bonar suggests, that “we must be kept from putting stress on the mere form of the composition.” Those ancient singers sang their way through the alphabet from A to Z; and it is well for us also to begin to praise the Lord while we are yet children, and to keep on praising him till we get to the “Z” in the very hour of death, gasping his praises till we get into eternity.

“My God, I’ll praise thee while I live,

And praise thee when I die,

And praise thee when I rise again,

And to eternity.”

Verses. 1-3. I will extol thee, my God, O king; and I will bless thy name for ever and ever. Every day will I bless thee; and I will praise thy name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and hit greatness is unsearchable.

Such as the Lord is, such should his worship be. If he were a little God, he would deserve little praise; but the great God is “greatly to be praised.” There is no fear of going to any excess in our praises; we can never laud him too highly, however lofty our expressions may be.

“Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.” David knew what it was to be himself searched by God, and he prayed, “Search me, O God;” but he could not search the greatness of his God. There, he was utterly lost; the utmost range of his faculties could not compass the greatness of Jehovah: “his greatness is unsearchable.”

4. One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts.

There is a hallowed tradition of praise; each generation should hand on the praise of God as a precious legacy to the next one. Train up your sons and daughters to praise your God, so that, when your voice is silent in death, another voice, like your own, may continue the strain.

5. I will speak of the glorious honour of thy majesty, and of thy wondrous works.

“I will speak.” What a powerful speaker David was! Note how he piles up his golden words. He is not content merely to talk of God’s majesty, but he speaks of its “glorious honour.” When he talks of God’s works, he calls them “wondrous works.”

6. And men shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts:

If they will not speak of anything else, they shall be obliged to speak with awe when the terrors of the Lord are abroad in the earth. If they were as dumb as fishes before, they shall begin to say to one another, with bated breath, when earthquakes, and famines, and war, and pestilence are rife, “What a terrible God he is!”

6. And I will declare thy greatness.

While other men were talking, David did not say, “Now I can be quiet.” When they did not speak, he did; and when they began to speak, he still added his quota of praise to Jehovah.

7. They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness, and shall sing of thy righteousness.

What a beautiful expression! “They shall abundantly utter.” The original has in it the idea of bubbling up, boiling over, bursting out like a fountain; men’s hearts shall get to be so full of gratitude to God that they shall overflow with the memory of his great goodness. Then they shall sing. Singing is the language of jubilant nature: “the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing.” Singing is the language of men when they wish to express their highest joys. The saints sing the high praises of their God. Singing is the language of the holy angels; did they not, when they came to Bethlehem, sing concerning the newborn King? Singing is the language of heaven; and most marvellous of all, singing is the highest language that ever God uses: “He will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.” Oh, for more holy singing!

8. The Lord is gracious,-

That alone is enough to make us sinners sing, for we need grace, and “the Lord is gracious,”-

8. And full of compassion;-

There is no “passion” in him, but there is “compassion” in him; what a mercy that is for us! He is “full of compassion;”-

8. Slow to anger, and of great mercy.

Hear that, ye great sinners, and ye saints who need great forbearance.

9. The Lord is good to all:

Even to his enemies. Does not the dewdrop hang upon the thistle as well as upon the rose?

9. And his tender mercies are over all his works.

He cares for the worm in the sod and for the fish in the sea as well as for men upon the face of the earth.

10. All thy works shall praise thee, O Lord; and thy saints shall bless thee.

Their voices can reach a higher note and a loftier strain than God’s works can ever reach: “thy saints shall bless thee.”

11. They shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom,

For the saints love God as their King, and they rejoice to remember that the King’s Son said to his disciples, “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom;” so well may they sing of it.

11-13. And talk of thy power; to make known to the sons of men his mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of his kingdom. Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.

What is the use of preaching if it does not glorify God? What is the use of a tongue that does not speak or sing of the glory of God’s kingdom? But let one of God’s bards have this as the theme of his song, and he feels like a hind let loose, rejoicing in glorious liberty.

14. The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down.

Does not this seem to be a singular change in the strain? The Lord is a King, and his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom; yet what is he doing? Why, he is upholding, propping up those that are ready to fall, and lifting up those that are crushed and oppressed. Earthly kings often glory in the terror of their power, and the splendour of their majesty; what a condescending God is ours, whose glory is a moral glory, and whose chief delight consists in blessing the poor and needy! Let us bless his name for this. Are any of you ready to fall? Then praise him for this glorious truth, “The Lord upholdeth all that fall.” Are any of you bowed down? Daughter of Abraham, have you been bowed down these many years? Oh, that you might be made straight this very hour! And you may be, for God can lift you up, for he “raiseth up all those that be bowed down.”

15, 16. The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.

What a glorious God we have! How easily can he supply the needs of his people! He has but to open his hand, and it is done! We need not be afraid to come to him, as though our needs would be too great for him to supply. The commissariat of the universe is superintended by this truly Universal Provider, who hath but to open his hand to satisfy “the desire of every living thing.”

17. The Lord is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works.

This is a thing for which many modern divines do not praise God. The attribute of righteousness in the character of God is expelled from a good deal of modern theology. But he, who loves God aright, loves the righteousness of God. I would not care to have even salvation if it were unrighteous salvation. The righteousness of God gleams like a sharp two-edged sword, and it is terrible to those who are at enmity against him; but the true children of the Most High delight to see this sword of state carried in the front of the great King of kings. The seraphim cried, one to another, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts.” The redeemed in glory sing, “Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints;” but the captious critics of the present day care nothing for these attributes of Jehovah.

18. The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth.

If you read this Psalm through carefully, you will notice the great number of “alls” with which the latter part of the Psalm is studded; and this is appropriate, for God is All-in-all, he is the One, the All, so let him have all praise from all.

19. He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him: he also will hear their cry, and will save them.

When you have respect to God’s will, God will have respect to your will. When you fear him, you will have no one else to fear; and when you make his service your delight, he will make your wants his care.

20. The Lord preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked will he destroy.

As in a state of sanitary perfection, everything that breeds miasma and disease is banished, so must it be in God’s great universe, when, he has completed his work,” all the wicked will he destroy.”

21. My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord: and let all flesh bless his holy name for ever and ever.